Art and Soul Retreat - Porland, OR

If you have never been to an art retreat you are missing out especially if you love art and various crafts. This year I'll be teaching at the Portland retreat my Bonsai Gem Tree class, Friday, October 5th. It is a full day class so you will have time to make not only a little bit larger tree than normal but learn all my secrets to a great tree design. You will complete a tree in class all ready for you to take home.

This is the style we will be making.

Come join me in this adventure of sculpting wire and gemstones to form a tree.

Also, if you find you want to learn this tree style and can't make the Art & Soul Retreat, I also teach at Shipwreck Beads in Lacey, WA a various of classes. Feel free to check out what they have to offer. Please note that the class at Shipwreck is only 3 hours in length and you will make a tree but it will be smaller in size.

Back into the Swing of Things

Well my trials with finding a new computer has finally come to an end. Yesterday I talked about a new tablet that I was trying out and after playing with it for a day, realized that tablets really won't replace a computer. Just to do the blog post yesterday was stressful and the learning curve was huge. So, off to the electronics store I went again and found a wonderful little Toshiba Ultrabook. It's lightweight, 13"and really fast. All really important things when cruising the internet, blogging and playing on social media sites. Now I'm back in business and won't have to worry if my computer will boot up.

With the busy month we have had I think I am finally getting back into my normal life. DH is recovering nicely here at home, strength and appetite returning and back to his old self. So, I revisited some things that I had put on the back burner and decided to get back into it. Today I submitted a proposal to teach at a local bead show (Puget Sound Bead Festival) and finalized some paperwork for teaching at Art and Soul Portland. I'm hoping I'll be accepted at the bead festival and submitted 3 different gem tree designs for them to choose from. I will be teaching a Bonsai Gem Tree class at the Portland Art and Soul in September. Here is the info if you would like to check it out. http://www.artandsoulretreat.com/retreat-Portland2012-2394-workshop.php Art and Soul is a mixed media art retreat that offers all kinds of classes ranging from jewelry design, painting, art journaling and now my gem tree sculptures. I may have to look at taking a couple of classes myself.

Here is a look at the new classes that I will be teaching this year at Shipwreck Beads. I will continue to teach the Standard Gem Tree and the Pine Tree classes this year. Click HERE to check out the dates and times of classes.

Have a great week everyone and I'll let you know how it goes on all those other projects.

Fat Book Embellishments

For Art and Soul this year the theme is "In the Garden" and I volunteered to make pages for one of the Fatbooks that will be distributed at Hampton this year. Since this is my first one to participate in, I was feeling a little overwhelmed and wanted to get a head start on my design. I decided on 3 different page layouts (these are only 4x4 pages) and wanted to make most of the embellishments on the pages. The theme is so broad that I didn't have trouble there but did when it came down to actually putting a sample together.

Here is all the stuff, pages cut and front covered, pile of embellishments and the 2 samples I have completed so far.

This pages features one of my wire trees with a couple of purchased felt pieces.

I like this page. It has vintage flower packet images sized down, one of my tissue paper flowers and a couple of felt flowers.

Here is a better look at the trees. Not sure whether I will use the wire flowers....maybe on the third sample.

These are the vintage flower packet images. You can find them HERE if you want to download them yourself.

This are the tissue paper flowers with buttons and either a pearl or crystal center.

I had so much fun I decided to make some real flower packets as I had some flower seeds. These I will  add one to each page on the back as a gift to the receiver. I used the same image and fabric to create a small pocket, left the top open to insert the seeds and then sewed it up.

Now to do a little flower painting on the 3rd sample...maybe I'll use the wire flowers on this one.

I hope everyone is enjoying the One World One Heart blog event and giveaways. If you want to find out more about this great International event see my post from Feb. 1st. Oh, if you are a blogger, be sure to enter your comment on that page to get in on the drawing.