Thursday, September 30, 2010

Composition, Camouflage and Contests







It has been a long week, full of sick kids, very little sleep and my own version of the flu bug. Needless to say, I have not accomplished a whole lot.

I have also been preparing to spend the weekend at a Becoming an Outdoors Woman seminar, where I will be teaching a course on outdoor photo composition.

In light of that I have been taking photos and making more survival bracelets -- this time with a color geared more towards women who love the outdoors -- pink camouflage!

I am also working on a new "bead painting" with a fabulous Owyhee Picture Jasper center stone. It is being done in brown, cream and gold tones with a little blue (sky) and green (grass) thrown in. I will post photos when it is completed.

The temperatures are cooling off so the mornings are crisp when I head out to drive the school bus, but by afternoon, when I am painting, I am down to shorts and a tank top.

The cool temperatures and shorter days are triggering the Autumn color change and the prairie grasses covering the Nebraska Sandhills are beginning to turn to the burgundy and gold hues of Fall.

I have the itch to create, but I still have handouts to prepare for my class, bags to pack and laundry to do, so I had better head out.

OOOPS! I almost forgot my newest thing -- a weekly contest! Comment on my blog posts during the week and at the end of the week I will put all posters' names in a hat and draw a winner. The prize this week is a survival bracelet in your choice of colors: pink camo, olive drab, black or hunter green. I am out of antler buttons, so the closure will be a simple knot and loop. This being the end of the week already, I will carry this particular contest through NEXT Saturday, Oct. 9.

Happy Creating!

Dawn

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Beads, Bracelets, Buses and Brushes






















It has been a while since I posted a blog entry -- since the day my kids started school, actually! They started school and I started a few jobs. I now drive the morning bus route to the west, which requires that I be up at 6 a.m., and I am also the afternoon overload driver, which means I drive a bus to hold "extra" kids if necessary. During the day I am painting outbuildings on a local ranch.
I have also been learning how to paint landscapes. So far, it is quite obvious that I have a LONG way to go -- my outbuildings look far better than my landscapes! I have done one painting a day for the last four days. I have a lot of trouble making the paintbrush do what it is supposed to do.

Needless to say, with all of that going on, the jewelry creation has been slow.

I did, howover, learn from my nephew in the Army, how to make survival bracelets from parachute cord. They are pretty cool -- I use a slice of deer antler as the clasp. There is around 10 feet of useable paracord in one bracelet -- if you ever find yourself stranded in the wilderness, LOL. The cord can be used as shoelaces, clothesline, strapping cord, a snare, or take off the sheath and inside you have numerous smaller fibers that can be used as fishing line, sewing thread, and more. I wrote a tutorial for the bracelets, which can be found at my website, http://www.dawnebryant.net/ or at www.jewelrylessons.com/dawnebryant.

I have completed two more of my "bead paintings." For those I used my miniature colored pencil paintings as the focal stone, then continued the paintings on out with the beads. These are a lot of fun!

Happy Creating!