Tuesday, November 25, 2014

2014 Art Charm Exchange Auction

Today is auction day and reveal day for the charms!  The whole event is organized by Jennifer at Glass Addictions.  I can't even begin to imagine how much work it is to coordinate this.  Each person that joined the exchange sent in 11 charms.  They got 10 back - one of theirs and 9 others.  The 11th charm from each person is either up now on eBay or will be later today, and all of the proceeds go to Beads of Courage. Jennifer unpacks all of the charms, then sorts and packs them up again to ship them out.  After that, she takes pictures of each charm, edits them and creates the eBay listings.  She is amazing. 

This year, our theme is Soar.  This is my first year and I had a lot of trouble coming up with something that matched the theme.  I tend to over think things a bit.  Here is what I came up with.


I kept thinking about leaves.  Trees are majestic and beautiful.  They sleep every winter and are renewed in the spring.  In the fall they celebrate with a gorgeous display of color and the leaves Soar gently through the air.  Always renewing and ever beautiful.  My favorite color for an autumn leaf is scarlet, I just love to see the trees full of them.

I drew the leaf onto shrink plastic, then colored it in with alcohol inks and punched holes for the jump rings.  Then they were baked.  I colored them again if they needed a touch up.   Then I coated them on one side with resin and let it cure overnight.  The other side was coated with resin and I let it cure again.  I filed any spots that needed any touch up and another coat of resin.  Some of them have bubbles from the resin, I left them because it really reminded me of the spots that the leaves get on them.  I am pretty happy with the way they turned out.  I was really happy to have them done!

 Here they are on my beading board before I sent them to Jennifer.


I received some lovely art charms.  I haven't done anything with them yet, but I have ideas floating around in my head.  I will do a post or two later this week to show you what I received.  In the meantime, here is the list for the blog hop.  I've put a ** by the charms I received, but please go and take a look at everyone's reveal post.  Please also check out the auction, it's for a very good cause.

Please share the link to the auction if you can.  The more publicity, the better the total donation will be for Beads of Courage. 

2014 Art Charm Exchange Participants:

**Alicia Marinache: http://www.allprettythings.ca
Jenny Davies-Reazor: http://www.jdaviesreazor.com/blog
Lennis Carrier: http://www.windbent.net
**Moriah Betterly: http://mlbetterly.blogspot.com

Posted by at 15 comments:

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Clay and Metal Blog Hop


Today I am joining up with Lisa at Pine Ridge Treasures for another blog hop!  We were sent yummy components from Metapolies, along with some coordinating beads.  I did remember to get a before shot.


I had a hard time with this one.  I wanted to do earrings, but that wouldn't have used a lot of beads, and I wanted to use them all or close to it.  I kept looking at them and couldn't decide what to make.  Then I finally thought wrap bracelet.  I tried memory wire, but the holes in the small beads were pretty small, I had trouble getting stringing wire through them too.  So I pulled out some coordinating seed beads, and my needle and Fireline, and here you go:

I think it turned out pretty well, and I used up just about all the beads.  I had to take a few off to make it fit right on my wrist.  I finished early, used up almost all of the beads, and remembered to get a before shot.  Better check the sky, it might be falling!

Thanks for stopping by, please check out the other participant's posts:

Your hostess:  Lisa Lodge, A Grateful Artist
Melissa Trudinger, Bead Recipes
Jo-Ann Woolverton, It's a Beadiful Creation
Carolyn Lawson, Carolyn's Creations
Shaiha Williams,   Shaiha's Ramblings
Toltec  Jewels, Jewel School Friends
Heather Richter, Desert Jewelry Designs
Marybeth Rich, A Few Words from within the Pines
Kim Dworak, Cianci Blue
Karen Grosset Grange, Ginkgo et Coquelicot
Ann Schroeder, Bead Love
Lisa Prewitt Knappenberger, LiRaysa Designs
Carol Briody, A Beads Life
Miranda Ackerley, MirandAck
Kari Asbury, Hippie Chick Design
Susan Anderson, La Main Tresor
LeAnne Loftus, First Impression Design
Leithleach Seodra, Alainn Jewelry
Posted by at 12 comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)