More Stuff

Some good.

Some not.

Here's the good part:

These are the Russian lacquerwork pansy beads that I bought at the Bowers show a couple of weeks ago.

I added some dangles made of pearls, Czech glass, crystals and a pair of Cathy Dailey silver flower beadcaps.

I am officially IN LOVE with these earrings. I am really wrestling with myself about posting them on Etsy, but then again, nothing is selling anyway so I suppose I can post them AND keep them at the same time LOL!

And now for the not so good:

I named this picture "ruined." Because every one of these items has something wrong with it. Mostly it's that the resin has soaked through the paper in certain spots making it look like the images have "grease stains" on them. No need to leave a comment telling me I need to pre-seal the paper - I did that. With 2 coats. Front, back and edges. I don't mind so much about the wooden pieces, but to ruin those #A@&&@&)#!!! expensive Patera bezels pisses me off! Oh, and one of the bezels ended up with a piece of dust or fuzz or something stuck to it. Which, considering that I put a cover over everything while it's drying...I can't figure out.

See what I mean about "grease spots?" This one woulda been so totally cool, too. Dang it

Speaking of "ruined" - this is the ONLY piece that survived the great drilling debacle of 2010. Which is a shame, because some of the other pieces were really awesome - until I tried go all power tool on them. Now, they are scrap.

But, occasionally I do get a few things right:

I've been getting some great artwork from various vendors - I loved these old Hawaiian tourism prints from the 60's and 70's. Reminds me of the years I lived on Oahu as a child. And the vintage blue flower prints were just so pretty. I still need to file the edges on these, but since they started life as wood beads, they already have holes in them. YAY!

Okay, these? Came out good! These are some embellished 3D stickers that I bought at Tall Mouse. They just happened to fit exactly into the square Patera bezels and they were already layered so I just plonked 'em in and resined them. I was afraid I'd get bubbles because of the 3D nature of these stickers, but surprisingly, they worked perfectly!

***We interrupt this blog post for a special announcement. WHAT IS UP WITH BLOGGER AND PHOTOS TODAY? Seriously - not loading; partial loading; randomly turning photos sideways; being SLOOOOOWWWWER than molasses - this is killing me!***

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog post already in progress.

How CUTE are these little koi fish? I know, right? These are those "puffy" kind of stickers applied to wood beads and then resined. They came out perfectly. I am definitely doing more of these!

These two are my favorites. The one on the right is a wood bead that I covered with some special art paper I had in my old rubberstamping stash. I added the brass dragonfly charm and a little blue crystal and then covered with resin. The one on the left is a Patera bezel. I layered in some swirly, watery-looking image that I bought on Etsy, added the brass dolphin charm and a seashell I picked up at The Wedge when we went there for Dad's memorial. I'm definitely going to do some more with the shells - they look awesome.

Okay, that's enough drivel for today. Check back tomorrow when I'm sure I will have something new to drivel on about ;-)

KJ

P.S. Happy Cinco de Mayo! Margaritas, anyone?