Thursday, December 15, 2011

My Book Locket





















A few weeks ago I took my first jewelry making class. It was a class on riveting. I made a beautiful pendant using brass and copper metals. I fell in love with riveting! At the bead store where I took this class, there is a metal craft studio time two or three times a month where you can make anything you want and use THEIR tools. I priced all of the tools for riveting and I decided I didn't want to spend that amount of money to own my own tools. So, using someone else's tools sounded like a good idea to me. Also, the metal craft studio time is FREE. Even better yet! All I had to purchase were my metals, rivets and wire. And the heart on the front of my book locket used to be an earring that came from the Goodwill store. Tonight I went for my first metal craft studio time at Beading Dreams. When I was in Tulsa for Thanksgiving, I asked my two granddaughters, Caty who is 10 and Carson who is 8, to draw some pictures in circles that I provided on pieces of paper for them. I asked them to draw pictures of themselves, their family, their cats & dog, their church, what they wanted to be when they grew up, etc. I cut out the circles and punched holes in them to put into my book locket. I did use one of the circles with a drawn picture on it as my template, but for some reason, none of the holes matched up when I started to assemble my book locket. I still love the way my book locket came out and I plan to wear it on a cord around my neck as a necklace. I hope everyone will ask me about my book locket so I can show them the pictures that my granddaughters drew for me and tell them all about Caty & Carson. Now, I need to make room in my book locket for some pictures that my grandson Christian can draw for me.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Nut Cracking

Every year for Christmas, my aunt Anne who lives in Oregon, sends us nuts as a gift. They are the kind you have to crack. The nuts you see in this photo are from last year or maybe some even from the year before. As you can see, I don't crack many nuts. I just don't think about cracking nuts while I'm sitting and watching TV. But today I pulled out a recipe for cookies that I want to make. They called for chopped hazel nuts. I'm sure if I were to look in some of the grocery stores, I could find some already cracked hazel nuts. But, I thought this would be a good project for me this afternoon. I don't have the TV on or music playing in the apartment. Just quietness that leaves me alone with my thoughts while I was cracking nuts. I thought about what I was going to make for dinner, what Christmas gifts I need to buy, things I need to get done in the next week or two, whether I really want to drag out Christmas decorations for the apartment and lots of other things, I'm sure. I cracked nuts for about a half an hour, and as you can see by my photo, I didn't get many nuts cracked. If I'm going to use these hazel nuts for my recipe, I'd better get cracking!!! And use these up before I get my new box of Christmas nuts from Aunt Anne!