Unexpected Gifts

I don't consider myself to have more luck than the next person, but I sometimes stumble upon  fortuitous occasions, for which I am always thankful. So today's post is about giving thanks for, and acknowledgment to those generous souls who offered up these recent gifts.

First of all, I must acknowledge the wonderful gifts I received in December from my PCAGOE guild mates, for our holiday swap. (yes, I'm very behind in the thanks for these lovelies, the holidays and start of the new year really ran away from me this year).  These beauties were the work of Jackie Sieben of The Pleasant Pheasant and JAE Jewelry (Gorgeous pens and seam ripper, left), Susan O'Neill of 11BOLDstreet (Funky trinket box and fabulous pendant, center) and Linda Riopel of NKDesigns (beautiful caned pendant necklace, right) Check out their work, by clicking their names to view their respective etsy shops.

(I wanted these images to appear together, so please click on the image to see them up close). Thank you again, Jackie, Susan and Linda!! I absolutely love my swap gifts!

The first of 2 surprise gifts happened last month, when I was notified that I had won a giveaway from the website, BeadingGem Journal by Pearl Blay.  Pearl partnered with one of my favorite polymer artists, Helen Breil, to give away a bunch of Helen's silkscreen designs. I was one of the lucky winners, and I had my pick of Helen's silkscreen designs! I chose the design "Cabaret". It arrived in the mail about a month ago, and I still haven't had the time to play with it, but here's a photo of the silkscreen package that I received:

I have yet to try the silkscreen technique... so I am really looking forward to a day when I can play around with this fantastic design! Helen has many other designs in both silkscreens and textures, if you're not familiar with her work, please do check out her website (which includes links to where you can purchase her designs for your own use!) And don't forget to check out Pearl's site for tons of inspiration, tips and giveaway opportunities!

The second windfall that came my way happened on Valentine's day. I entered Deb Hart's (of Renaissance Gal of San Antonio) Facebook event, where she generously gave away 3 of her polymer pieces. Deb is known for her fabulous millefiori cane work. The other 2 prizes were a bunch of her original canes and one of her caned owl pendants. The prize I was so very lucky to win was one of her sea turtle trinket boxes!! If you know me, or follow this blog, you probably know I have a little adoration for sea turtles and Native American inspired art... so, to say I was thrilled about winning this treasure was an understatement!  Well, my beautiful sea turtle arrived last week. I've taken a couple shots of her to show you how fabulous she is, and for the first time ever, I shot a video to post here on the blog. The idea for the video came about because one of my most favorite features about this treasure is not easily displayed in a still photo, check it out for yourself: (crossing fingers that the video actually works)

And since the video doesn't do justice to viewing all the wonderful details, here are the still shots...

Can you tell I'm absolutely in love with this turtle? ;)  She has found a permanent and prized spot on my nightstand, where I can admire her every day. If you love this as much as I do, and you don't know about Deb Hart's work, you should definitely check her out! You can find Deb here on her blog, etsy (where you can purchase a turtle similar to this one!), and Facebook. And if you want to learn how to make some of Deb's creations, she offers a great variety of classes at CraftArtEdu.

So, again, a big Thank you to (my guild mates) Jackie Sieben, Susan O'Neill and Linda Riopel for my holiday swap items, and huge Thanks to Helen Breil, Pearl Blay and Deb Hart, for their generous hearts and the wonderful prizes that I received! Aren't they all wonderful? Have you had luck in winning online contests or participating in swaps? Leave me a comment below, and tell me your thoughts!

And as an aside; if the video worked in this post, I hope to do some tutorial videos to post on the blog in the future....  and, if you like the Thank you image (first image of this post), you can find that as a printable digital postcard file in my graphics shop YourDigitalWorld.

Season of Giving and Making

I hope that everyone reading this blog has had a wonderful holiday season! And my best wishes to everyone for happiness, health and prosperity in 2016!

Because it was such a busy month preparing for the Christmas holiday in my home, and making gifts, I didn't get time to create a new piece for the PCAGOE January challenge. Luckily, I had an older piece that suited the theme, which is 50 Shades of Gray... no, not associated with the infamous book, but a study in value! I chose an older necklace that I had created with my silk fabric dye transfer. Here are a few shots of that piece:

 So, what was I so busy doing that I couldn't create a new piece for the challenge? Making gifts for family and friends. First on the list was a stocking that my hubby had asked me to make for him... which, at the moment, I do not have a photo. Basically it's a red stocking edged with candy striped trim, super simple.

