What Do Soap, Metal, and Shoulder Bags Have In Common?

Absolutely nothing, but you'll see some of each right here. (I told you last time, catchy titles aren't easy to come by).

First things, first.  Although I am going away early tomorrow (more on that in a bit), somehow in my mind, creating something for this week's CCC and SSSS challenges seemed like more of a priority than, oh, packing.

Today marks the end of the Compendium of Curiosities challenges.  We've done every technique in Tim's book.  Linda saved a really great one for last....design details.  As usual, I can't divulge the details, but much piercing was involved.  At the same time, Simon Says, show us metal.   No problem combining the two:

This is a very small piece, done on a 4x4" coaster.  The base is covered with TSS rock star black, which was first embossed with Tim's collage folder.  I then embossed some of their cabin red metal on the silver side as well as the red side, with Tim's patchwork folder.   I cut them up, arranged them on the coaster, did some sanding and inking with stazon, and then went on to the techniques.  Don't know if you can see the stitching I did....I probably should have used something other than black wire.

I thought the piece at that point looked a little empty, so I added the ideaology flower, the bottlecap and the Wendy Vecchi butterfly.  In the interest of full disclosure, the bottlecap with the shrink plastic bird was a leftover from last year's cruise charm swap.

On Saturday, I attended a spa workshop at my friend Heidi's place, with Corris as the teacher.  I don't know what was going on with me when this picture was taken, but apparently something was very funny:

That's Kahena on the left and Corris on the right, waiting for the soap to melt.

In addition to the soap, we made a wonderful body scrub and some perfume in a roller top bottle:

At this time tomorrow, barring any delays, I'll be in the Miami airport meeting up with a whole bunch of my art friends for Keys4Art2011.  From there we head to Key Largo and 6 wonderful days of creativity and friendship and great food and a few mojitos as well.  I decorated small canvas shoulder bags for everyone.  Each is a different color, hopefully the recipient's favorite, but I asked that question ages ago, and artists can be quite changeable when it comes to things like that.  They all have our retreat logo, but each is embellished differently.  Of course, I missed a great photo op when I packed up all 18 and shipped them down to Florida without taking any pictures.   But....I do have the one I made for myself, so this will give you an idea of what they look like:

I'll be back with a full report on Sunday.  Stay well, and make art!