Holiday Ornament Swap and Blog Hop

Just over a month ago, I sent out an invitation to participate in my first annual Ornament Exchange and Blog Hop.  Time has truly flown by and today is the day for the Blog Hop Reveal!

We had a small, but mighty group:

Karen Williams and Carrie Johnson

JJ Jacobs and Tanya Goodwin

Francie Broadie and Lori Finney

Liz Hart and Becky Clay

After I paired each participant with a swap partner, it was then up to them to exchange emails and handmade ornaments.  My only 'rule' for participation was that the ornaments had to be handmade by each participant and had to include at least one bead in the design.

 Thank you all for joining in for this bit of holiday cheer!  Liz and Becky don't currently have blogs of their own, so they sent me photos to share in a separate post here.  From my perspective, I love how these swaps allow me to get to know other beaders and artists from around the country a little better. 

I'm afraid the package that Carrie sent to me seems to have been temporarily lost in the mail.  It was coming from Hawaii, so maybe it decided to spend an extra day, or maybe a week or two hanging out at the beach before making it's way to oh-so-rainy Seattle.  Can't really say that I'd blame it!   Even still, it's been fun getting to know Carrie better as we exchanged emails regarding our holiday traditions and favorites.

While Carrie enjoys many of the more 'traditional' holiday themes, she admitted that since she's lived in Hawaii, she's "grown to be a fan of the local Christmas themes such as volcanoes, seahorses, hono (sea turtles), pineapples, monstera leaves, petroglyphs, palm trees, coral, jellyfish, starfish and reef fish".  Reading that, my original plan to send her a more traditional holiday ornament began to morph.

She also mentioned that her favorite color is the new Toho 2600F "Lemongrass", followed by "lime greens, teals, orange, orange-reds, periwinkles".  She continued "pretty much I love all the greens - especially olives and limes, oranges. Bronze/Browns/Coppers/Silver - all good."

So not necessarily the normal Christmas colors.  Can you guess where this is going?  Yep, I decided to make her an ornament in my Happy Fish series.  Because it was going to be a Christmas ornament, I decided to work with an ogee pattern for the scales.  What could be more ornament-shaped, right?

Here's what I finally came up with:

My newest Happy Fish, all decked out in her holiday splendor

I wrapped the little fish up in a hand-painted box, then added a couple of other things to the shipping box, including some of my biscotti and a little paper ornament I made.

A peek inside the package before I closed the lid

I haven't heard yet what Carrie thought about my unorthodox creation.  I'm truly hoping she liked it.  In the meantime, I know that I had an absolute blast stitching my newest Fish friend.

Now, be sure to check out everyone else's ornaments, and I promise to post Carrie's as soon as it arrives.

Dear Dali - It's nice to meet you!

I love Dahlias! Funny thing is, I'd never even heard of Dahlias before moving to Seattle, but I quickly fell in love with the bright, big, spiky blooms and their extravagant colors.  Gladiolas may be the 'official' August birth flower, but I've decided to trade them in for Dahlias.  Done!

Last month, I'd decided my next Happy Fish would feature flowers.  Fast forward to September and I'd still made no significant progress.  Nothing seemed right.  Then I spied these beauties for sale at a corner grocery on the first day of the bead retreat.  I walked by them three times before deciding I had to have them.  They reminded me of the quinacridone pigments which make up some of my favorite red, orange and violet paints.  Such rich, luscious color!  The Dahlias' color and the shapes of their petals inspired my newest Happy Fish.

I call her Dali.... 

Dali's under-sketch with artist pens

Here she is in all her finery, happily posing for the camera

Meet Spike and Pete, Creative Block Busters Extraordinare!

Spike, happily swimming through a 'rock stream' in my garden

You might have already caught a peak of Spike in my earlier post for the Time to Stitch challenge about bead embroidery.  Both he and his younger brother Peter (Pete for short) made their official debut in the Summer issue of Creative Spark magazine produced by Znetshows.com.








 Besides being incredibly fun to stitch, these Happy Fish turned out to be the antidote to a months-long episode of creative block.  After finishing Explorations in Freeform Peyote Beading, I'd promised myself time for personal exploration, where I could play with any design or beading ideas my heart desired.  This included signing up for Robin Atkin's Bead Journal project at the end of last year. 

