Angela's Necklace

I received a beautiful necklace in the mail that originated with Angela Barribeau, a friend from my Charmsters group. She designed the necklace and put on two charms, a crown and a beaded dangle. It then went to the next person in the group, and she added two pieces. When it was my turn, I added three Swarovski pearls with crystal dangles, and a leaf and bead addition near the clasp. This necklace will now travel through the talented hands of six more artists before it returns to Angela. Here's how it looks now.

Shell Seeker

In an earlier post, I talked about the One World One Heart campaign developed by Lisa Swifka. Bloggers were asked to visit other sites, place a comment, and the host of that site might choose your name to win a giveaway. I received a beautiful genie painting from Lisa. In return, I sent her this painting that I call Shell Seeker.

The painting includes layers of painted tissue and some shells I found here in Florida. Lisa lives near the Pacific, so I thought she might enjoy this.

One World One Heart

The wonderfully giving, and talented, Lisa Swifka hosts an event each year called One World One Heart. Bloggers are invited to join, and give away one of their creations to a lucky winner. The catch is, the entrants must also be bloggers, and they must invite you over to their blog. I was told about this by a friend, and when I checked, I just knew I had to enter.

What a fantastic group of artists! The giveaways were beautiful jewelry, paintings, art supplies. Every time I went on the site, more artists had joined. I was not a giveaway blogger, but I was lucky enough to win something! And I won from the coordinator of One World One Heart, herself, Lisa Swifka! You can check out her OWOH blog here, and you can still see the list of over 900 bloggers who generously gave away their creations.

Lisa also has her own blog, called A Whimsical Bohemian. Be sure to click on the links to her art to be impressed by her talent. (And her prolific-ness. Is that a word?)

The artwork Lisa sent me as a winner is shown below. She made the beautiful genie painting with the crystal jar. I wanted to show you just how well it goes with the paint color in my art studio (O.K., a corner of my bedroom), where I've posted my art wall. All the art you see was created by others, including the charms in the shadow box -- all received in swaps from my Charmsters group.


And the other reason for my post, besides publicly thanking Lisa. I have now personally thanked her, and I sent her a collage I recently completed. I won't post a photo here until I'm sure she's received it in the mail!

Bead Soups

Two years ago I was fortunate to take a class from Beverly Gilbert at the Art & Soul retreat in Portland, Oregon. Beads on Metal was a fun class where we learned so much: cutting metal, stamping it with letters, aging it with liver of sulphur, sandwiching pieces with hand-made rivets, and finally, decorating them with interwoven strands of beads. Beverly was a thorough and patient teacher, and a real talent. We used many types and sizes of seed beads in different colors.

Beverly has started her own line of what she calls "Bead Soups." She's done the mixing of beads and colors in such a yummy way. You can see her collection here, on her website. I bought a few of her soups, and have made a couple multi-strand necklaces with them. Here's my latest creation. This one uses her Silver Sand bead soup.

White Pelicans

Two weeks ago I went up to Cocoa Beach to visit my parents. I grew up on a canal just off the main part of the Banana River. We're fortunate to see porpoises (maybe they're dolphins, but we always called them porpoises), manatees, and lots of birds: pelicans, cormorants, osprey, roseate spoonbills, blue herons, wood storks. In fact, an injured blue heron (it looks as if one leg is broken), comes up onto the patio of my parents' house every day. My dad calls him Harry, and he feeds him a can of sardines every day. Woody the Wood Stork occasionally stops by, and my dad has a little extra for him.

Brown pelicans live year-round in Florida. But each January or February, a huge flock of white pelicans migrates through town. They don't stay long, but occasionally they'll come into the canal in the back yard and fish. They don't dive-bomb like the brown pelicans, but sit at the surface and scoop the fish from there. They travel in big flocks, and the cormorants follow them. I came across them as I was going over the causeway coming back. I raced into the house, got the rest of my family, and we went driving out to where they were. As we arrived, they started to pull away from shore. But this is the photo I got, and you can see just how many there were. The cormorants are the black birds. They dive under the water to get the fish. Click on the photo and you can see it better.

This is just one more of the pleasures of living in Florida.

Jewelry Swap

Here's the latest necklace I received for the necklace round robin. This was created by Darlene Moorhead, and I added a cocoon bead to it. I've displayed it on a hand carved pear sculpture that I won in a raffle.