here a few more bracelets … a little greenish blue, mostly in very light shades
I love the leaves… for the first bracelet, I used some of my wooden beads, a few of the smaller greenish/blue beads, and those cute little glass leaves…
this piece just screamed for a silver connector… and I have to admit, these circular silver connectors are my favorite… I have lots of different connectors, but my hand seems to stray to silver more often than the gold or brass…
see how the brass goes so much better with the purple beads… even though I love the silver connectors, the color of the beads plays a big part in my choices… so even though I love the silver circles, I would use it with my lighter beads before picking it up for one of my darker beaded pieces… later guys, tracey
alrighty… not the normal artistic post, but I am soooo proud of my little tree… lol
I planted this guy three years ago… and I admit, my thumb is anything but green… maybe even a little black… lol… so I assumed that twelve plums a year was all I would get out of the little guy…. buttttttt….
this year the tree is full of little green balls that will soon be delicious plums… ymmmmmmy …
it is hard to pick them out unless you know where to look, but trust me… there are plums growing all over the tree…. so many, I lost count when I tried to count them up… woo who… I cant wait to share what the tree looks like after the fruit turns color… later guys tracey
this is another friendship bracelet… but extra long so that you can wrap it around your wrist twice…
I really like the twisty look… best of all… when you are first starting it is easier to go with the twisty look… that means when you are lacing the string, you only have to remember one side of the string to go on top… otherwise (for a flat look) you have to alternate which side goes on top…
also… when making a bracelet long enough to wrap around your wrist twice, I suggest using the embroidery thread… it is more flexible… but I haven’t tried this with the hemp yet… who knows… I may change my mind… lol… that is what is great about art… each time you try something new, you find something else that you will either love or hate…
Mom and I found these cute letters that you can stick on your bling (or any art project really)
this piece is great because I found these clear shiny disks to connect the beads (no metal needed) mom mostly likes her bracelets without the connector, but I like to add a little extra to my work… with this disk, I had a piece that was beautiful and had a flat surface that was perfect for the stick on initials… I don’t know if I should make more of these with random initials or if I should use the letters for something that will remind the wearer of the book event they were at when they purchase the bracelet, or … really there are a lot of possibilities…
if I adhere the letters before the event instead of allowing the readers to pick their own letters… I have a resin that provide a protective coating, making sure the letters last longer…see… decisions, decisions… 😛
turns out that may is gonna be extremely busy, but I want to add a few art projects for everyone this month… may need to schedule them but they will get added… muhahahaha…
to start off, I want to share some of the bracelets mom made… she is hilarious… she decided she wanted to help me build the number of bracelets I had to sell at book signings but she loves colors as much as I do… we have been wearing our favorite outfits as we head out to Hobby Lobby, JoAnn’s, and Michael’s to check out their glass beads… that way we can match bead choice to outfit… the end result??? momma’s got bling…
I like to mix things up, while mom loves similar beads but simplicity and beauty… but the dang things can get expensive… always look for sales when you go bead hunting… even with a good sale, there are so many beads out there that if your not careful it is easy to spend more than you had planned… if you are like me, and always have that evil piece of plastic in your purse/wallet, you can get in real trouble… lol… if you can make yourself head out with just a twenty in your pocket (in theory) that would be less expensive… lol
this is one of my favorite pieces that mom put together, but if you look close, there is a bead that appears to be wrapped in thin sting… it is a beautiful effect buttttttt…. the string on one of the beads has already started to unwrap…. not sure how to make sure this doesn’t happen…. but be careful, peeps… I hope to be able to use a clear sealant to fix the bead… fingers crossed…
finally… this is a piece I made for mom for Christmas so that she could feel decked out while wearing her cream colored outfit… if you hit the sales and play around with bead choice, anyone can put together something beautiful for their loved ones… this is a hobby that can be overwhelmingly expensive, but it doesn’t have to be… a handmade gift can be affordable, and the thought behind the creation will have ten times the meaning of something bought off the rack… have fun with it peeps… tracey
I am the author of the Finder’s Keepers series… I have one book out and a second in the final edits stage… woowho… Southern Discoveries (Finder’s Keepers: book 2) has an awesome cover that I am waiting to reveal until next month… Finder’s Keepers is a paranormal/fantasy romance series… I also have a contemporary romance that will come out later this year, Skymann series… book one is tentatively titled Artistic Beauty …
My arts and crafts do more than just relieve my downtime… I like to create my own swag… instead of ordering bookmarks and such, I like to try to make them… I’m sure there will be somethings that will be beyond me (like those huge banners… lol… I wouldn’t even know where to start…)… but bracelets and pendants, booklets and bookmarks… those I can do…
necklace
Drop in from time to time, to see what I come up with…. not all of my art is for swag bags and selling at the author table… some will be just for me… and frankly hard to transport!!!