Fast forward to April, and I still hadn't beaded anything significant, nor made a single bead journal entry.  Aack!  Yes, it had taken significantly longer than anticipated to finish the rewrite/reformatting for the digital versions of Explorations, but that still left several months of creative wasteland.  Looking back, part of the problem was while I said I wanted to 'play', I felt like I should work on a series of large, extremely challenging sculptural pieces.  My creativity simply doesn't work that way.  Not for me. 

Spike, sans sea glass.  Poor Spike!  He's underdressed.

For me, if I promise my creative self play time, then I assign it work, I have a rebellion on my hands.  All of my best work seems to come from little seeds, from saying 'let's just' or 'what if' and from not being too invested in the initial outcome.  Sometimes I forget this personal truth!

Then something like my Happy Fish comes along to remind me.  By the time I settled in to make a piece for Christine and Therese's challenge, I didn't have enough time to make a 'fancy project'.  Combine that with my love for Georgia McMillan's Happy People, and a desire to use sequins a la Sarah of Saturday Sequins, and Gilbert, by first Happy Fish was born. 

Pete shows off his 'plumage'.  Fused glass cabochon by JJ Jacobs

 He was so much fun, I immediately started in on a second fish - this time I wanted to use these really cool stone spike beads I'd picked up last year, but hadn't found a use for yet.  When Hope invited me to participate in the Summer,  sea glass issue for Creative Spark, saying Yes! was a no brainer.  My fish NEEDED sea glass for their tails.  They told me so, really, in no uncertain terms.  They explained that no self-respecting fish would let itself appear in public without their lovely sea glass tails!  (Sorry Gilly) 

And while all this silliness played through my head, I was off and beading again.  Meanwhile, as I worked on the fish, ideas for other projects began appearing, almost as if someone had finally managed to turn the handle of a long-rusted tap.   I've even started work on the first in my new sculptural series. 

Let's hear it for the power of play! 

I'm about ready to start on a new Hapy Fish.  This one is going to have flowers.  Normally, my garden is in full bloom this time of year, but because it's been so hot here in Seattle this summer everything bloomed early, and my poor garden is looking a bit bedraggled. No flowers in my garden?  Well then I'll decorate my fish with flowers!  Even fish would like flowers, right? So why not? 

Creative Spark Seaglass Spectacular

Summer 2015 Creative Spark ezine

I love sea glass!  When I go to the shore, it's a real challenge for me to walk along the beach at a normal pace, because sooner or later I get caught up in the search for the elusive sea glass.  Especially the rarer colors, such as the deep cobalt/sapphire blue that's my favorite find.  I can get so caught up in the search, I'd miss the sailboat regatta tacking around the bouys fifty feet out from shore.  Or the kite surfer dancing across the waves, or my husband waiting patiently for me a mile up the beach.  Oops!

Then, I discovered ZnetShows' cultured sea glass beads.  I can't truthfully state that I've completely abandoned my search for seaglass in the tide line, but I CAN say that I am much more easily distracted from the search.

ZnetShow.com's cultured sea glass is so lovely - it comes in all sorts of wonderful shapes, though I'm particularly fond of the more organic 'shard' designs that echo the shapes of 'natural' sea glass.   So you can imagine how excited I was to be invited to participate in summer, sea glass edition of Creative Spark.

Sea glass shards from ZnetsShows' website. They say 'fish fins' to me!

Hope Smitherman, Creative Spark's fearless editor, asked us to work with a sea-inspired or 'summer' theme.  While the main focus is on jewelry design, she also asked for upcycling/recycling and non-jewelry designs.

Sea-themed and non-jewelry?  Yep, you know where I went.  I quickly finished up Spike, my second Happy Fish.  He now sports sea glass tail fins.  And he's joined by his younger bother Pete, who sports deep blue tail fins.  I finished both up back in June, and have been waiting to say anything ever since.  You can see them both in the pages of Creative Spark, along with a sneak peek at work on my newest freeform peyote fish.  It's still in very much in progress.

My contribution may just be the quirkiest, but looking through the other artists incredible designs is simply inspiring.  Flipping through the pages, I find my fingers itching to go digging through my stash to play with more sea glass! 

Take a look and see what I mean:  Creative Spark, Summer 2015.

Thank you Hope, for once again putting together such a gorgeous magazine!