The second project was a pair of slippers that I made for my mother-in-law. She loves these slippers that I make, and she will wear them until they have holes in the soles all the way through to her toes!  So I decided it was time she get another brand new pair. This pair is triple reinforced on the soles and upper is made of neoprene, so hopefully they will last a lot longer than her previous pairs have! Here's what they look like:

 About a week before Christmas I decided that I would make and send out origami stars, which I made out of our Land's End holiday catalogs, to my family and some friends. I generally skip sending Christmas cards because of the thousands of trees that are destroyed to make all of the paper for them. But my traditionalist hubby grumbles every year that I send out a Christmas email in lieu of Christmas cards. So this year I decided to compromise with the origami stars, getting the last minute idea to upcycle my holiday catalogs, which was an added bonus! I made about 70 (give or take a few) stars. And here's a sampling of what those looked like:

Last, but not least came the polymer gifts. I needed a little gift to give to my personal trainer, who gives me the gift of her creativity twice a week, to create challenging and always varied workouts that keep me wanting to return and wishing I could work out with her daily(which is a miracle in and of itself!). And I wanted another special gift for my friend and soul sister, with whom I knew I'd be spending New Year's Eve. In addition, I wanted to create a special gift for my parents. A month beforehand, I had the foresight to start a homemade lavender essential oil, by steeping a jar full of lavender buds in carrier oils for a month long, this was the idea behind the 2 gifts that followed, for my trainer and my friend. I created for Angel, my trainer, this polymer covered bottle which I then filled with my homemade lavender oil:

I created an inro necklace for my dear friend, Susan. Inros are small vessels, this one was created from a perfume sampler bottle, complete with the wand attached to the lid. After the polymer for this piece was cured, I then filled it with my homemade lavender oil:

And finally, I upcycled a chandelier light bulb into a cardinal tree ornament for my parents. My mom has always loved birds, but especially birds on her Christmas tree. As a matter of fact, her parent's always had the old-fashioned glass birds on their tree. As such, my mom has gifted her children and her siblings a glass bird ornament every year at Christmas. The glass bird she gifted me this year was this sweet owl:

Here are two of my other favorite bird ornaments that my parents have given me over the years:

These bird ornaments, with their fibrous and feathery tails, were the inspiration for the cardinal ornament that I created for my parents. He is quite large though, I'd estimate that he measures about 7" from beak to tail, and about 5" tall. I created him with the red glitter Premo accent polymer, with some black and a little bit of an orange mixture. The legs were made by covering an armature of wire with polymer and baking separately before inserting them into the body of the cardinal. And the plume of tail feathers and comb feathers was created by integrating some sheer red fabric strips into the polymer at those points. My parents both loved him. My only wish is that he were lighter in weight. The bulb was a pretty heavy glass to begin with, but then there was about 2 to 3 ounces of polymer added to him. Here he is:

I also created some polymer gifts for 3 of my PCAGOE guild mates, using my handmade texture plate from a previous PCAGOE challenge, for the the gift exchange the guild offers every year. I forgot to take my own photos of the pieces, but these are the photos my guild mates took of the pieces I made for them:

Here are the lovely gifts I received in exchange, from my talented guild mates (in order, from Linda Riopel of NKDesigns, Susan O'Neill of 11BOLDstret, and Jackie Sieben of JAE Jewelry and The Pleasant Pheasant)

So, with making all these gifts, getting my house decorated for Christmas and baking a couple batches of cookies, I did not have any time left to make my challenge piece, thus the older piece that I've entered for this month (above). For anyone who might be interested, that necklace is available in my createmyworld etsy shop here. 

Whew! That was quite a lot to post about! What do you think of all the gifting creations I made? Do you like handmade gifts to give and receive? What was your favorite handmade gift? I'd love to hear from you, leave me a comment below!

Voting is open for the January challenge, and you can cast a vote for your 3 favorite entries at the PCAGOE blog. Remember, you could win a prize! Voting closes on the 7th of January at midnight EST.