I got bored and decided that I needed a tree on my wall… I swear I will finish it someday soon… I have a number of art projects to beef up my swag scheduled for next month… hopefully I will have the time to share some of the projects with you, starting with the various bracelets mom and I have been working on…
I also hope to make key chains, necklaces, and maybe a few bookmarks and booklets… what crafts do you guys have planned???
I want to learn how to do this … I was at Hobby Lobby (of course) with mom and she spotted this painting…
this is just a close up of the children… I hope that if I study the brush strokes, I can figure something out… now most would take a class… HA… lets do it the hard way, I say… lol… it drives mom crazy, but I love to just grab a brush and go to work…
Mom loves going to the beach… it is her go-to vacations spot… if she has a chance to go out of town, her first thought always goes to the sea… I would prefer to go on walk-about… just jump in the car and drive… the most fun I ever had on a vacation, mom and I packed up our clothes and the dogs and slowly made our way from the East to our destination of San Francisco… all the little stops along the way, all the wonder full roadside rest areas were divine… I loved it and would do it again and again, if I could…
but first I would like to paint the sea for my mother… 😛
this is similar to the abstract piece I am still working on for my mother… but this one needed to look good in my grandmother’s kitchen… she gave me a piece of the wall paper she planned to use, and I did my best to work up a painting that would work with what she wanted…
if I still had this painting, I would be reworking the flower petals… they just don’t look finished to me… but when she saw it, Granny-two said she liked it as it was… but looking at this picture, I have this overwhelming need to steal it so that I can fix the areas sticking out to me… grr… lol
this is the last piece I did for my publisher, Mary Smith, over at Gone Writing Publishing, for her give-away boxes… there were a lot of fun…
book/ escaping stories
As you can see, by adding a little more to it, the painting started to look even better… that is what I love about oil paints… you can work on them, continue adding to them, for days… the fact that paint takes so long to dry can be annoying when you want to finish quickly, but it is worth it… you just keep working until you like what you see… and if you decide that you hate the entire thing, you just have to break out the white paint… muahaha
then you have a blank canvas to start over with, and no wasted material… oil paints are very forgiving… they allow you to work until everything is perfect… TRACEY CLARK
this was a fun… a bit messy, but fun… I have this tree painting that I did in college, and I love it so much that I painted it on my wall at home… and apparently, my cuz loved it as well… she was getting ready to get married and she came across this idea for a wedding tree… but instead of buying the premade version that everyone else had access to, she asked if I would create one… and really… how could I resist…
wedding tree/ before marriage
I didn’t want the background to be complete white, and that is the only thing I ignored her on when I started this piece… I hate white… I just couldn’t do it… I did erase the clouds in the sky that resembled faces… they were supposed to be vague representations of my cuz and her future husband… but she didn’t like them, and I had to agree… I just couldn’t get them right… finally I got my sky just right and she loved it…
but I still wanted to put something into the piece that represented two bodies coming together… I decided to use the bark of the tree, making the right side darker to show something more masculine, to join it with the lighter/female bark on the left side… 😛
to represent their love, I painted a few branches in the form of a heart, and wrote their names in the smaller branches… Erin and Neil… Her name came out a little clearer than his, but the names were more for them to now that they were there than for the world to be able to see…
And finally, I added some roots shooting out of the dirt, and used them to write the date… Sept 2015…. mom thought I would look better with a few more roots, because that was the part she loved the best on my original tree, but Erin said she liked it as it was… and I had to agree… I mean, I loved my roots, but I wanted the date to stand out as much as possible… you still have to look close, but it can be clearly seen… finally the tree was ready for the big day…
wedding tree/ guest fingerprints
all that was left was the fingerprint part… I told Erin that this was incase any of her guests committed a crime, I would have their prints on file… muhahaha… just kidding… the fingerprints represent their friends and family coming together to join their newly united family… the messy part came in because I prefer to paint with oil paints… that meant that we needed a lot of baby wipes for the guests to clean off their fingers when finished… but as careful as I tried to be, I managed to get some paint on my pretty dress… some soapy water and all was fine, but I loved that dress so was a bit frantic… lol…
clark arts and crafts 