Completed Jewelry

I'm on a roll now. Here are some more pieces that I finished this week. The two on the left are resin. The one in the middle is a boro bead that I got at the bead show last week. I just love it! It almost looks like an owl face. ( I'll post a link to the artist as soon as I go through my paperwork for June and find her business card.) The one on the right is a sterling spoon bowl. It has the word "Paris" engraved on it.

This is a piece that has a vintage tablespoon for the base of the pendant. The little elf inside was a china figure. Disclaimer: No elves were harmed in the making of this necklace. His head was already broken off. Really. It was. This picture turned out a little over-exposed.

Luckily, Bordeaux was right there to help me out. She cast a nice big shadow over my pieces while I was trying to photograph them. Never a dull moment with the puppy girls!

Never Enough Time

I just read through a bunch of blogs, and I'm feeling a tiny bit less guilty that it's been so long since I posted. Apparently there is an epidemic of spring/summer busy-ness going around!  I'm on a two-week break from working at the estate sale company and I have about two years' worth of projects in mind that I'd like to work on.

As you can tell by these necklaces, I'm in a beachy/1930s/carnival kind of mood. I found the elephant at a bead show and it inspired a whole bunch of pieces. Isn't the pail cute? This is my "Water for Elephants"necklace. The other two are ice resin pieces.

I've been playing a lot with ice resin and am just thrilled with the results.

Thanks to my dad, Dale Brown, for taking photos for me. I thought my camera was dead, but the nice lady at the camera store revived it for me this morning. I was so relieved. I love that camera, and didn't want to have to learn a new one!

Over the Edge and Arcimboldo Self Portraits

 by Leslie Brier, Brier Design Studio

I wanted to share some of our finished Art and Soul Projects with you. My daughter and I took Stephanie Rubiano's "Over the Edge" class. We worked on cradled hardboard, and learned all kinds of new techniques. Stephanie takes great care to ensure that projects are well-made and of archival quality. That is something that I really appreciate.

This is my finished project. I used a photo that I had of my daughter dressed as a fairy.
When I took the Stephanie Lee class last winter, my classmate and kindred spirit, Annie, gave me a book page. The words "A fairy legend" worked perfectly with the image.

 This is my daughter's completed project. The tag says: "Take the road less traveled by". Didn't she do a great job?

 The last class that we took was Pam Carriker's Arcimboldo self-portrait class.



This was the original image that my daughter used.

And this was her finished self-portrait. It turned out great!

 This is the original image that I used.

And this was my finished portrait. As you can see, my daughter's project was much more successful than mine. I added a lot of paint, because I was unsure of myself. The good news is, that I learned a lot from the project, and I'm planning to try it again soon. Pam's methods definitely take the scary out of portrait painting.

This is Pam signing our book. You can see a couple of the other class portaits in the background. Pam's book is called Art at the Speed of Life. I am really enjoying this book. It is just the pick-me-up I have needed with the schedule I've been keeping these days.

Where Have I Been?

by Leslie Brier, Brier Design Studio

Note: I am going to whine for a moment, so if you don't want to read the whiney part, you can skip straight down to the pictures.

Ever since I got back from Art and Soul, my life seems to be on fast-forward. Work-wise, I'm juggling a whole bunch of projects at once. On the home front, my son is getting ready to graduate from high school, and my daughter is going through SOL testing. I'm trying to get the house company-ready, meet all my deadlines, and still have some time to create.

Oh, and there's a snake in my garage. And it won't leave. When we get brave and try to chase it out, it just slithers back further into my garage. I would post a picture of it, but then, every time I go to my blog page, I'll get cold chills all over again. I feel sorry for it, but I really, really, really want it out of my garage.

I feel better now.



Guess what I got for Mother's Day? One-third of an antique booth, that's what. I've decided that it's time to put all of my hunting and gathering skills to good use. My friends Suzanne and Jolie and I went together on a space in an antique mall.

This is how the booth looked when I left it today. I think we did a pretty good job of mixing together all of the different stuff we had.

Jolie brought in this cool manly mannequin. I covered him with all kinds of little goodies.

I just got that bird cage. I decided to take it straight to the booth, before I fell in love with it.

The teller at the drive-through at the bank saw the cage and  asked me if there was a live bird in there. I totally forgot there was a bird cage in my car. And I was still freaked out about the snake in the garage, so I'm thinking that suddenly there's a live bird in the back of my car. After I freaked out for a minute, I realized what she was talking about, and so I blurted out, "No! But there's a snake in my garage!" Now I'm wondering if I need to change banks, or just pretend I was drinking at the time.

Art and Soul Vendor Night and "In the Garden" Charm Swap

by Leslie Brier

Didja miss me? My daughter and I just got back from Art and Soul in Hampton, Virginia and we had the most amazing time! We squeezed so much into three days that I'm going to have to do more than one post. And I'm not going to remember what order everything happened in, so I'll just download some photos and ramble on about them.

