Heart Stud Earrings ~ Pay it Forward February

{Have you ever heard about a situation and it just breaks your heart and you feel like you HAVE TO do something about it?A few months back I met a lady, Lovely Reckley, and she told me how she goes to four different schools in Abaco and feeds 85+ children that would have otherwise had no lunch. For some of these kids, this is the only meal of the day.Lovely even takes food to some of them when school is out.That really broke my heart. I mean, I know there are kids all over the world that are starving, but when I realized there were children right under my nose it killed me. I kept wondering what I could do. I thought about offering to help cook, but cooking for so many mouths really overwhelmed me. Then I realized what a COMMITMENT this awesome woman had made to these children.....EVERYDAY!!!At Christmas, instead of giving gifts I gave a donation to her organization (and to our Humane Society) instead of buying things that people really didn't need.But it kept tugging at my heart. So, I decided for the month of February I would post several heart themed items to my blog. They would be for sale, and I would give 25% of the cost of the item to Lovely, to help with her costs.I may post an item everyday or I may post several items a week.....I am really not sure, but 25% will go to "Feed the Children" in Abaco, Bahamas.I CANNOT imagine going without food, or only having one meal a day that I had to rely on someone else to bring to me, and these children shouldn't have to deal with this either, so please help!}

I hope you love these earrings as much as I do!! This is the very first pair of stud earrings that I have ever made!

They are about a half of an inch wide. Very sweet and simple.

I made them from Precious Metal Clay. I rolled out the clay, textured it, cut out the shape and then sent it to the kiln for firing. The hearts and the ear studs are fine silver. The backs are sterling silver.

You can find them in my Etsy shop......HERE. {sorry, these have been sold since I wrote the post}
They are $28, and 25% of that will go to Feed the Children Abaco.

Thank you & have a great weekend!

Brave Heart Pendant ~ Pay it Forward

{Have you ever heard about a situation and it just breaks your heart and you feel like you HAVE TO do something about it?

A few months back I met a lady, Lovely Reckley, and she told me how she goes to four different schools in Abaco and feeds 85+ children that would have otherwise had no lunch. For some of these kids, this is the only meal of the day.

Lovely even takes food to some of them when school is out.

That really broke my heart. I mean, I know there are kids all over the world that are starving, but when I realized there were children right under my nose it killed me. I kept wondering what I could do. I thought about offering to help cook, but cooking for so many mouths really overwhelmed me. Then I realized what a COMMITMENT this awesome woman had made to these children.....EVERYDAY!!!

At Christmas, instead of giving gifts I gave a donation to her organization (and to our Humane Society) instead of buying things that people really didn't need.

But it kept tugging at my heart. So, I decided for the month of February I would post several heart themed items to my blog. They would be for sale, and I would give 25% of the cost of the item to Lovely, to help with her costs.

I may post an item everyday or I may post several items a week.....I am really not sure, but 25% will go to "Feed the Children" in Abaco, Bahamas.

I CANNOT imagine going without food, or only having one meal a day that I had to rely on someone else to bring to me, and these children shouldn't have to deal with this either, so please help!}

Good Morning!

My heart item for today is this Brave Heart Pendant.

It is made from copper, fine silver and one of my glass headpins.

The copper heart I cut out of sheet copper, stamped, filed and textured it.

The silver tear drop is made from PMC3, which when kiln fired turns into fine silver.

I finished it off with one of my glass headpins. Connecting them all together with fine silver wire.

This pendant is $48, the chain is sold separately.
If you are outside of the Bahamas, you will be able to purchase it from my Etsy store, HERE!
25% goes to help "Feed the Children in Abaco".
Thanks for stopping by!
Go out into the world with a brave heart today!

Pay it Forward for February

Have you ever heard about a situation and it just breaks your heart and you feel like you HAVE TO do something about it?

A few months back I met a lady, Lovely Reckley, and she told me how she goes to four different schools in Abaco and feeds 85+ children that would have otherwise had no lunch. For some of these kids this is the only meal of the day.

Lovely even takes food to some of them when school is out.

