New Summer Goodies at the Time and Again Shop

Today I went to the Time and Again Shop (click here for directions), located in Northwestern Pennsylvania, to decorate two hutches with a "Beachy" theme. What fun! I went with one of my favorite color themes of aqua and blue! I made 3 back colorful back shelf inserts from paper which gives a whimsical backdrop for the beachy items. What do you think of Horrace and Deloris (the crab and the octopus)?

The completed hutch.........

This is a cool little pendant which is reversible. Here is the front......

here is the back.

Looks pretty good all decked out, eh? Oh, by the way, the hutch is for sale too.

I displayed some of my jewelry designs on drift wood to stay with the beach motif. This is the "Sand & Grassy Dunes" necklace. It is a fiber and metal necklace embellished with shells, freshwater pearls, glass beads and wire. It looks amazing with a simple white T-shirt.

In keeping with the sea shore theme, these keys are definitely one of a kind! These look great on a simple silver beaded ball chain.

I call these "Beach Buckets". White washed and filled with beach pebbles, wooden star, shells, sea glass and a beach ticket. How cute would they be with a little votive candle tucked into them?

I made some beautiful blue and green wire wrapped sea glass pendants with shell and bead accents.....there's one in front of the picture frame.....

Windswept is the name of this necklace created with a multitude of fibers, hemp, gross grain ribbon with shells; bone, glass, wooden and ceramic beads; buttons and brass rings. The best thing is the price......$15!

Waves and Sand, now that's a great name for this necklace! Fibers, green and blue shell disks, shells, pearls and glass beads mix together in a melange of beachy goodness.

Beach birds anyone? Pendants created from clay filled poker chips!

This is an awesome table. Just look at the patina on it! Chipped blue paint with grey showing through. It's a low and very long table, great to set outside for a garden party or picnic. Notice the blue and white chenille throw on the table....Hazel has the largest collection of chenille throws I've ever seen in every imaginable color and pattern at the shop.

Ok we left the beach and now we're going to venture into the garden.......

Ah....look at the bunnies playing .....A nice place to sit.........

and have a cup of tea......check out all these tea cups!

We've had our tea now let's go on an Americana tour of the prim items offered in the shop!

Chris from Bee Joyful Creations makes the most detailed Prim/Americana items. Check out all the great things she created in this cabinet....

and here.......

and here.........

and here........yes, she's been a very busy girl!

How about these giant wooden slat flags? The one in front is a little over 3 feet long and $38, what a deal!

Well! You probably have visual overload now so I'll save the other photos for the next posting.

If you are going to visit the Time and Again Shop, it is open Thursday, Friday, Saturday 10:00 to 5:00 and Sundays from 1:00 to 5:00. You can add Time and Again to your roadtrip of antique and speciality shops in the Great Lakes Region (click here).

Address: 2213 Perry HwyGreenville, PA 16125-3629
Phone: (724) 253-4901

Music!

Sorry to those who do not like music on blogs, I apologize in advance if it annoys you. I missed my music and just had to add it again. In the bottom right hand corner of your screen you'll see a little speaker button, click on it and check the mute box if you're not into music, if you are into music then enjoy! :-)

Red Crab........Blue Furniture

I've been painting on furniture again! This time it's vintage metal outdoor furniture.

Getting into that summertime mode of a beach theme......seashells and crabs......
I love how the red really "pops" on the light aqua blue.

One side down...........now I've got the other side to do with a matching crab and shells.

What's for supper?

I made this salad tonight for supper. It's baby spinach with pears, candied walnuts, and shaved Parmesan cheese with warm garlic tandori spread with goat cheese. It was delish!

She is the "Queen Bee"! I just completed this for a swap. It's 3.5 by 5 inches. The key around her neck is to the hive. She locks the workder bees in overnight and lets them out during the day.

I made this little collage on a piece of Formica and it's going to be turned into a necklace for my friend Marsha. It's her guardian angel! She won it when she correctly guessed "Formica" in a previous post. I have to seal it and then get it mailed on Monday.

This is the back of the angel collage.

Steampunk Garden Journal

I'm in Steampunk Journal Round Robin over at Amusing Muses. There are 8 mixed media artists who will each create a journal and every 3 weeks their journal will get shipped to the next artist who will create a 2 page collage and then send it to the next artist on the list. It's going to be a lot of fun and should take about 8 months to complete.
The exciting part is seeing what spin other artists will take on the "Steampunk" theme. Because I'm an avid gardener (veggie and flowers) I'm created a Steampunk Garden Journal. Can you image the crazy things a Steampunker would have in their garden?

This is the cover of my journal. It hasn't been bound yet which I'll do with wire binding. The cover has two parts, the bottom part flips open to reveal a suprise on the lower half of the blue cover. The key is part of a mechanism to keep the journal closed.

I tried to make the flower name placards look rusted. First I cut small rectangles of foam core board, painted it with copper Pearl Ex paint. After the paint dried I gobbed gel medium on the edges of the rectangle and then sprinkled it with fine craft sand. When the glue with the sand was dried I mixed small amounts of blue, copper and green Pearl Ex powder with a little water until it is thick and creamy and daubed it on the sand to create a patina. When it dried, I then sealed it with Ranger Glossy Accents. Antiqued furniture nail heads were cut down and stuck into the foamcore. Lastly I collaged on the blue paper and then the names of the flowers on top of it on the rectangle. I also sprayed stamped and distressed all other papers on the covers. It took me about 6.5 hours to get this much done!

