Charms, Trays, And Girls Gone Wild

Keys4Art2011

Day 5

Day 5; it's Saturday, after our long day at The Paper Niche lots of people were sleeping in, but this is the day we set aside for working on projects without "outside" teachers, so all is good.  Everyone has the painter's trays from 7 Gypsies and we have loads of stuff we all brought to share to go into the little compartments.  This is how my tray looked, obviously unfinished, when it was time to pack up:

The pirate's treasure chest in the upper right hand corner was actually one of the gifts Val brought, and with a lot of glue and a little patience, I managed to fit it in that compartment, partially opened, so I could fill it with goodies.  The piece with the skull (left side, one up from the bottom) was inside the treasure chest, but it fit well in this section, and I just had to add some more sand to the edges to fill in.  Those colorful flip flops (I brought enough for everyone) are from Oriental Trading and are erasers!  

When I got home, I put the tray on my work table and have been adding to it bit by bit.  It is still not finished, but we're getting there.

Here are a couple of not so clear (sorry!) closeups so you can see just how dimensional that treasure chest is:

Here are some snaps of other finished trays.  The first is Elena's, the second is Val's (photo swiped directly from her blog), and the last.....I don't know.  Artist, identify yourself!

Aren't they fabulous?!!

The other activity we set aside for Saturday was charm making.  There are some members of this group, who shall remain nameless, who have all but issued death threats on Val and I for coming up with this idea.  Who knew that charm making, something I find so relaxing, could cause otherwise reasonable women to get so emotional?  Then again, I have a friend here in NY, who breaks out into a cold sweat at the mere mention of the words "jump ring."

Val demonstrated several techniques; she even had 7 melt pots shipped to Elena's so we could make UTEE charms.  Again, I raided her blog for this photo:



Gorgeous!  We poured black UTEE into memory frames and added the metallic color with rub n buff.  Since the surface is slick, you could also color them with alchol inks, stazon ink,  and if memory serves, perfect pearls works too.

Here is Val hard at work turning bullet shells into charms. 

For my part, I demonstrated three of the easiest charms I could think of, and even the charm haters seemed to be won over.  I hope.  I really don't want to have to keep looking over my shoulder.  A certain someone from the great northwest seems to have some good tracking skills.  Anyway, the first is a bottlecap charm, made simple by using images that were self adhesive and sized just for bottle caps.  The cool technique I added (inspired by my good friend Pat) was a band of ballchain to really finish them off.  This is the sample I brought:

The next easy easy one was inspired by the great Wendy Vecchi.  With a teeny 5/16" punch and some glossy accents, you can use Tim's little memo charms to make this:

Last of all, for those who own no metal whatsoever, a circle of sturdy chipboard, some scraps of paper, clear embossing powder and a glaze pen are all you need to create this modern looking charm:

Later that night we all headed to The Marlin, a local restaurant (and the place that provided almost all of our food for the week) for our farewell dinner.  There was a DJ, there was alcohol, and (some would say unfortunately) there were cameras.  LOL!  Gina may think that what happens in Key Largo, stays in Key Largo, but we know better.  It winds up on facebook, twitter, countless blogs, and probably youtube.  Let the festivities begin:

Naturally, at one point a conga line appeared.



This is NOT what you think.  Gina is not trying to earn her airfare home.  She was actually drumming up some tips for the DJ.  I speak the truth.

But Daisy sure got into the spirit of things:

Gina makes new friends wherever she goes:

Happy faces, all around:

And there was some very serious vocalizing:

We settled down long enough for this group photo.  Or maybe we just collapsed.

Here's The Marlin's owner/cook Manny, followed by some of the seemingly endless platters of food that kept appearing at our table:

I do hope Elena realizes that she's stuck with us forever now.  Keys4Art2012, here we come!