Southwest Queen Head

And here is her head all beaded in l5's.

New Round Robin

This little Star will go with the Santa, we can send two items.
So Santa will have a Star to go along with him!

New Round Robin

Well its been a very busy week this week for sure.
This is a new Round Robin thats starting up and I'm sending this Santa. I love him.
The face was made by Maggie from my BAD Yahoo group and Rhonda Kivett make the form.
He will be gone for months and months and won't even be back for Christmas, sniff, sniff.
I hope he comes back looking like an "Old World Santa".

Applique Butterflies

And I was telling my long time friend "Hersheybar" about this project and she asked her applique group if they would make some.

Now just look at these, aren't they just darling.

Artists all over the world are making Butterflies! Makes me happy!

Nassau Appliquers, North Merrick, L.I. New York, way to go ladies, you did a great job too!

Butterfly Project

The High Desert Bead Society just finished up a wonderful special program for the Houston Museum.

In an effort to remember l,500,00 children who where killed in the Holocaust they are asking Artist to make butterflies. They will be a breath-taking exhibit when its done. The due date was the end of June but they are extending it, not sure how long, so there is still time if any of you Artists would love to participate. More details here: butterflyproject@hmh.org

Here is the picture of the butterflies flying to Houston this week. Most of ours are all hand beaded, some painted. Thanks again to all the members who participated in this great exhibit.

Sul's back

And here is the back of SUL!

Sul - my healing doll

Here is Sul, my healing doll from a class I took on my BAD yahoo group. She was a joy to work on for sure and I can't tell you how much I learned from her. You can read below in my blog most of why I made her and why.

But just to review a little, the sword charm is the knife that went thru my liver and caused me all this medical grief for almost a year now. Colors of reds in Sul for the courage to go on, the pastel colors meaning calm and to try and keep calm thru all this recovery, lots of greens for my new life and try and achieve harmony and balance in it, the frog for my transition back into real life and out of being sick, the garden theme and the earth on the bottom of her and roots for me to be nurtured, rocks leaves and the writing of her name on the doll for healing.

And a very special thank you again to our wonderful teacher Kristen Evans, a very very knowledgeable teacher to say the least, she truly has refreshed my outlook on life now. I want to continue in this avenue of symbolic teachings so to speak and work out more of ME thru my rock. I think that would be a great way to continue on with this journey. And the best part of all this, it was so FUNNNNNNNNN! Thank you, thank you Kristen again.

And I thought of something that my Dad told me years and years ago, "NEVER, NEVER STOP LEARNING DIAN, ALWAYS TAKE CLASSES ON SOMETHING, ANYTHING, YOU WON'T BE SORRY" Boy, those words sure ring true for me today!

New Round Robin Doll

Here is my new Southwest Queen. She will be leaving me soon for a round robin on my BAD yahoo group. There are seven gals who will work on her, so she will be gone from me for 7 longgggggggg months!

She will be so beautiful when she comes back, I just know she will.

I dont have a name for her yet.

Form made by Rhonda Kivett.

SUL's back

And here is SUL's back so far.

That FROG looks so big! LOL

SUL's progress

And I've been working a lot on SUL, my healing doll, this week.
Here are some progress pictures of her front.
I really am enjoying the process.

This was a class as I said last week from my BAD group.

I wasn't going to take it because I had so many other things to do and then I thought, life is too short, you should have fun too, so I dropped everything. She has been a joy to work on.

Thank you Kristen for the class.

UFO's for this week

And here is my work for this week.
Three cooper wire bracelets made from a class I took from Paulette Smith.

Hope you like them. I have more to work on this next week.

This is a great project to use one of a kind beads that you have laying in your bead boxes.

Wedding necklace

I was at the High Desert Bead Society Board meeting last week and just had to take a picture of this Wedding Necklace Paulette Smith made for her future DIL. It is just drop dead gorgeous with beautiful silver too. I'm sure her DIL will love it.

More Flowers

And my Shasta daisies are so pretty and the birds carry the seeds all around and now I have many more in different places I never dreamed they would come up. Thank you to the birds!