I'll post more of the progress tomorrow!

Mini Collage Necklace Tutorial & Grilled Strawberry Pizza

Well I'll tell you, I had a lot of right guesses about the base of my mini collage necklaces! Those of you who guessed Formica, were right! I'll be sending out mini collages necklaces to Sheila, Heidi and Marsha from Tumblefish Studio within the next week or so!

Formica was created in 1913 at the Westinghouse Company as an electric insulator but quickly became useful in other ways. In it's heydays during the 1930s it was used in diners to cover just about every surface! Your grandma probably had a kitchen table covered with it!

My mini collages have a base of a sample of Formica from Lowe's. I got the idea from an article about an artist who uses the samples in the same way in the Somerset Studio Magazine last year. This necklace is two sided..... Mr. Summer Crab on one side and .........

Seaside Sailor Boy on the other side!

Ok, here the skinny on how to make them......... get a Formica sample chip from Lowe's. They are about 1.5 inches by 2 inches.

Spread a liberal amount of gel medium on the back of the sample with a brush...

place it glue side down on a piece of cardstock....

Let it dry and then cut around it. Do the same thing to the other side of it.
Here are some Formica samples I covered and now they are ready for collaging!

Getting back to my obsession with grilled dough....I did grilled pizzas again the other night and had an extra piece of grilled dough so I saved it and used it as a base for strawberries. The berrie were drizzledd with a vanilla glaze (1TB. of french vanilla coffee creamer added to 1/2 cup of powdered sugar) and then drizzled with bittersweet chocolate. It was DE-LISH!

And the winner is...........

The randomly drawn winner of the altered key is.......(insert drum roll here)...................

Terri from Pringle Hill Studio!

Hey Terri, please email me your address!
Smiles-
Melissa

A lot to share.........

A lot to share.......

Wow, I have a lot to share with you all in blogland. What a glorious weekend....beautiful weather! It's been a busy time in the studio as of late. For a few weeks I felt like my creative muse had abandoned me, but apparently the muse needed a vacation. I'm going to start by sharing the inspiration for a few new pieces of altered art jewelry. Last weekend while I was planting annuals in my pots for the back porch I thought I saw a bird fly out of my hanging fern but you know sometimes your eyes play tricks on you! So after I got finished planting I did a little investigating. and ........

Sure enought right there in the middle of my fern was a birds' nest! We've been learning how to cohabitate with each other this weekend as I spend a lot of time on the back porch. It's my outdoor studio/library/computer room/entertainment area so I'm not leaving it for one itty-bitty bird! She's adjusting as I am also.........I think she's really liking my music selection today, I've got a little Duffy, Michael Bubble, 10,000 Maniacs, Nina Simone, Bag of Toys, Diana Krall and Jamie Cullen.

Inspiration!

Nature is almost always the inspiration for my art. That little bird inspired me to make these altered poker chip pendants.....

These little "tweeters" are ready to go to the Time and Again Shop in lovely Greenville, Pa. but if you see one you'd like (7 bucks, free shipping) just email me and I can put it back for you.

I smell something grilling, get the extinguisher!!!!!!

Hey! Time to eat! I just had to share my delicious grilled eggplant, garlic, ricotta and romano cheese pizza with you! Grill the egg plant slices first. Roll out dough into small pizzas, brush with olive oil and place oiled side down on the grill. Grill for 1minute 36 seconds. Brush the top with olive oil then flip. You have to be quick so have your toppings ready to put on as soon as you flip the dough!

Yummy grilled dough! It's crispy on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside. I get it at WalMart. It's in a bag for 88 cents by the WalMart pizzas. One bag makes four, 6 inch pizzas.Quick! Spread on the grilled garlic pieces followed by the ricotta then a sprinkling of romano cheese. Next top with grilled eggplant slices and sprinkle with kosher salt. Boom! It's time to take it off the grill and eat it!

What is it, tell me please!?!?!?
Ok, full stomach, now back to work! This is a little altered art necklace that you'll never guess what the base is made of. I'll give you a few hints......it's thin but strong and it was invented in 1913 ...... it was used a lot in the 1930-50s, especially in diners, it's still used today and it was even used on the Queen Mary ocean liner in the Art Deco decor! If you make a comment guessing what it is and you guess right, I'll make you a necklace similar to the one below! You have until Wednesday so put on your thinking caps. I'll pick 3 winners from the correct answers.

The cool thing about this pendant is that it's reversable. Just flip it and you have two different necklaces. I measures 1 and 3/4 by 2.5 inches. I'll be posting a tutorial on how to make it on Wednesday and also reveal the mystery material.

Bigger......
Lastly, I saw an old friend this morning that I haven't seen in exactly a year. We went though some tough times together last year. I was so happy to see her and there hasn't been a day that's gone by that she didn't pop into my thoughts. She is doing well now, so am I, which reminds me of one of my favorite sayings......"we are so much bigger than anything that can ever happen to us".

I hope all of my friends in blogland had a wonderful weekend! Remember, tomorrow the winner for the altered key will be drawn so enter in the previous post.
Smiles-
M