Red-Tail Designs

A spot of beads here, a few stitches there.

These last few weeks I’ve been trying to catch up and finish projects I started long ago. Of course, before I did that I had to put together this birthday gift for Melody.

I was trying for a mosaic effect here. Whether I accomplished it or not, it's still looks neat.

Couldn't help but highlight the bright, buttery tones of these flowers.

These bicolored teardrops were a great find at My Father's Beads. I couldn't pass them up, even though I had no idea what to do with them. Their time has come.

When we saw the gratitude wrap, Melody pointed out that it was the adult version of the art sketch books I make for kids. I like the idea of having a stash of cards that I can write on the go and not worry about mangling them in the depths of my purse.

I made my own pattern for this (as I do most of my projects) so that three quarter-yards of fabric will yield two card wraps. Cut two quarter-yards of fabric in half and you have the inside and outside for two books. The third quarter-yard allows for pockets and a little left over. (There’s fusible fleece sandwiched between the inside and outside, too.) Little measuring, less cutting, more time for embellishing.

Embellishing was the fun part. This Amy Butler Burgundy gothic rose print just cried out for some beads.

The final product outside...

...and inside.

Inside, the pockets and liner are from Portabello Pixie’s Farmer’s Market line of fabrics. Maybe I’ll finish the second card wrap this week for another birthday.

I did actually finish some projects though…

Curtains for my 5-year-old’s room. I’ve had this fabric sitting in my studio for oh, about 2 years. Finally I got to stitching it up.

I envision some pink beads hanging from the green tiebacks. Yet more embellishing to do!

Cutting and sewing with really big pieces of fabric makes me nervous. What if I cut it wrong? What if it’s not the right length? What if it turns into a horrificially difficult project like my living room curtains? What if the bottoms don’t line up when I hang them? Plenty of worries to put off a project for 2 years.

Turns out, they were long enough to fit inside the windows (think tension rod), but not quite long enough to hang from a curtain rod. I added the green satin at the bottom, and love it. It makes the room glow in the morning sun.

I also whipped up an artist book for a recent birthday party. Four hours before the party I was adding the felt flower. Better late than never!

And I finally finished some gourds we’ve been working on (I’ll post a tutorial on those another day).

So I’m all done, right? Not a chance. I have at least 10 new projects in the works, or at least stewing in my head. Here’s a sneak peek at one…

What do you think this is going to be?

At the torch with tiny wire and my nemesis the copper earring.

I was back at the torch bright and early determined to leave the class with a pair of leaf earrings. I cut new patterns, sent them through the rolling machine, grinded, sanded, annealed (that’s metal-talk for heated with a torch), bended, annealed, bended again and welded the rod on.

Annealed copper leaves.

Leaf cut outs and the earring goofs from Saturday.

Sending the leaf cutouts through the roller to get the shape.

That was the easy part.

See where I have that tiny little rod in my hand? I had to heat and bend that without melting it in half.

My pièce de résistance for the weekend: the leaf copper earrings. I liked the unpolished look, even though one has purple bands. The purple will eventually fade.

Doug Salmon, the instructor, was very up front with us on the first day: “I’m going to show you the hardest way to do things, so that from now on any other skill will be much easier to do.” He wasn’t kidding. This was hard.

Instructor Doug Salmon helps a student.

An hour and 2 goofed earrings later, I had a fairly close match to my first earring. (Not to worry, the goofed earrings will be pendants.)

The thing about this, I realize, is that sheer determination will not yield results with this kind of work. Determination will get you to try again and mess up another 26 earrings, but only skill and learning to do it right will get you to create with this medium.

Doug is offering the next level class at his studio at Spruce Forest next month and I highly recommend his classes. He has a sense of humor, he isn’t afraid to let you burn up a bit of brass and he tells you there are more ways than his to metalsmith.

I am definitely not a stellar welder, but after this weekend I left with a some jangly jewelry, dirt under my fingernails, a bit of soot on my face and great big smile.

The beginnings of copper earrings.

Yesterday I played with copper and brass, hammers and grinders, acid and fire. And look what I made!

Finished cuff bracelets.

I had such a blast at my metalsmithing class and I can’t believe I get to do it again today!

I’m so impressed that I made this jewelry.

I can’t wait to work on these copper leaf earrings again today. The curlicue on top takes a lot of coaxing of the metal with the torch so you bend it without severing the rod. Ooops! That’s what happened to the other piece. But, I’ll bend the hook and make it into a pendant. I meant to do that, right?

