Brrrr..... it's been a cold winter here in South East Queensland. Yes, I know, I know, we have no idea what cold is here in our little corner of the world, but then, we are not geared up for cold weather. Night time temperatures have regularly hovered just a few degrees above zero and that's pretty chilly when you don't have any heating. But spring is not too far away in the southern hemisphere and to banish away the winter chills, I've decided to bring spring forward a month and let the butterflies take flight in search of spring blossom. My butterflies are all breaking free of their chrysalis - their winter nest, so to speak - in search of all the wonders or spring..... blossoms, love, sunshine. Yes indeed, warm sunny days. I'm looking forward to those! The base of my butterfly chrysalis is a Pavlova Magic container. Now you have to be an Aussie or a Kiwi to know what that is. Pavlova is kind of like our national dessert and we both lay claim to having invented i......

Do you ever get in one of those moods where you just don't want to stop playing? You know the kind, when you get on a roll and just don't want to stop. Well, having been deprived of creative time over the last couple of weeks, tonight I really felt like making up for lost time. With the tedium of the end of financial year now behind me, I was happy to pull out my resin supplies to do some casting. Not only did I cast and finish a couple of bangles, but I also had time to experiment with surface finishes. And here's the results: The first one is inpired by the lush greenery of the tropical rainforest. The depth of colour in this bangle is amazing. The shades of light and dark greens and blues play well off each other. The second bangle is inspired by the brilliant blue ocean, with white capped waves crashing over the coral reef. It's called Pacific Blue . The addition of brown to the blues adds a nice contrast. I was on a roll by this time and I had colour combinations ......

Here in Australia the leaves are turning and winter is fast approaching. We've farewelled the warmth of summer days and we're enjoying the last bit of colour autumn has to offer. It is my favourite season of the year. In Queensland, we're lucky to have a dry, mild winter - no winter gloom in the Sunshine state - and we only have two seasons: the wet one and the dry. We don't see a changing of the seasons and we seem to move almost seemlessly from summer to winter. It is wonderful to still be experiencing warm days in the middle of May even though the nights are now chilly. The only sign that winter is approaching is the shorter days. But having grown up in a cooler clime, I sometimes miss the changing of the seasons....... no colourful leaves in autumn and no deciduous trees in winter. So today's offering is an ode to those days of my youth when I experienced a true autumn - where the lush green leaves of summer gave way to the fiery shades of red, orange and yell......

This week the wilds of Africa have been calling and I've been exploring some other design ideas for Friendly Plastic tile jewellery ..... this time, dramatic black and white. My black and MOP sticks are still on the endangered list so I'm preserving my dwindling stocks of them. No worries! I've improvised and used the black and white backs of coloured sticks as the front again. This is a great way to use up surplus colours but just make sure that you sand away the metallic finish so that the plastic is exposed - it will give you much stronger bond when attaching one layer to another. To create the pattern, I heated each 3" stick with the heatgun until softened and then pressed an uninked stamp into it. Next, I plunge the stamp and plastic straight into cool water for about 30 seconds so that the stamp releases easily from the plastic (make sure your stamp is unmounted if you're placing it in water). I used Pinata inks to paint the depressions because they have both......

Wow, Friendly Plastic's fun!! Is there no end to the ways this incredible material can be used?!! If you've been following my blog you'll have noticed quite a few posts about Friendly Plastic recently. (And if you haven't been following my blog, then click on the Friendly Plastic label in my index to see what I've been up to.) I've used it on card fronts, in jewellery pieces and also to cover pens. I've had a play with Jana Ewy's Fracture and Fusion technique, I've made beads using a couple of different bead making techniques, I've moulded it and I've marbled it. So this week I set out to use it differently yet again and I've gone in another direction altogether. This technique works best with light coloured Friendly Plastic sticks, as in the sample above. To create this piece I used a white-backed stick as the front of the tiles because I was running low on MOP and didn't want to use it up on an experimental piece (the coloured side......