I am loving my new eClips!  Made these birdcages and flowers and greenery using it with eCal, and had a blast... the larger (round) cage, flowers, and greenery are from svgcuts and the smaller (square) cage is from A Little Hut.

Lyn was here for Crafty Thursday, and we are anticipating Crafty Friday, as well, at the crop at Scrapbooking Studio! 

Where in the world is my Vagabond?

My Vagabond is in my craft room... a.k.a. "Fantasyland".  It does move around though, after all, it IS a Vagabond!  In this pic, it's between my Sizzix Big Shot Pro and my eClips... go, Sizzix!

Distressful Storage...

Here's the top of my box:And the back: And the front: And, inside, filled with the ink pads:Where, oh, where can we store our collection of Distress Inks? The cool metal storage boxes aren't available anymore, unless you are lucky enough to come across one on eBay and you are a bazillionaire, too! When they kept coming out with more colors, Lyn and I were, well, distressed! We just love to store and rearrange and organize our supplies... so in the spring of 2010, I started looking at boxes, all kinds. Finally settled on a lightweight (ish) wooden box from HL, and Mike, bless him, made and installed the necessary partitions. Then I went to work decorating... did I mention that Lyn's birthday was coming up at that point? Make that two boxes! I like pinks and teals, Lyn's favorite color is red, so the accents suit each of us. The boxes hold 30 pads, so along with the original storage metal boxes, we were good to go. We are working on similar storage for our Distress Stickles and Distress Re-inkers now.

Roses

Two days in a row, after nothing for four years...

These are roses, made for one of Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of Christmas, 2009. Friend Lyn & I made all 12 of of the 2010 tags - well, we made 12 tags, anyway! - we modified a couple, and totally re-did one of them. We are going to make about 6 from each of the previous three years' Christmas tags, the ones we loved the most/wanted to learn techniques from, too.

The roses are made from grungepaper, cut from Sizzix Flower layers #5, then colored, cut, and manipulated. TH gives detailed instructions on his blog, look for 12 Tags of Christmas 2009!

Happy Tuesday!

Happy, happy, joy, joy...

Here's a Lisa Pace-inspired tag. (She is just amazing!) I used Victorian Velvet and Tea Dye Distress Inks (edge only) on the background, applied with a blending tool. Stamped a flourish all around the edges with Antique Linen Distress Ink. Topped the tag off with a generous misting of Perfect Pearls, and set aside to dry. Cut the birdcage and bird from grungepaper, using TH's Sizzix die, painted it SnowCap White with a paint dabber, dried it, and stamped the same flourish, but used Bundled Sage Distress Ink. Decorated with pearls and dangly Pearls, and under the pearls at the bottom, I punched out tiny flowers from a sage print Anna Griffin paper. Bird was inked in Worn Lipstick, stamped with Snow Cap pigment ink, and embossed with Pink Pearl EP. At the bottom, K&Co. chipboard letters over a torn strip of the same sage print paper. Added a printed Prima flower and leaf, and topped the whole thing with a piece of brocade ribbon.

No seashore, yes seashells!

Here's the Seashells bracelet I made last night while at Girls' Night Out. The fishies are connected to form the base of the bracelet, with lots of seashells and a few starfish dangling from them:Happy weekend to all!
--Cindyann
*edit: the cool dangly bracelet beads (seashells, stars) are from the Glass Bead Garden. Alexis, the owner, offers the most extensive array of flower, leaf, and nature beads I have ever seen - and the customer service is awesome!

Back so soon!

Here's my eighth freeform:

Still having a blast with them! (Thanks, Jeanne!)

I have done some other bracelets along the way - here's the patriotic one I just made:

The stars along the top of the pic are wire-wrapped to form the base, then dangles are added to where they join. I made the silver dangles -they are wire-worked - and the star dangles consist of a large star on an eye-pin, with four smaller stars danging from it. Fun!

--Cindyann

It's been awhile...

Race season has definitely started - we have been busy with 2 differnt track events for Mike and 5 autocross events for the both of us so far. Mike chaired 2 of them, and I chaired one, so a lot of organizing, too. One of the track events was in Watkins Glen, NY. (A 17-hour tow. Looooong ride!!)

There has been beading and crafting going on, just no blogging. Here's the bracelet I made for my friend Lyn's birthday - a red, white, & blue freeform: It was a joy to make!

Happy crafting, happy summer!

--Cindyann

Beading, beading, beading...

Freeform number six added to the family. The first one I made may be on a commercial - there was a cameraman filming at Your Design tonight. It was rather lonely there - usually there is a group of regulars, but the only regulars tonight were Lyn and I.

Off to Autocross school tomorrow!

--Cindyann

Think PINK!

Finally - a pink one. I'm still having the best time doing freeform peyote - especially the ruffles, and the little "nests" of drops. See the purple AB drops, over to the right, surrounded, and also one below that grouping?

Rallying & beading...

Mike and I went on a triple rally with the Corvette Club today. We hadn't ever done a rally - it was fun! There was a gimmick rally, where you look for clues along the way to both answer a set of questions and find your way; a distance rally, where you keep track of your mileage and try to have the exact official mileage; and a poker rally, where you draw a card at certain checkpoints. There were scads of Corvettes, and we were among the SCCAGRR Japanese auto contingent: Randy's 350Z, Matt's RX-8, and my Miata. Randy & Heather placed in all three categories - Mike and I got 2nd in the gimmick rally, so the Great River Region was well-represented! We saw a lot of back roads and places we'd never otherwise see, so it was a neat little adventure/Sunday drive.

Moose was definitely glad to see us when we got home. Mike went to his computer, and I went downstairs to finish my fourth freeform bracelet, done in mint greens, crystal AB, and eggshell Ceylon, with Amazonite focal beads, shown here:

A friend requested that I post some of my previous bracelets, so I will from time to time.

This post features wire-worked bracelets:

My first wire-working project,
from a class at Your Design.
Second wireworked bracelet,
the colors are actually lighter
than they appear.