Rhodonite creations

I have been working with gemstones in my beading lately. The pink and grey beads throughout are Rhodonite which balance out energies so that you feel grounded, and it encourages compassion. It is meant to give you the strength to stay true to your heart and ideals

This is what the stone looks like under better lighting and in much bigger form...

The pink is a dusty rose colour, a sort of muted pink. I added small crystals, latticed grey metal spacers, and tiny pinkish beads.

The big beads are Travertine Czech firepolished beads and they do have a burnished quality to them. Love them!

It took me awhile to get this finished off, I'm so glad it's done and I can wear it!

I also made myself a purse charm....

The bottom stone is Mookalite, and it's an all pink one which doesn't happen often. It usually has swirls of dark red and mustard. Mookalite  increases your flexibility and your ability to see several solutions to any problem. I added a little Blushing Bride button from the retired Twitterpatted product series.

Stay grounded!

Telephone Pole Trail

This first photo is a picture of the work in progress, before much of the painting happened.

 I include it only to show how the piece evolved, since it's a bad picture.

The base is a 18"x 20"collage of book pages on canvas. Over this I drew with permanent black marker. I added layers of more book pages, music pages, corrugated cardboard, newspaper, sewing patterns. Using the patterns of the pasted papers to give the painting shape, I then painted with acrylic paints over top.

The snow is created using bubble wrap dipped in paint. The clouds are made with dryer sheets.

I used stamps throughout. There are hints of pearlized stamps in sky that only are visible in a certain light. I used the Illuminate Stamp pad for these.

Here is a close up of my birds, textured with.black microbeads over pieces of torn black tissue paper. Silver dots embellish their edges.

The inspiration behind the piece is the little walking path near my place which provides a view of these telephone poles and a bit of a messy building site. However a cold grey winter and its falling snow turned a routine doggie walk, into a striking moment with the starkness of the white snow, the grey undertones of frozen earth and these black birds. 

I've been working slowly on this for months, chipping away at it. I'm a newbie to mixed media so still experimenting and hope to share more creations soon.