busy weekend with no photos

This past weekend, and really the week itself, has been so busy. My younger sister and her two youngest children arrived from Washington state for a visit. We hadn't seen them since Christmas so it's great to catch up. Her visit has the added purpose of attending our brother's wedding, too.

I worked at the VAAM Gallery on Saturday, a very welcome day for me. I take whatever I happen to be working on and use the day as studio time. This time it was jewelry, which is nice and portable. I have been known to haul my sewing and embellishing machines into the Gallery, plus assorted fabrics and fibers, which is a lot of hefting around but still fun, and generates interest in Gallery visitors.

My brother and his fiancee have asked me to make their wedding guestbook so I got busy on that this weekend, painting and stamping a large sheet of paper for the cover and basically getting the cover pretty much finished up. Hopefully I'll get the inside cover glued in tonight, then I can start on the pages. The wedding colors are pastel blues and purples, so the book is in the same colors. I promise to photograph the end results. The wedding is this coming Saturday, so on Friday we will all be driving to Des Moines, Iowa for the festivities, traveling by way of Kansas City to pick up my youngest brother, and stopping in Clarinda, Iowa, where my father grew up so he can show us around.

One other thing I accomplished this weekend was to make the mold for my silver seashell pendant. I got some molding compound and worked it up, impressed the shell, and presto! Worked just like it was supposed to. Now if I can only get up the courage to put the precious metal clay into the mold. It's a fair sized shell for a pendant, over 2" long and over an inch wide, plus it's 3D so it requires a lot of silver which translates into a bit of a $$ outlay, so I really don't want to screw it up. As an aside I found, or rather my husband did, a local source for the gelled alcohol fuel I use to fire my precious metal clay pieces. It is less expensive locally, plus I don't have to pay to have that heavy stuff shipped. It's all good.

Hope you're having a good Monday.