Necklace pieces before hammering.

The torch had me a little leery, but after a few tries I’m fairly confident with it, and I have all my hair intact (although I did come close to melting someone’s sunglasses).

The two cuffs were the first half of the day. Lots of filing, welding, buffing and bending. I also had a lot of grinding to do because, although I get along with the torch, I’m not adept at it, so I get huge blobs of brass instead of smooth joins.

Necklace to be assembled today.

We moved on to the necklace in the afternoon and today I’ll assemble it. I wanted to add different beads so after class I ran over to The Bead Works in Lancaster. The 18 gauge wire limited my choices, so I settled on these darker red stones and some gold beads.

I loved hammering out these shapes. More than just banging with a hammer, shaping the copper is what I imagine bonsai tree trimming must be like…you just know where to apply the tool next. I could have hammered out shapes all day.

Cooper and brass cuff ready to be welded.

My hands are a little stiff from all the bending and hammering and cutting with sheet metal shears, but I’m read to head off to class again today. The instructor is awesome; he doesn’t take himself too seriously and he loves letting us fix our mistakes.

Wish me luck that I can make a matching to that earring.

Fireman's name engraved on the back.

I sent this custom horse hair bracelet off a week or so ago.

Oscar's name engraved on the front.

Hopefully by now the owner of Fireman and Oscar has it in her hands or on her arm. Her friend had this bracelet made after she lost both of these horses in one short month. Her friend wanted a memorial of the two and asked me to make the bracelet with the stainless steel nameplated engraved front and back with the horses’ names. Both horses’ tails are woven into this bracelet.

The barn where she kept the horses also creates memorial stones for lost horses. The stones and bracelet arrived within days of each other so both could be presented at the same time to the owner. They were presented together so we’ll “only have her cry once,” her friend said.

Here’s to Oscar and Fireman.

On a lighter note, I’m off to class this weekend to learn metalsmithing with Doug Salmon. The class is through the Pennsylvania Guild of Crafters, and I’m hoping to come away with not only $175 worth of handmade jewelry (that’s the promise from the class literature), but also some new applications for my horse hair jewelry. I already have ideas brewing and hopefully we’ll cover ringmaking because I’m anxious to develop a horse hair ring using silver to protect the horse hair.

Someone suggested I could encase the horse hair in resin to prevent wear and tear of the horse tail. Obviously this was not a horse person, for he didn’t understand that horse people would actually want to touch the horse hair.

I realized this is only the second art/crafting class I’ve ever taken. Sure I had art class in school and learned a variety of crafts in Girl Scouts and from my mom. But last year’s Precious Metal Clay class was the first time I ever paid an expert to teach me something.

Interesting, considering how many different classes I’ve taught. I taught basic jewelry making at Michaels craft store, horse hair work at local stores and porcupine quillwork at the Indian Museum. All these crafts (and many others I’ve tried) were self taught, requiring lots of trial and error to get it right.

That was back in the day when I had seemingly endless amounts of time. Now, it’s great to have an expert show me in 2 days what I could take years trying to learn on my own. So off I go to burn up some silver (they’re not letting us near gold…too expensive these days!) and brass and copper. I’ll let you know how it goes.

MaryJanesFarm Magazine sittin' atop the fence post.

It’s been a week of wonderful things.

First Up: MARYJANES FARM magazine. I love, love, l-o-v-e this magazine. I guess it speaks to my inner fantasy to own an old stone farm house with shutters and a big red barn. The beauty of this mag is that it encourages everyone to be “a farm girl at heart” no matter where you live and how many chickens you do or don’t have.

I’ve been waiting eons for a new issue and guess what? Now you can buy a regular subscription! The folks at Mary Jane’s Farm obviously hooked up with a publisher (they used to do it all by themselves, whenever they got around to it). And while I’m slightly disappointed that they now accept ads–not accepting ads was innovative–I’ll take it in exchange for more regular issues.

You can hear a podcast interview at CraftCast and find out all the things the founder Mary Jane Butters is up to. She has a new book out, too, that I’ll be check out next time I go on a Barnes & Noble date with friends.

Luxuriously squishy moss near the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

New England Fare: Clams, mussels and lobsters from a clambake.

Vacation in the Sun: Just returned from vacationing in New Hampshire (again). Got in some family time and outdoor time. Finally it was sunny and we got in some mini-hikes and a classic New England Clambake. Plus we visited the great Science Museum where the kids got to see lots of wild animals up close.

