Update on the Monarch Box

  My box project is getting ready to sand and finish.  I have one piece of soldering to do, I just couldn't get one little piece ( out of 8) to sweat solder!   I tried several times and even sawed another one out, just couldn't it to stick.  I was afraid I would un-solder the other 7 pieces or melt the whole box top, so I stopped for the day.  Tomorrow I will try again and then decide how much more I want to do to the box.  I have considered cut outs on the top or bottom, plexi in the bottom as a window and several other ideas.  Time is the deciding factor and I am running out of it.
   I have tried several new techniques, including using a raw potato as a heat sink.  It worked!! I have so many ideas and so little time.........

This is what it looks like when I leave class late in the afternoon.  I don't know who's farm is, but it makes a nice picture.  It is cold and rainy and the ground is still frozen.  I like to take sunsets and cloud shots, I will try this one again when the ground is green.

April Showers

Here I go again... It is raining hard with thunder and lightening out tonight, so I am here at my computer.  I haven't been doing any art other than for my  metals class.  I need to finish my current project and start taking pictures of what I have done this year.
   I am currently working on a lidded box.  It will be a tribute to the Monarch butterflies I see in my yard.  I have always like to watch them, when I was a kid out on the Kansas Prairie I would sit in our garden watching them.  They liked to eat the dill plants as caterpillars.  I was totally mesmerized by the 'pillars.
   I started the box before I knew how endangered the Monarchs are becoming.  I hope they revive and find new lands to feed on.  I have a milkweed pod and a catalyst on the lid of my box and will put a real preserved butterfly inside.  I pinned it several years ago and found that it is marked as a male.  It is beautiful!
   Hope to finish it soon and get started on my hinged locket.  I will try and post soon.

 This bird house will be out again this year.  Hope another family of wrens moves in.  It has had wrens in it every year since a grand dter painted it.

Wishfull thinking...

I am going to try and do more new art to post more often.  This picture is of a trip I took with my grndter in 2011.  We went to an art show of illustration for children's books.  Several artists were featured and examples of their works were shown.  Their bios were also displayed, so you could put their faces with the work each one did.

The display was in a castle like building that is the entrance to the Edsel Ford Estate in Michigan. Note the "rope" of hair hanging from the ramparts. This show was at the time TANGLES was released at the theaters.

Woe is me

Woe is me!  Here I am again making an attempt to get back on track.  Hopefully, this post will be part of a series of days that I can remember to come here and post.
Here is a picture of my current vacant rental.. comes with fenced yard ,maintenance and plenty of food.  Ha Ha Ha!

Enough of the explaining here goes.....  I have been doing mostly jewelry lately, I am taking a metalsmith class.  I make "real" jewelry - meaning I use silver, copper and brass from sheets of metal to fabricate my pieces.  I love the sawing, pounding, soldering and polishing my projects.  I will post a picture of one of my pieces, as soon as I get one taken and sized.

What a change!  It seems like forever since I have been to see this blog.  I guess it has, everything has changed.

Present and Accounted 4

These last few months have been a black hole for me.  I was upset and confused about the following:
   1. On August 23rd I received a call that my brother had died that day from a blood clot, he was in the hospital for tests.  He was 10 yrs my junior and the last member of my family, leaving me with only a few aunts, uncles and cousins. He lived in South Carolina, so I had not seen him in a few years.
   2. I had a stroke, soon after he passed.  I was taken by ambulance to a stroke center in a suburb of Chicago, 40+miles away, for treatment.  It was a hard time for me knowing that my brother had just died from a similar incident.  I have done a good job of recovering from the stroke, not having insurance made it hard.  I have been on meds and a regiment to recover.  I had some lack of balance and inabilty to write.  I had just started a class in silversmithing at a local jr. college and was terrified of losing all my art skills.  I spent alot of time recovering my motor skills.  I couldn't even sign my own name, which would mean the end of alot of my art.

I hope that I can be forgiven for not being on line during this time.  I have been able to recover from most of the primary problems of the stroke.  I now know that there is a GOLDEN WINDOW for a person who has a stroke, this window of time is 3 hrs. If a person is taken to the ER within the 3 hrs, it will allow the doctors to inject an anti-stroke medication that can stop the stroke.  I missed that window because of  not having insurance and thinking this was just a bout of extreme mental strain.

 
  

Finally I can....

I am not doing a good job of relearning how to post from a borrrowed computer!  I can't seem to figure out how to know what picture is actually going to be posted.
   This is my first post for the latest exchange I am in, I hope it comes up on the blog right.  I don't like that photographiing a negative image shows all the small imperfections.  Most of those small scratches are made visible by the camera (both by the flash or abient light), and are not as visible to the naked eye.
    Here is one of my ATCs from my series, Full Moon Series.  It is of the leaves of the Feverfew plant.  It is a plant I have grown for over 30 years.