That really broke my heart. I mean, I know there are kids all over the world that are starving, but when I realized there were children right under my nose it killed me. I kept wondering what I could do. I thought about offering to help cook, but cooking for so many mouths really overwhelmed me. Then I realized what a COMMITMENT this awesome woman had made to these children.....EVERYDAY!!!

At Christmas, instead of giving gifts I gave a donation to her organization (and to our Humane Society) instead of buying things that people really didn't need.

But it kept tugging at my heart. So, I decided for the month of February I would post several heart themed items to my blog. They would be for sale, and I would give 25% of the cost of the item to Lovely, to help with her costs.

I may post an item everyday or I may post several items a week.....I am really not sure, but 25% will go to "Feed the Children" in Abaco, Bahamas.

I CANNOT imagine going without food, or only having one meal a day that I had to rely on someone else to bring to me, and these children shouldn't have to deal with this either, so please help!

My item today is a quilted journal cover that fits a Mead Composition book, which can be replaced if you fill it up. I named this journal "Heart Strings", and quilted on it is the famous quote, "live, love, laugh"

If you are in Abaco or Nassau you can contact me to purchase this. If you are the U.S., Canada, or somewhere else the item is listed in my Etsy shop.....HERE. {sorry, this journal has been sold}

It is made from cotton fabrics and cotton batting.

I even quilted a heart pattern on it.

The hearts are made with 2 pieces of fabric fused together and stitched down the middle, so there is a little bit of a three dimensional quality to it.

And there are two hearts on the back of the journal cover as well.

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope sometime this month you will find something you like that will give a donation to "Feed the Children Abaco"

Have a great day & eat consciously.

Back to Quilting

Today I have been back at the sewing machine. Finishing up a quilt I am making for the Bahamas National Trust. It will be raffled at Art for the Parks, which is a local art show that I participate in.

I realized today that this show is 2 weeks from Friday......eeeekkkk......TWO WEEKS!!!
I only have a few more blocks left to make for this quilt, and I really love the palette....lime, yellow, hot pink, a little orange and dash of red.

And this pattern sews up very quickly.

I have so much to do, but I love the creative adrenaline rush I get leading up to a show. It is something I wish I could bottle and use when I have no motivation to work.  
I am looking forward to sharing with you all my new creations.
After this show I will also be back to teaching quilting again!!  If you are local and would like to take up quilting, or be a part of a quilting class, please let me know ASAP.
Well, back to stitching for me right now.......unlike my precious cat, Mr Wiggles, who gets to snooze in the sunshine.....

Bracelet Blog Hop for The Global Genes Project

The Global Genes Project is a campaign to raise awareness to rare disease in children.

One of my blogging friends, Lori Anderson, is hosting this blog hop.  She too, is affected by a rare disease.

Jewelry artists were asked to make a bracelet with the predominate color being blue.

The bracelets will be given to one of the 7000 families that have a child with a rare disease to show them love, hope and support.

Here is the bracelet that i made.....

I used one of my lamp worked glass beads, a hand stamped tag *wish*, and several blue glass shell beads.

The shells, for me, represent unfolding mysteries.  I wish for these families that the mystery of their child's rare disease can be solved.

I had a hard time getting a good picture of the hand stamped tag.

Go and check out all the bracelets that others have made here on Lori's blog.

Scroll down to the bottom to see the list of blog participants and check out all the wonderful bracelets.

I hope I am not posting this too early, but I am getting ready to leave for an art show so I needed to get this posted before I left.

A Peek and A Ta-Daaaa!

I am still finishing off swaps goodies this week.  I am not sure how I got involved in so many at one time.  Actually I say that and today I have signed up for MORE!!!  Slight addiction (maybe).  I just love making goodies for people and receiving their goodies :)

Here is a sneak peek of one of my placemats for the Placemat Quilt Swap.

I can only show a peek because I know that calamitykim follows my blog!  She and I agreed to do a pair for each other so our husbands could have one to use as well!  She does some pretty cool work, so go check out her blog.