New fabrics to add to my stash!

New Fabric to play with: Kris of Monkeyfoot Designs she passed on to me some scraps of fabrics from Amy Butler and Joel Dewberry. And lucky me! Her PortabelloPixie Farmers Market order came in while I was visiting so I came home with some adorable prints (note the apples and stripes and firework flowers). I’m itching to stitch these up into some new coffee cuffs.

Yummy dinner at Mama’s Restaurant & Cafe Baci, Hackettstown, NJ: On the last leg of the journey south, the kids and I stopped for a bite in Hackettstown, NJ and I was in heaven: Mama’s Restaurant & Cafe Baci has a gluten-free menu. Not just a box with 3 items, but 4 pages of gluten-free pasta, pizza, breadsticks and dessert (carrot walnut cake, anyone?). It was awesome to order a huge bowl of penne pasta with Alfredo sauce, shrimp, artichokes and asparagus, and not worry about how I’d feel later. Plus, I had garlic herb breadsticks, pipin’ hot Italian bread with butter and white cake with white icing to go (all gluten-free!). I’ll be heading back there.

Saw Sunflower: My 5-year-old couldn’t wait to see our resident garter snake and name it. Big strides I say, because my 5-year-old still screams bloody murder at the tiniest insect. But she appreciates snakes. Yeah! Sunflower is her name because she’s black and yellow.

Homemade Breakfast: My 5-year-old decided to make breakfast this morning. She found a recipe in a back issue of My Big Backyard magazine. We didn’t have strawberries so she used the blueberries we picked last week and the blueberry jam I made from our pickins. Yummy!

Captions and sharing: My web guru (aka my husband) updated my version of WordPress and look! I have captions on my photos! I’m so excited. He also figured out while my Notable Reads (down there on the left, below the Crafty Crow button) were not working. He’s a computer ace! So click away now to see the bird mobiles and watercolor techniques.

Ever wonder how artists go from idea to product? Me, too.

On Friday, I took photos of a new idea to see how it developed. Here’s what happened:

Idea! As I was gathering supplies in my studio to work outside, this hematite circle and blue fossil bead in a random dish o’ beads caught my eye.

I also wanted to use porcupine quills with these materials.

Three quills, to be exact. This is a good start, but I don’t like the way it hangs.

It needed something in the middle to stabilize it. And it needed more color. However, the triplet of quills didn’t slide over the beads, so I took off the bottom jump ring. Definitely not the look I was going for. Added a new jump ring at the bottom, but it was too big so the quills slid all the way down to hematite.

Pshoo! (that’s the sound of beads hitting the floor). I dropped the whole thing. Beads EVERYWHERE. Just a few seconds before I thought, “I should put tape on the top of this in case I drop it.” Should have listened to myself.

Back on track and figured out a different way to get the quills over the beads.

Don’t like the beads, so go with turquoise heishi. Roadblock! Heishi holes aren’t big enough to slide onto headpin.

Found a different turquoise heishi that fits on the wire

Finished earrings! I love that the quills can spin around the heishi, so the earrings change as you move. What do you think?

If you really like them, you can buy them at my Etsy Shop.

Gas is $3.85 a gallon and I just spent a half hour driving around in the middle of the night trying to get my one-year-old to sleep. Had it worked, I’d be asleep right now. Instead, I’m writing this post.

The little bugger (that’s the one in question, stealing my bobbins) has hardly slept in 3 days. I’m guessing he has an ear infection or a nasty case of teething. These revelations never come to you during the hours of 9 - 5 when you can actually do something about them. They don’t come when you can call someone: your mom, a friend, the doctor. Instead at 2:30 a.m. I realized he wasn’t just being a pain in the butt, he was likely not feeling well. Or feeling worse than I thought.

I have never driven my kids around in the middle of the night to make them sleep, even though it’s been suggested. But I was at a loss and the neighbors are probably tired of hearing his wailing. So off we went. At 2:30 a.m. In the car.

Despite the earlier humidity, it was cool outside.

Off we went in search of sleep. Up the hill, down the otherside. In my sleepy state I chose a route with the least amount of stop signs, maximum amount of rolling hills and straight shots. I was sure he’d be out in 5 minutes. Nope. Too much to see at 2:33 a.m. Three cars, a big rig and a bicyclist (yes a bicyclist, but he/she was wearing reflective clothing!).

