Snowday Cornbread

Making cornbread in a cast iron skillet is a perfect, subzero, housebound, activity.

The key, in my whitebread opinion, is to brown some butter with a bit a bacon fat.
Brown butter is magical stuff.

It was as good as it looks.

Snow Daze

Backyard snowscape with chandelier and red Weber grill.
Baby it's cold outside.

Christmas Came & Christmas Went

He sees you when you're sleeping...

...and it shook when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.

It dropped more needles than it kept but we loved it anyways.

I even kept some of the ornaments I made.

Many records were played on the old mono record player. This was my holiday favorite.
Time to pack it all up and stuff it back up the chimney.

Souvenir of Luxembourg

It's necklace season.
An iridescent lampwork focal bead, vintage found chains, a tiny stone heart and a couple of old stray crystal beads to go with this beautiful old souvenir charm from Luxembourg.

On the Fringes

A new necklace.
The focal is one of mine, an off mandrel leaf that is about 2" long.

All sorts of beady fringe goodness.
Labradorite, carnelian, garnet, freshwater pearls, tiger eye, amber, coral and black tourmaline sticks.
The chain is all vintage, scrounged from estate and garage sales.

For you lampworkers out there - the leaf is Cim's 'Sange' with Val Cox's large size 'Raku' frit.

!!! Craftacular !!!

It's that time of year again,
the most wonderful time of the year...
time for CRAFTACULAR!

Cookies and Beer

Another holiday party poster done!
Beer, ugly X-mas sweaters, whiskey, big beef and rock & roll - what could possibly go wrong?

Candy Spangles Bracelet

Bits of a new bracelet.
I found an old, old lid to a candy tin and cut it into spangles with my handy dandy disk cutter.
Then got on the torch and made some beads to match.
Wired it all together with bronze and sterling silver.
Viola!

For the lampworkers out there:
I started with a barrel core of black and rolled in aventurine frit. Then carefully encased it with clear. At the end I added a stripe of transparent olive green around the middle.

Santa / Satan

In my other life I do graphic design.

Rockin' Robin

Day 2 of a small (10"x10") robin painting.
It's a real juicy one.

*please note * that in the photo above I am wearing my lucky red socks.

Old Plush

I shoulda been doing this, I shoulda been doing that.

Instead I squeezed out some oil paint and started a batch of small paintings while blasting the Pogues on my studio stereo.

This is day one of this little painting.

Heart & Seeds

A big mossy glass heart with vintage chain and stray glass beads and a nice chunk of yellow jade.

This necklace is available at:
Shop One2 - the fine craft gallery at RIT.

Pod Necklace

A very simple necklace -
one of my lampwork pod pendants,
some vintage silver tone chain  and two segments of old of rosary chain.

The black glass rosary chain lays against the back of the neck.
That way if you have short hair, or your hair is up, there a nice surprise detail.

This piece is available at:
Shop One2 the fine craft gallery at RIT.