Also, back in January there was a benefit concert, raffle and auction here in Abaco to raise money for Royal Potcake Rescue to do a spay and neuter clinic.  I offered to donate a quilt to the raffle.  At the time I couldn't sew because of some stitches I had, but the winner was very patient and the organizer of the event is in Abaco now and (I think) the quilt has been delivered to her.  So now I feel okay posting it on my blog.  Since the fundraiser was for the potcakes this is the original idea I had:

Since my drawings are not to scale they don't turn out exactly alike, but close.

I stitched "potcake" on the side of one of the dogs, and then along the bottom I stitched "the most colorful dog", which they are in SO MANY ways!

Here is what became of the drawing.......

And as always, when I am doing my little photo shoots, my own potcake helpers must be there to supervise and check things out.  PLUS they think the pool deck was built just for them, so I am not allowed out there alone, and that is where I take most of my pictures.

That is Karma giving it a close inspection and thinking "that dog has crooked ears just like me!"

Trooper is being distracted because Trixi is trying to chew his leg off!....never a dull moment around here.....that's why I love them so much :)

Quilt for a School Fundraiser

This has been one of my projects this week.......to get this quilt top that my Mom pieced, quilted for the Angel's Academy fundraiser tomorrow night.  The fundraiser is at the Jib Room and this quilt along with a laptop and a framed pieced of artwork will be raffled.

Wonder what my chances are at winning it back?

This is made from vintage Bahama Handprint fabrics and a white tone on tone cotton fabric.

Most of these fabrics aren't available from Bahama Hand Prints anymore.

So if you are here in Marsh Harbour, come out and support Angel's Academy.  I've also heard there will be a few delicious desserts auctioned off!

Latest Quilt

I cannot believe it has been a week since my last post!!! Time goes by too quickly!

Last week I was busy finishing a quilt that was being donated to a fundraiser, as a raffle prize, for a young boy here in Marsh Harbour, Abaco, that has Hodgkins Lymphoma.

It was a double bed size quilt, made from a variety of fabrics to give it a scrappy look.  I love quilts made from many different fabrics.

Had a few blocks left over that I included into the backing.

Since the weekend I have been spending a lot of time on my torch making glass beads, and I also have another quilt in the works.

If the sun stays out later, I will take pictures and post them for you to see.

Have a great day!

Donations :)

This week has been busy so far.....wrapping up work that I am donating to various fundraisers.

The "early bird" quilt above, "mermaid garden" and "bird watcher", below are going to an art show in Nassau (the big city of the Bahamas), called "Art for Haiti"

A group of artists have come together to have this show, and each artist is donating a portion of their sales to help Haiti after the devastating earthquakes.

"bird watcher"

"mermaid garden"

I also had to paint two buoys for Friends of the Environment's upcoming "Reef Ball" which takes place this coming Saturday.  Check out their website.....they do great things for our beautiful island of Abaco.

On Saturday night when a guest makes a donation they will be able to pick from a variety of buoys that have been painted, or decorated, by local artists.

A little "thank you" from Friends of the Environment!

The first one I did was with a mermaid that wrapped right around the buoy, and a saying on it "if fishes were wishes, all dreams would come true"

It's hard to see the whole buoy in pictures, unless I posted about 5 pictures!

I originally wanted to mosaic one of the buoys, but this was taking longer than I anticipated, so I will have to finish that later on and share it in another post.

These buoys wash up on the beaches here, in the Bahamas, so this is recycled art.

Plus I love to collect them, so my husband was very happy that two would finally be leaving!

Of course I had to do one with owls :)

Both sides have an owl on it....this is my favorite.

Then there was the fundraiser for "Pathfinders" which is a local scholarship charity here in Abaco.  

This is a mixed media, framed quilt.  The artwork started out as a traditional quilt, then i embellished it with paint, and framed it in a driftwood frame which is embellished with smaller driftwood pieces and sea glass.

And I said in a previous post that I would post a picture of my completed journal cover.  I finally got the binding on it, with a button for the closure.

I had alot of fun doing this and I am sure there will be more of these in my sewing future.

Will be sharing lots of new work with you over the next few weeks.

My imagination is in high gear and I am producing new goodies everyday.

Happy creating....until the next post!