I watched his face in the rearview mirror as we passed street lights, trying to assess his nearness to sleep. At mile 10.3 I thought I saw him nodding off. Instead he sang a few bars of a made-up ditty, likely to keep him awake so he could see the big trucks on the highway.

Gas is $3.85 a gallon and I drove 20.7 miles and the kid didn’t fall asleep. This is having kids. When we returned home, he emptied my purse of cars and is playing with them now instead of sleeping.

A while back, Melody tagged me to see what I carry around in that behemoth of a bag I tote around. I cried, “No tagbacks!” something I haven’t said since second grade. But alas, I was still tagged. (Honestly, I don’t get this online tagging thing). I guess what’s in your purse reveals something about your personality.

I’d like to say I carry around a tiny little clutch with driver’s license, credit card, $100 and a funny, intelligent read. Not so. Instead, my purse is more like a flea market/used car lot.

So here goes.

First the bag above is a circa 2007 made by my sister-in-law Kris from Etsuko Furuya fabric from the Amy Butler Nappy Bag pattern. Note the all-important cellphone pocket on one shoulder and cute spider on the other. It’s so huge, I joke that one day I’ll look in there and find a frozen turkey I forgot from weeks ago.

The essentials that go in any bag: wallet, cell phone, check book, diapers and wipes and coffee cuff for emergency coffee stops.
The kids stuff: artist book, crayons, Batman bib, snack cups,lots of cars,. Sad will be the day when giving my 1-year-old won’t solve every problem.

Other stuff that keeps me ticking: lip gloss, business cards and that lady with the funny nose that keeps me amused.

Plus the all important collection of paper junk: paint sample I want to match curtains to; Ninja girls fabric I want to buy more of; one of many to-do lists; myriad of coupons.

Missing on picture day was my every-important day planner that contains about 16 to-do lists. I think it was giving a lecture at a local college on time management that day.

Since I began to write this post, I’ve rescued 3 Matchbox Cars from my 1-year-olds pajamas, he has (funnily enough) emptied my purse completely and he’s now compemplating banging really loudly on the Barbie piano. Time to exit the highway and go to bed. Hopefully.

I just had the best Mother’s Day ever.

No flowers or candy involved. No breakfast in bed (even though a little one said she was going to). No gifts at all. Okay, so I did get a little bag my wee one made a preschool, filled with very fragrant potpourri and a badge. But nothing store bought.

And yet, it was the best mother’s day…

Reason #1: The WHOLE family slept til 9 a.m. That’s right, we ALL slept through the night and until 9 a.m. If you have kids, you know what an accomplishment this is. If you don’t have kids…well…I won’t hold it against you that you can sleep ’til 9 a.m. every Sunday.

Reason #2: Laid back friends. Yes we awoke at 9, but we had friends coming at 10 a.m. to go canoeing. One hour to: dress four of us, make breakfast for four, get “I fell into the water clothes,” find paddles and life vests, put canoe on car. Sure.

We got most of it done, except for the canoe on car. My canoe hasn’t seen water in many years (last permit expired in 2002) so I couldn’t even remember how to get it on the car.

Luckily my friends and their boys roll with the punches. We got canoe on car with not damage to our car, no damage to any neighbors cars (we live VERY close to other people) and hopefully no embarrassing video on YouTube (very close to people with video cameras to tape their schmo neighbors doing something stupid).

Reason #3: Goofing on the river. Nets, buckets, canoe. Throwing rocks. Watching ducks. Trying to catch fish smaller than my fingernail with a butterfly net. Shuttling kids up and down the river on their first-ever canoe rides.

Reason #4: Leaving the vestiages of society behind. I was so excited to go canoeing I forgot my mongo bag with wallet, cell phone, day planner, etc. All I had in my pocket was my keys, 2 clothespins and a twist tie.

Reason #5: Lunch on the fly. I scrounged up a credit card between us adults and headed to a local store to pick up lunch. No planning or cooking. No thinking about nutritional balance and who likes what. Just hoagies and macaroni salad. Yum!

Reason #6: Coming home to a clean house. My husband’s gift to me was cleaning the whole house on Saturday. So when I returned to the homestead after a rough day on the water, I had nothing to do but relax and put up my raisin-wrinkled toes.

Best Mother’s Day ever.

The turtle has arrived!

