Pam's Delight

This piece is my best friend's gift to her mom for Mother's Day. The baby is Oliva, you might remember her from some earlier pieces...

On the cover, the picture of her little feet is actually behind a glass slide that I trimmed with gold scrap and accented with rhinestones. Inside is more of the gold scrap & rhinestones. You can't have too many rhinestones, can you?

La Sirena

The outside dimension on this frame is a little over 6 inches tall by 8 inches wide. The inside of the mat is about 3 by 5. I'm really, really happy how this turned out and I have ideas for a series of them including one with a peacock feather and one with a woman with butterfly wings. I think there will probably be several more as well.

The shells & sand are real. The starfish just happened to fit the one she is holding just perfectly. The paper inside the bottle reads "Love Song of the Siren". I really like the finish on the frame. I managed to get the bleached out "beach" feel that I was looking for. You can't really see it in these pics, but under the ivory top coat, you can see both blue & brown peaking thru in different areas. There is glass that covers the front of the frame...I just had to take it out to get a decent picture without any "flash back" from the camera's flash.

The Sweet Life (contains mild nudity)

This does contain a vintage photo with some nudity in it...

This is a great little box I got from Hannah Grey (an awesome little online retailer). I found the picture online and new exactly what I needed to do with it. It turned out exactly how I wanted it.

Frida/Day of the Dead Cross

This is another cross I made for the same swap as the cross below. She likes bright colors, glitter, rhinestones, and Frida Kahlo. That's what she got!

Sacred Heart Cross

I made this cross for a swap on Craftster. The base color is a dark periwinkle. I made the heart out of some very lightweight air dry clay and the flames are pipe cleaners that I touched up with a bit of paint to get the color I wanted. The color of the heart doesn't show very accurately here because it has a slight metallic sheen to it...its reflects too much from the flash. Overall, its about 6 or 8 inches tall.

Heavenly Body

This is a new experiment for me. The body is about 6 inches tall and the full wing span is about 15 inches. The body is made from paper mache and I decoupaged the celestial tissue to it and then painted the areas the tissue didn't cover. I do like it, but it definitely needs more work in some way I can't yet define.

I need some help!

I'm thinking of submitting some of my pieces to the "Rock & Roll Craft Show" here in StL for review to see if I can get accepted into the show. The only problem is that I can only submit 3 pictures total.

Which ones should I submit??? I only have until April 9th.

Here is a link to the site for the show so you can get an idea of what they are about.

http://www.bgb.org/RRCS/

Mexican folk art

I have a real love of Mexican folk art. I recently made this piece using Loteria (kind of like Mexican bingo) game cards. I took an unfinished frame, painted it red and put on a crackle finish. I topped that with a coat of black paint, but it didn't come out distressed enough looking for me, so I sanded it as well. After that, I decoupaged some of the game cards to it and outlined them with glitter. I'm really happy with the overall look. (the yellow in the center is just an envelope I put over the mirror as to not get flashback when I took the pictures)

New Style

This box is a little different in style...it has a 3-fold opening and is a bit bigger than the normal book boxes I use. I like it though...there will definitely be more of these.

Spring Class at Sage Paper

These are the samples for my March 29th class at Sage Paper. I'm partial to the green one...the flowers and the girls are just sweet.

Japanese Motif

This piece is larger than I usually work with...about 4 inches tall, 3 inches wide and 1 inch deep. I found it a challange to work with all that space! (the quarter is there to show size comparison)

John 14:27

I made this one for my mother-in-law to give to her sister. I'm really happy with the way it turned out...the colors are very rich and I like the dove I finally found!

Just an update

Things have been pretty busy lately.

I'm participating in a couple of swaps on Craftster, a shrine swap that I've made a Day of the Dead shrine for and then another "One Tiny Thing" swap. The rule of this swap is that you make one thing for your partner, no more than 4" by 4".

I'm also scheduled to teach another class at Sage Paper on March 29th. It will be a Spring or Mother's Day type theme. Go to the link for Sage Paper on the right side of my main page and check out the schedule for her classes. Its a great little shop down between the Central West End and St. Louis University's campus.

And I have several more outstanding orders for custom work that I'm doing as well. The really good news is that I was able to put in a bulk order so have plenty of boxes at the moment to cover everything! Wahooo!

I also have some really good ideas bubbling around inside my head right now for some other things...I'm hooked on bugs for some reason...,like in the Dream 2 box.

And I finally tried my hand at making some microscope slide pendants this weekend and had an unfortunate run-in with my new soldering iron, so there is a need for some healing time before I get back to that.

Stay tuned for more projects & pics in the coming weeks!

Another Dream

Overall I'm pretty happy with this. I really like the right side on the inside with the insects. I'm not overjoyed with the leaves on the left side, though. I definitely want to use the insect idea again. The penny in the last picture is to show size. Its not an embellishment. *grin*

I was unable to get a really good shot of the right side due to hot spot I keep getting on the copper frame from the flash. Very frustrating! The picture in the frame is a really cute little cherub.

For My Sister

I made this for my sister's birthday present...I had a lot of fun with it!

Some changes

I just realized that my front page was showing the last 30 days worth of posts, which make it impossibly slow to load if you have a slow connection. I'm sorry about that! Now I just have the 5 most recent posts show on the front page. Hopefully that will make it easier to view. If not, let me know and I can change it again.

I've also opened a shop on Etsy.com. Etsy is similar to eBay except it is exclusively for handmade arts and craft items. Its pretty cool. There is a link off to the right of the page or here is the link. I made the mistake of not registering with Amaryllisroze as the user name and they won't change it for me. Oh well, lesson learned!

http://arozeboom.etsy.com

"Olivia"

I made this one for my best friend...this is her Olivia...she's an especially beautiful baby~

A departure from my norm...

I was on Jury Duty last week, so I have a bit of catching up to do... I have one more box
that I haven't posted yet because its a secret that will be revealed shortly! Shhhh!

In the meantime...I bought this cross shaped box in New Mexico in November...I painted the inside of it, painted some bottle caps, made some skulls from polymer clay and painted them to
look like sugar skulls. Glued it all together and here's what I came up with.

I'm a big believer in the Mexican Day of the Dead...I love the idea behind it and the imagery.

"Forever"

I made this for a friend to give to her son for his wedding anniversary. She asked that I incorporate a few things....both the son & his wife have sapphire for a birthstone, they've been married for 21 years, he's in the Navy and they live in Hawaii. Here is what I came up with.
I wish I had gotten a better picture of the sand dollar...its real!

"Bailey"

This is another pet memorial for a woman I know. She lost her Bailey a few weeks ago.