21st Century Pillow Book

Hello! It's almost the most wonderful time of the year! No, not Christmas. For me, it's Halloween. I love the spookiness, the dressing up, the decorations, everything. So I always plan out a lot of projects for this time of year, and I love to go way beyond the card and make decorations for my home. This month, the Imagine Artists in Residence are creating "Holiday Planning" projects, and this is mine. I started off with this small bottle that held syrup from one of my favorite restaurants, Cracker Barrel. I love that they give you these individual bottles when you order pancakes, French Toast, etc. I always bring them home to use as storage for sequins, seed beads, etc. The bottles have these great embossed designs which make decorating simple. I decided to use my Studio Glaze in St. Valentine, as these shapes reminded me of drops of blood. I laid the bottle down on to a paper towel to keep it from rolling around. But in the end, I wound up just holding ...

Imagine has so many fun coloring products, and I've used a lot of them. But StazOn Studio Glaze was a product I had never used, and I decided it was time to give it a try! Glass Painting is a lot of fun, and StazOn Studio Glaze makes it so easy! Coloring books for grownups seem to be all the rage lately, but what if you want to do something beyond the page? Sometimes it's a shame to hide those pretty designs in a book. This tutorial will show you how to use your favorite coloring book pages on glass. 1. As you can see, I had started to color this page already. But I thought it was so pretty, that I wanted to put it on a glass. This coloring book happens to be small, but you can use any size book. I photocopied the page and finished off the lines that were incomplete because they went off the page. 2. The bottom of my glass was really narrow, so I cut a few slits upwards into the image so that I could get it to fit better. Also, to make this project a whole lot easi...

Making jewelry has always been a passion for me. It is my favorite thing to create. Yes, even more than cards and scrapbooks (although they are very close behind!). I love that you can show off the craft wherever you go. Carrying a 12x12 scrapbook isn’t easy to do! But a necklace, you can wear proudly and exclaim “I made this!’ So sometimes I don’t have the “mojo” as so many of you call it, to play with jewelry… and other times, it’s just not a good idea to lug my bead boxes downstairs to try and create while my son is playing with his trains and my daughter is trying to stick her hands in to everything that she’s not supposed to. So sadly, my beads and things have to sit in my craft room and wait for me to find a few spare moments to play with them. But yesterday, not only did I have inspiration, but I had the time and energy to make a couple of pieces! Here’s one of them: Those are real pieces of quartz crystal! Aren’t they stunning? I have had them for years… and never got around...

So, I have been trying for weeks now to get some presents and cards made for some of the special friends I have made over the past few months. I Finally got to finish a necklace for one of those friends. I can’t tell you who she is… because I haven’t sent the necklace to her yet… but, I am pretty sure that she will be reading this post. So, she’ll get a sneak peek at her gift. I hope she’ll be surprised when it arrives in her mailbox! I used lots of different beads for this 3 strand necklace. A ton of glass, some acrylic, opalized glass, square, metal… it’s a long list. It’s made of different shades of blue and purple… which I believe are her favorite colors (hope I’m not wrong!). I had fun making this necklace! As usual. I especially love the little baubles I hung off of the chain. So, now I’m off to make some more! That is… if Rhiannon ever takes a nap!