The Wigglebutt Blog

I have a  Love~Hate  thing with fall. Love the colors. Fall colors, earth tones are my absolute favs! Love the fact that the gardening and yard work is finished for another year. As much as I love my yard and garden, I'm pooped☺ The view from our deck  Sept 28, 2013 Hate the fact that Winter is very VERY close. These colors will only be here another week or so then the trees will be bare. The snow won't be far behind;( I should feel lucky, I suppose, since last year at this time it was snowing. (My husband has a morbid need to keep track of these things.) We did have a little bit of 'ugly' earlier in the week, just not in my neighborhood. Anchorage and Eagle River got dumped on pretty good. The view from the front door of the shop. Monday morning Sept 23, 2013 And, as you might imagine, most of the cars in the pic were there  to have their snow tires installed. Surprise! Well, in honor of Fall, and the fact that the ...

My first challenge☺ You can call me Chicken Girl if you want, but I have never entered a "Challenge" before. I guess I have always been afraid of getting ~ 0 ~ votes. No voting involved in this one, as far as I can tell, and even if there was, what's the worst that can happen?  No one can "take away my birthday"  (I get older next week by the way☺) so I figured ~ why not go for it! There are two categories~ A finished piece:  Love the way these came out;~)  Asymmetrical earrings using my polymer clay leaves wire wrapped to hammered copper washers with a lamp work bead from my fav Juls. The second category ~  Handmade component:  More polymer clay leaves using a different surface treatment. So, I guess I'm entering two challenges☺ Hey, even the Cowardly Lion stepped up to plate eventually, right? ~Baby steps~

I have spent the last several days working, trying to get some rest, and making some more .....leaves☺ I think I am an addict. "....Hi." "....My name is Pat." ~~~HI PAT~~~ "and I can't stop making leaves." These are itty bitty ones that you could use for earrings. I am in love with the color of these. I also experimented with some 'faux wood grain' made a cover for a notebook made some ultra thin leaves. these are colored with mica powders not exactly sure which direction i'm going with this one, but i kinda like it so far. "There are 14 species of whales in Alaskan waters: Orca, Sperm, Beluga, Blue, Bowhead, Northern, Right, Finback, Humpback, Sei, Minke, Gray, Pilot, and Narwahl." "Approximately 1.25 million Pacific Fur Seals return to the Pribilof Islands each year." Great Land of Alaska - Facts and Trivia

I spent two solid hours today taking pictures of pendants (to list) and some necklaces ( to post, then list ). When I say taking pictures, I mean sitting cross legged on the floor with my mini tripod in front of my homemade light box ....for two solid hours. I'm not as young as I used to be, so after about the first hour or so, sitting cross legged on the floor gets to be less fun. Anywho, when I was done taking the pictures, which looked great in the camera monitor, I uploaded them (or downloaded them?) to the computer and promptly decided that buying my new camera maybe hadn't been such a great idea. The colors were wonky and everyone of them was too dark, nothing like they had looked on the camera monitor. After ranting to my Honey for about 20 minutes about how I shouldn't have to do massive amounts of PhotoShop redo  to get my pictures to look right, he discovered that I had somehow accidentally adjusted my "exposure compensation" to almost as low as it would...

I finished another batch of leaves Well, I thought I was finished with this batch. I really like that the colors were so vibrant,  but they seemed almost too 'bright'. I added some "antiquing", a fancy way of saying burnt umber acrylic, and I like them much better. I have a ton of these, now I just need to figure out what to do with them ☺ I'm planning on spending my evening installing jump rings on these bad boys while I watch Criminal Minds. I do love watching TV in the evening, I just can't JUST watch TV.  I always have to be doing something with my hands.

I had a ton of things I was planning on working on over the weekend in the crafty department, but after writing my previous post, I felt compelled (more like obsessed with the need)  to experiment with making some fall leaves. This is the first batch These were done with acrylic paint. I wasn't sure if I liked them at first but they have grown on me. hahahaha!  I kill me☺ These are the second go-round. On these I used alcohol inks. The color was a lot brighter before they went in the oven. They seem to have lost some of the color during the cure but I still really like them.  They are a little more 'elegant'. Next time around I will try curing then applying the inks and see how that works. After gathering everybody together for this group shot, I realized I like them combined. I still want to try to get the inks brighter  and that will just give me even more variety. That is, after all, why some many people enjoy fall foliage, right? And something else...