More flowers

This is my first experience with Lambs Ear too. I went with a dear friend to a Nursing home and they had these for the residents there to feel, feels just like velvet, I never knew they bloomed and I'm getting a lavender flower. How fun.

More Flowers June 2008

And my beautiful Dahlias, first year I have had these.
The nursery said to just put them in the garage for the winter and bring them out in the Spring. I sure hope it works. My first experience with these.

Reminds me of football Mums.

My Columbine sure adored the cooler weather this Spring and they are still good.

Flowers update

Its just beautiful in Prescott, Arizona today, about high of 85. Thought I would take some pictures of the great flowers before the real heat gets to them.

All my flowers are container gardening on our deck because of the animals in the Prescott national forest in our back yard!

Some pretty carnations and pansies etc.

The Symbolic meaning of my doll

Many of you know what happened to me here in Prescott last year with my medical issues, but I think a lot don't either, so I'll tell you what I hope to achieve by making Sul as a "healing doll".

The the green doll is for a garden of healing. I plan to use honeysuckle flowers on her somewhere, thought about doing coraling for the honeysuckle flowers but not sure that would look good coming out of a small doll, but we'll see, honeysuckle is for 'letting go of the past', which I hope this doll does for me.

This whole project is to try and LET GO of a bad situation that happened to me in the hospital last year, a nothing liver biopsy that went terribly wrong and the Doctor who did it almost killed me, effecting many many serious organs that have had to heal for months and months.........Long story short, when you almost die, it just upsets your whole being and I have to get over it. Right now the only thing I'm left with and isnt healed is my heart, was just on a heart monitor for two days Fridayand Saturday at home and its the pits, but the medication isnt working, so they have to find out why, there hoping this post traumatic stress my body is going thru right now is only temporary, its from all of this stuff from last August, it could be a year or more before I'm all well. BUt I have to work thru it and accept it all and stop being angry about it all etc. Enuf said. So thats what I hope working on Sul will do for me.

Plan to use red somewhere as it means courage and action, I have to have the courage to get over this and move on, and by moving on, that to me is taking action.

Plan to use pastels somewhere as they are calming and cause tranquility, boy do I need that.

Greens/and/dirt/roots to nurture me in the garden as they mean new life, which I need a new life, I need to start over well again, harmony and balance which I need badly too.

Pinks are for innocence and I went to the hospital and was very innocent going and trusted them completely! ugh

Some gemstones I should use but not sure I have them, amethyst for peace of mind, aquarine for serenity, coral for life force, onyx for protection from stress, man I really should buy that onyx, rose quartz for inner peace, that too for sure..........

Frogs for transition in life, and I"m certainly there now, and I do have a frog.

I have a beaded figure of a liver and will have a sword thru it or a knife or some such thing. No one will know whats thats about!

For healing I need rocks, stone, wood, buttons leaves, quotes, ribbons or writing on the doll. Hope to write LETTING GO somewhere on the doll.

So thats my plan for right now, all subject to change as I bead and things either work well or dont work well and you move on to another change, I dont mind change at all........

So thats it from here, now I"m off to buy the last batch of flowers for summer.
And Summer has arrived in Prescott, Arizona, finally.

Wishing you all a wonderful day and take time to smell the flowers!

Honeysuckle

As Honeysuckle means " LETTING GO" here is a picture for inspiration.

I thought maybe I could use the coraling stitch and see if that would work out like the photo.
If not, I can always change to something else. I dont mind change at all.

Tray of Beads for Sul

And here is the actual prep work for my Sul, beads, charms etc etc.

You'll like to see the beginning because you'll know how she was created from the very beginning.

Doll by Rhonda Kivett.

Drawings of SUL

We were suppose to make drawings of what we thought our doll would be.
So here are the first drawings of Sul with a little color here and there..

On Line Doll Class

Well guy's I'm starting something a little different for me this week.
I signed up for an ON LINE doll class called Symbolic Dolls by Kristen Evans, she is on my Beaded Art Doll Yahoo group. I tell you I must have l00 pages of text from this wonderful teacher, never had so much inspiration to pull from. She truly is the best teacher for this class.

Here are the beginnings of my class, the exercises you cant read well but it tells of all the things I might use for my doll SUL, which means a Healing Doll.

So here are those.