Things to do on a stormy day

yesterday was cold, windy, snowing (a little) and just not a day you wanted to go outside at all

fortunately, there were lots of projects at hand to be worked on

 

 the first of the (now) three pieces for the motion lesson of the Visioning Project  -- this one is titled "Mesmerized"

piece number two is titled "Dropped Ball" (with a "thank you" to Alison, who left the comment that gave me the idea for that title)

the third piece I created after I thought I was done with this lesson when someone pointed out that it would be interested to see what I could do by playing more with the triangles

this piece is titled "Follow the Arrow"

aside from the lesson on creating a feeling of motion with shapes, these are also the first of these lessons that I quilted on the machine, and I used the quilting to "echo" the shapes to emphasize the motion of each one

I'm pretty pleased with them

the quilting of the sky on the far left side of the trees piece is done --- there are still all of those aspen leaves to be quilted (I plan to outline each one and quilt in the veins of the leaves)

this is moving right along, but I still can only work on it for at most a couple of hours a day because I'm hand quilting it and the fingers on my left hand get too sore for me to do any more

 

this is moving along nicely

when I did the first drawing, I didn't have that big oval crystal, so that space in the drawing was two smaller round crystals 

I like that big oval one -- but I'm having some issues with creating the bezel for it -- I worked on that some yesterday, but have not yet figured out the exact adjustments from the round bezel to the oval one

it'll come I'm sure

here is the latest sketch of what to do with that round metal tag

yesterday I ordered some glass beads that are spike shaped to put into this 

yet another piece that is totally different than anything else I've worked on -- and if I can manage to get it done by the deadline in May, I may put it (and a couple other of my steam punk pieces) in a local exhibit

 I'd like to say a word or two here about the last few drawings that I've done for the jewelry pieces

in a recent issue of a jewelry magazine that the DH gets there was an advertisement for this newly available book on drawing for jewelers 

it's a hard bound book that was originally released in Europe (it's in that cool longer, narrower format that is the standard for papers there), and it's pages are high quality color that will stand up to being used over the long haul

when the DH saw the ad, he said "see if you can find this book and order it"

those new and improved drawings I've done lately are the result of reading (and some practice scribbling) from the first three chapters in this book

WHOO HOOO!

the phrase "I can't draw" is slowly being eradicated from my vocabulary!!