Friday, 30 September 2016

Beads Of Courage Art Charm Exchange and Charity Auction...


Welcome ti the 2016 Art Charm Exchange and Auction organised by the talented and indefatigable Jennifer Cameron in support of 'Beads of Courage' a charity providing innovative, arts-in-medicine supportive care programs for children coping with serious illness, their families and the health care providers who care for them.

'The Program is a resilience-based intervention designed to support and strengthen children and families coping with serious illness. Through the program children tell their story using colorful beads as meaningful symbols of courage that commemorate milestones they have achieved along their unique treatment path'.


The premise of the exchange is that each participant makes 11 charms based on a given theme and sends them to Jen, who then sends each of us a collection of 10 charms. The 11th charm goes up for auction for BOC (details of auction dates and times will be available later).

The theme this year is fairy tales and I decided to create some ginger bread houses form the story of Hansel and Gretel. These are made from terracotta clay decorated with underglaze - Ileft the charms unglazed to give the soft effect of icing.

"After days of wandering, they follow a beautiful white bird to a clearing in the woods, where they discover a large cottage built of gingerbread and cakes...'


And in return for my efforts I got a whole host of loveliness made from all sorts of material and inspired by many different fairy tales....











You can find out more about the inspiration behind these charms and the others in the auction by visiting the makers blogs below. All participants will have a charm up for auction so look out for updates on the date and time for the auction here and on my facebook page.


Thank you

Lesley

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Thursday, 29 September 2016

AJE Tree Theme Challenge Reveal...

http://www.motaen.com/wallpapers/get/id/35777/resolution/1920x1080

This month's AJE monthly design challenge is hosted by Caroline Dewison and is all about trees. The image above is of a historic avenue of beech trees at Kingston Lacy in Dorset and is one of my favourite places. Originally 365 trees were planted (one for each day of the year) and they cover a two mile stretch of road which is pure joy to drive at any time of year. Some of the old trees are now beginning to show signs of distress so the National Trust are planting new trees to the side of these beauties so that they failing trees can eventually be replaced

This is  hugely inspiring theme and I had a whole host of ideas that I wanted to try in a number of mediums but September turned out to be a very busy month. A great month with vacations and visitors but somewhat short on creative time so my offerings are fewer that hoped. The ideas are still there for future reference though so that's good.

In the end I decided to go down the bead embroidery route and use the iconic 'green man' as my take on the tree theme. I chose one of my own face cabochons and matched it with some Czech glass leaf beads. After securing the cab with a beaded bezel and stitching on the leaves I added accents with drop beads and bugle beads to give the feeling of layers of leaves.


To give the pendant a sense of movement and depth I added some branch fringing at the bottom.


This is a long necklace and I used a double length of distressed leather to provide a contrast representative of the bark of the tree.


I have a bit of a thing about Czech glass leaves and love working with this sort of a design as there are so many variations and I'm happy how his one turned out.


I also managed to do a quick remake that was a good fit for Caroline's theme. While giving my studio a thorough clean I came across this multi-string beaded bracelet but it had no focal element. I've no idea where the original went but I have plenty of tree related components so I knew I could find something to finish it off. The gorgeous etched copper oak leaf is by Julie Nordine and has been in my stash for many years since I was partnered with Julie in a Bead Soup challenge.


I think it works really well with the beaded section and the lampwork beads by Glass Bead Art.



We had a lot of interest in this challenge so I hope you'll join us on the blog hop to see how everyone else has been inspired by our wonderful woodlands - just click on the links below to join in. Many thanks to Caroline for hosting this months challenge and to you for for stopping by.

Lesley


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