Studio Snapshot. Sweet Little Chickadee

sweet little chickadee painted by Tracie Lyn Huskamp...

Discovery Park Wildflower Bracelet Featured in this Lovely Collection

Buried in Betsy's Closet, a blog featuring fashion accessories, has included my Discovery Park Wildflower Bracelet , offered at Bumbershoot Designs, in this collection, Wild Flowers. Check it out!  Many thanks to Marianna!

This pretty charm bracelet combines mint green and frosted white vintage 1960's West German lucite leaves, rose pink vintage lucite flowers and vintage clear round glass bead “dewdrops” as accents. The leaves and flowers are wonderfully detailed, with delicate veining and serrated edges on the leaves. Everything is attached to a 1960's vintage 8 inch sterling silver double link bracelet chain. All findings and the clasp are sterling silver. Vintage lucite is a lovely material to wear - is light in weight, and makes a soft jingle that is quite pleasing.

Discovery Park, one of Seattle’s natural jewels, is home to many wildflowers, including the tiny pink ones that inspired this design.

Three Muses. Maps.

"Maps" is the challenge this week at the Three Muses challenge blog - Incorporate maps into your piece.  Here is a book I have made - the base of the book cover is a map of one of our favorite vacation destinations, Seaside Oregon. Over the map I have collaged bits of paper and hand dyed thin papers and metallic threads, so the base map peeks through the layers. 

Then I stitched, stamped and embellished in an ocean theme, with starfish stamps and vintage beads that remind me of iridescent bubbles. 

 Inside this book is an eclectic collection of my handmade papers and paper experiments. I've sewn a seam down the center of the book to hold all the pages together.

Hello Dolly. Mixed Media Monday

These are my pieces for this week's challenge of Hello Dolly, on Mixed Media Monday.  We watch A LOT of old movies and I knew I wanted to focus on the movie "Hello Dolly".  There are some wonderful hats in that movie. I love vintage hats, and I wanted to incorporate vintage hats into my piece somehow.

Then I remembered the set of 4 ink sketches I purchased at a local antique store...

The sketches were on heavy watercolor paper, pretty much already ATC size.  Not all have hats, but I thought you'd like to see them all, and I encourage you to enlarge them, the facial detail is so lovely.

I embellished them simply, with the goal of enhancing and extending, but keeping true to the spirit of the original artist and his or her subjects.

Monday in Seattle. Picture and Quote for the Week

(white camelia, Japanese Garden)

It is at the edge of a petal that love waits.

~ William Carlos Williams

New at Bumbershoot Designs. Pearls and Rubies, Vintage Blush Pink Glass Pearl Earrings With Rubies, Sterling Silver

A new design this week... The perfect blend of the finest contemporary and vintage components, these earrings feature gorgeous pale blush pink vintage glass faux pearls, topped with sparkling, faceted, real rubies. The pearls and rubies are wrapped with sterling silver to sterling ear wires with a strong contemporary line. The glass pearls are a good size, about 1/2 inch in diameter, and they are very light weight.

These vintage glass pearls are from Japan and are hollow, that's why they are so light. I have a very limited supply of these gorgeous pearls to play with.  I love how the rubies and silver enhance the soft blush pink lustre of the pearls.

Currently available here, or if they are sold when you click on the link, just contact me.

New at Bumbershoot Supplies. Vintage Japanese Hand Painted Flower Cabochons

New this week at Bumbershoot Supplies, some already arrived and more to come... Several new vintage Japanese flower cabochons have been listed in the shop and more are coming soon.  These sweet plastic embellishments were made in Japan many decades ago.  Our selection dates to 1950's to 1960's Japan and includes a wide variety of flowers and birds, most of them hand painted.  Just think of that - hand painted.  Pretty amazing.

These are wonderful embellishments for mixed media, fibre and paper arts as well as for jewelry applications.  You will find our selection at Bumbershoot Supplies in the "vintage plastic cabochons" section of the shop.  Feel free to contact me with any questions or requests.

Studio Snapshot, Spring Bonnets

Vintage spring bonnets, tattered, full of favourites...

...flowers, rhinestones, netting, ribbon, wonderfully aged colours...

...still somehow fresh...

Three Muses. Bye Bye Blackbird.

This is my entry for the Three Muses Challenge this week: Bye, bye blackbird.  So, no matter how hard I tried to get these blackbirds to come out black, they came out white. Think of it as a photographic negative... albino blackbirds.  Just can't argue with the muse.  Did you know there really are albino blackbirds?  There are lots of interesting pictures and discussions on UK birding sites, for example, here.  Anyway, the major inspiration for the piece was the gorgeous Beatles song, which is now running like a tape in my head, over and over... here's a link to Paul McCartney performing it.

For this ATC, I've used vintage sheet music, gesso'd, stamped, birds perched on the music as if it is a branch, vintage mother of pearl sequins, stamped with letter stamps.

To get ideas for this theme, my family did some brainstorming and my daughter Emma did some research at www.poets.org. She found this beautiful piece by Wallace Stevens.  I thought I would share it with you - there is so much contained within it to appreciate and work with.  Parts of this poem also made their way into my ATC. In the US, April is National Poetry Month!

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Wallace Stevens

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,

Like a tree

In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman

Are one.

A man and a woman and a blackbird

Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendoes,

The blackbird whistling

Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window

With barbaric glass.

The shadow of the blackbird

Crossed it, to and fro.

The mood

Traced in the shadow

An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,

Why do you imagine golden birds?

Do you not see how the blackbird

Walks around the feet

Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;

But I know, too,

That the blackbird is involved

In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,

It marked the edge

Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds

Flying in a green light,

Even the bawds of euphony

Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut

In a glass coach.

Once, a fear pierced him,

In that he mistook

The shadow of his equipage

For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.

The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing

And it was going to snow.

The blackbird sat

In the cedar-limbs.

Nature's Awakening. Think Monday Think ATC

This is my posting for this week's challenge "Nature's Awakening" at Think Monday - Think ATC.  Background is painted with watercolor paints, tulip doodled on scrap receipt paper, letters are rub ons, with doodling, and ribbon embellishment.

To me, tulips are a classic symbol of spring awakening, and they are celebrated here in the Pacific Northwest because just north of Seattle in the Skagit Valley, there are acres and acres of them.  The Skagit Valley Tulip Festival runs April 1-30 every year, and in just a little while it will look like this:

If you are interested in visiting, see the festival web site for more information and "bloom maps" so you can visit when the flowers are at their peak.  You will see every color of tulip imaginable, maybe even a blue one :)