Charming, charming, charming

I guess I was feeling charming at 3 in the morning, because I woke up early yesterday/Friday, to storms, licking cats and a noisy water softener (again) and decided it was high time I assemble my charms from the ZNE http://www.zneart.com Castle in the Meadow charm swap last Sunday in Detroit. The bracelet in the bottom pic is the result. All but three were made by ZNE members in quantities of 25 each for the swap. The green glass rings, ruler bit cut for me by Kris of Retro Cafe Art Gallery in Indy http://www.retrocafeart.com and baby moon by Melanie of Earthenwood Studio http://www.earthenwoodstudio.com I added later. The soldered charm in the very middle, the Scrabble 'G' is by Donna of Bonnie Blue Denim http://bonniebluedenim.blogspot.com who was nice to enough to make everyone a charm with personalized initials, so mine has an 'S' on the back.

Immediately above my ZNE bracelet is the nautical charm bracelet I also made Friday morning, this one for my sister-in-law. It has procrastination all over it, since she had given me four charms from Michael's in late March and asked me to make her a bracelet like the one I got from Kat of Altered Kat or Great Musings on etsy and here http://alteredkat.blogspot.com. That one is the turquoise bracelet in the second photo from top. It has over 50 charms on it, so trying to make her four charms into something like that took me awhile to pull together. In the end, I used little glass fish from Debbie/Oh Kitten at Chubbyville, glass beads from Laurie of Loud Life on etsy and Living Out Loud http://loudlife-laurieblaumarshall.blogspot.com and also the mother-of-pearl charms from my Altered Kat bracelet. Who says I can't make nice and share?

And finally, in reverse order, the top photo is a review of my Art & Soul Hampton charm swap. Yes, there is a charm bracelet in there somewhere, along with 32 unique, hand-made charms.

That Peaches & Cream Complexion

Here is a copy of a recent collage using some of my vintage magazine finds from Better Homes and Gardens and McCalls from the 1930s to 1950s. I see I didn't do the best job copying or scanning, since I cut off a couple of key comments, such as "All they ever wanted to talk about was her crow's feet" and "Are you really lovely to love?" Well, clearly not with all these crow's feet- kind of all over, huh? Collage doesn't have to make any sense- that's why I like it.

I am now going to try my hand at making a glass charm similar to those in my book club book "Pretty Little Things." I had the silver foil tape and now I have my glass squares. This can be done without Flux and a soldering iron, although it won't look as nice. I also now have both a stuffed crow (on a crow kick, non?) and a stuff rat, and either will look divine on my witch hat, which gets mailed off to someone else. Come to think of it, all the good stuff gets mailed off to someone else, hmmmmm.

However, one lovely thing did come to me yesterday, and that was a silver soldered charm by Kris Hubick of Retro Cafe Gallery (see links at right). She did a great job-so smooth and the bail is placed so nicely. I just got a chain for it today as I decided it was too big for my charm bracelet, as I am afraid the others I have ordered from Sally Jean will be. Hard to do dangly when you're on the computer all the time.

I also hope to squeeze in another post tonight about Home and Color for both my ZNE assignment and my Caat assignment. I do take these seriously; I must have been a good little school girl. Were you?