First of all, my daughter and I had the world's best roommate, my coolio art friend,  Janet Moss. She is the best at planning ahead, networking, and helping me justify my "junk" purchases. I'll have a post soon about the gorgeous scarf she is wearing.  This was us heading to Vendor Night which is an artsy junker's paradise!

Look at the amazing stuff I got! I bought a pocket watch from Sue at Vintage Rescue Squad that I'd had my eye on. The baby and the pin cushion with the baby on top came from Beth and Suzy of Dime Store Chic, and those two ribbons hanging in the back came from John Whiting of Whiting's Old Paper. He has the most amazing paper collection you can imagine. His store is a definite must for an ephemera excursion.

Before I left for Art and Soul, I signed up for a charm swap. Here is the bunch of charms that I sent to Hampton.

This is a closeup of one of the charms.

And this is the glorious assortment of charms that I received! Each one is so beautiful. I felt so grateful to be part of such a talented group of women. Opening each of the charms reminded me of getting valetines back in grade school It was all so exciting! (You can click on the photo for a closer look at each one.)

Anne Koussa made this beautifully presented charm. It actually brought tears to our eyes!

Here are charms made by Melissa Robertson, Gail Cervarich, Carol Dee Myers, Donna Butcher, S.K. Berman, Janet Moss and  Kristina Penhoet.

These were done by Theresa Hope-Goddard, Patti Reinheimer, Deborah Petronio, (the adorable baby face flower) Lorie Garver, and Dawn Gallop. (Yes, that is a tiny garden gnome!)

Still more came from Marcy Wyatt, Carol Dee Myers, and Julie Armstrong who organized the whole group, and had adorable little bags for us, and flowers for us to wear as well.

I missed getting a closeup of the group of charms at the top of the first photo, but they were made by Erin E. Montgomery, Linda Simon, Margaret Rodriquez, Karen Fllerton, Tammy Marie Bacot, Catherine Mein and Linda Hawkins.

The original concept of the swap was to make one necklace out of all of the charms. However, each one is so beautiful, I think they merit their own necklace or bracelet. I have a lot of jewelry to make!

Basic Ingredients

by Leslie Brier, Brier Design Studio

The Art About Food Show just opened at LibertyTown last Friday night. I'd been collecting items to use in a food-themed assemblage for awhile and I finally got them all together about a week ago. It started with a cocoa tin and a small antique doll. (I think she's about 4 inches tall.)

And this page from a promotional cookbook:

Normally, I would make a color copy of it, but I started this project late at night, so I decided I'd go ahead and use the original.

This was my rough layout. I painted the rolling pin to match the ad, and then placed items where I thought they should go. I took this photo so I could put everything back after I added color and texture to the background. (Sorry the quality of the photos wasn't better. I wasn't thinking about showing them to anyone else when I took them.)

I had some old paper ribbon that I was used by 3 Chefs Restaurant to wrap around cardboard boxes of fried chicken. I used it to define the different areas of my artwork. You can see that I added color, too. Nothing was secured to the board at this point, so I took that photo to refer back to later.

This is the finished piece. It's rare for me to stay this true to my original concept. Usually, what I start out with and what I end up with are miles apart. In this case, I had a lot of time to think about what I wanted to do, and not a lot of time to complete it, so I had to trust my instincts, and get it done. In the end I was pleased with the result.

Wild Women, Steampunk and Flying Free! - Altered Book Round Robin

by Leslie Brier, Brier Design Studio

Last week, my altered book group met to share our latest creations for the Altered Book Round Robin. I am so excited about the artwork made by Terry Pitzel for my steampunk-themed book. The doll was a part of the pages that Terry worked on. I took a quick picture of her before I tucked her into the book and sent her on her way with the next artist.

Here she is as part of the spread that Terry did. Isn't it wonderful?  

Linda Madden created this work for (below)  Jennifer Gorman's book. The book's theme is "fly free". The flower centers on the left are textured metal, and Angelina fibers make up some of the foliage. The heart and wings are fabric and embroidery.  I hope you can click on it to see some of the detail. I think I had my camera on a lower resolution setting than usual.

I worked in Terry Pitzel's book. Her theme is "notorious women" . I decided to go with Josephine Baker. I learned so much about her. She spent a lot of time in Paris. When she died more than 20,000 people attended her funeral. She was also an actively involved in the civil rights movement.

 Of course, I had to include an image of her in the banana skirt!
 The writing around her is quoted from Josephine herself.

 I made a Josephine Baker doll for the paper doll section as well. I had some tiny banana-shaped beads that worked perfectly for her skirt.

This month I'll be working in the "fly free" book. I have an image in mind - I just have to figure out how I'm going to use it.