He’s a bit flashier than I imagined, with the white around his shell, but that’s okay. This is my first quillwork turtle (that looks like a turtle), so he should be flashy. My projects usually don’t turn out exactly as drawn/imagined because I try to go with the flow. Although I drew a sketch for the turtle, I didn’t outline the design on leather. I usually freehand the whole thing right there as I’m quilling. Sometimes that works and sometimes that doesn’t.

I’d say it worked this time.

The turtle is done–he looks like he’s going to crawl right off the leather, doesn’t he?– but I still have to whip this into shape with leather tie, leather backing and quilled border. I have a few days left before the Powwow. Pressure is a wonderful thing.

While quills soak and soften, I pull together other porcupine quill pieces.

My tradition-style of porcupine quill earrings on the right; on the left are some new ones I envisioned in the middle of a bead store this past weekend. They are more stunning than they appear in the photo.

Friends and I checked out Beadnik in West Chester, PA (along with a fabulous dinner at Vincents and coffee/gelato/pastries at Sprazzo. We should have gone to Sprazzo first. Life is really too short to save incredible desserts for last).

I’m sure I’ve seen these silver tubes before since they’re among the many silver beads made by the Karen Hills Tribe in northern Thailand. I love Tribal Hills Silver and order it whenever I have money burning a hole in my pocket. But there in the bead store, these two little tubes spoke to me.

I have visions like that in bead stores.

In fact, I often have a take a deep breath and remind myself to focus when I go into a bead store. I get very distracted by, “Wow, I could pair this bead with that bead and have and fantabulous new thing.” Too many dollars later I have more beads to take up space alongside the other fantabulous beads I purchased before. This year, I’m aiming to use all those beads in projects so by year’s end my bead boxes are empty and I’ll have to buy new stuff. Then again, don’t all of us collectors-of-inspirational-bits-n-pieces dream of burning through our stash? If only we had enough hours in the day.

Seems I’ve been tagged by Kris at Monkeyfoot Designs to answer some questions about blogging.

Somehow, this reminds me of taking a Cosmo quiz in high school. I did try to wiggle out of it by claiming a rarely cited rule about not being able to answer questions if you have less than 5 blog entires, but alas, that did not work. So here it goes. (I included a few fun spring photos in case you get tired of all the words:))

1. Why did you start blogging?

I started blogging for a few reasons: 1) I’ve been looking for new and different ways to expand my business 2) I was hoping to find a way to stay motivated and 3) planning to get myself on a regular work schedule. As I was rethinking/redesigning my web site, a blog seemed a good way to accomplish many of these things all at the same time. Plus I had a lot of familial influence, with my husband and his sister being bloggers.

2. How did you come up with your blog name?

My blog name is the same as my business name, which was inspired by a red-tailed hawk. For many years I have been involved in wildlife rehabilitation and education. I was training a red-tailed hawk for use in education programs, and often wondered what the hawk thought about me in its life. For days I pondered this and then it occurred to me that this red-tail probably called me a red-tail. I have red hair and usually wore it in a pony-tail when working with the bird, so I sported my own “red tail” on a regular basis. It seemed an obvious name for my company.

3. Do your friends and family know about your blog? What do they think of it?

My husband helped me design my blog and most of my friends and family know of my blog. About half of those people look at me kinda funny like, “a what? a log? a smog? a frog?”

4. How do you write posts?

Being trained as a journalists, I write my posts like one. I write stream of consciousness, then go back and edit and make it a story with beginning, middle, and end. It will be interesting to see if that changes over time.

5. Have you ever had a troll or had to delete comments?

Thankfully, no.

6. Do you check your stats? Do you care how many people read your blog? If you do care, how to you increase traffic?

I do check my stats. I find it interesting to see how people get to my site, what words they search to get there.

7. What kind of blogs/posts interest you?

Right now I read many sewing and crafting blogs. I like seeing how people put together materials that wouldn’t normally be associated with each other. That inspires me to try different things.

8. What do you like and dislike about blogging?

I like how people can connect and get fabulous new ideas from blogging. I don’t like that I don’t have enough time to do it as often as I’d like and that my pictures are as fabulous as I’d like them to be.

All done! I am going to tag Melody, Hedge, and Ken to continue the Cosmo Quiz blog questions. While they’re doing that I’ll be off to tackle my pile of birthday goodies I got this week. Lots of old issues of Mary Jane’s Farm and a new book called Doodle Stitching. Can’t wait to see what they inspire next!