Creative head space

I just got back from a weekend on the coast and thought I'd share a few pictures. So often I've posted finished work on this blog, but rarely do I remember to take photos of my work in progress. Since our garage studio is a few more weekends away from completion, I've been content to sit at the dining room table in our Pender Harbour home. It has a gorgeous view of the bay and it's a great spot to sit while you work, though I'll admit it also provides its share of distraction. But this is how I like it. A little distraction never hurts and the natural light is so much better to work with. Add to the mix a hot cup of tea and some background music (today it was Santigold) and I'm in just the right space to create.

Serenity Now...

a stormy sunset, pender harbour BC


The website for our cabin/cottage is published! And it only took a few hours to put this together. Thanks, iWeb. I love my mac.
Check out the site here:
http://www.serenitynowretreat.com

i heart imac

We have finally taken a bite of the forbidden fruit. After years of pc hardship, replacing part after part to build some hideous, gorgon-like machine, we came to our senses and decided NO MORE! No more spending $100's to upgrade a computer that needs it every 6 months. No more virus invasions despite having "the best" in anti-virus software. And no more cumbersome metal case making click, click, clicking and high pitched whirring noises -what the hell was that, anyway?
No more time to take a better photo...gotta get back to mac!


we sold a car to buy this 27" baby, but the new imacs are oh so worth it...

WTF?

Hey, maybe we shouldn't take ourselves so seriously.
Thanks Linda, for making coffee come out my nose.

Regretsy. Check it.


SOLD OUT!

Prep

Okay, back to business. Now that the suite is done and I have a brief reprieve from the craziness at work, I can finally concentrate on my other creative outlet. With our first holiday craft show just over a month away, I want to make sure I give myself a head start by getting the most difficult pieces done first.
While I still love beading jewelry and will be selling it at the shows again this year, Kas and I decided to sell more of our fine silver work this year. I'm hoping it'll set us apart from a lot of other jewelry artists and besides that, it's just more fun to do.
It's also a lot more labour intensive. Working with precious metal clay is a multi-stage process. One piece can take up to a week to produce. Fortunately, with this nice little assembly line process I've got going on, I can get about 6 or 7 done at a time.
I've never had so much stock all at once and I just had to take a picture since they all look so pretty together. Can't wait to see how this amount times 5 looks on our craft table.
So here is the latest batch from the last couple of weeks.


reversible fine silver photo pendants a la frost collections

Renos complete! Well, almost...

I guess there are a few more little jobs to be done, but for all intents and purposes, our suite renovation is complete! We're so happy with the results. Kas and Nick did a fantastic job.
This was a massive undertaking for us as we had very little time and money, two things crucial to the success of a reno. But with help from people we trust, it was never a concern that this project wouldn't turn out the way we had hoped. And now to get this baby rented! Oh man...


features include brand new kitchen, hardwood fir floors (the real stuff, not engineered!), lodgepole pine ceiling, new light fixtures and a fresh coat of benjamin moore's cloud white


had to scrounge what i could for a last minute staging, but it works


found this chair in the garage...i think it belongs to kas


kitchen cabinets: akurum by ikea
hardware: varde by ikea
sink: domsjo by ikea
countertop: numerar by ikea
faucet: danze euro from canadian tire
subway tile backsplash: from tiles for less

More wedding pics

I recently opened a Flickr account so that I could share my pictures with a few people I know who (shocked gasp) don't do Facebook. I thought I'd post a few more of the shots I took for Kas and Nick's wedding. I'm pretty proud of what my little Rebel DSLR can do with little more than its stock lens and some lucky lighting conditions. For my birthday I got a polarizing filter for my lens which cuts through reflective surfaces like water and metal. This Christmas I'll be putting a few more accessories on my list in the hopes it'll help get my photography to the next level.
#1 on my list is an external flash. Great for shooting jewelry since it saves one the trouble of having to build a lightbox or depend on natural lighting conditions.
#2 is a light diffuser for the external flash. Great for shooting people in low light conditions because it brings out a more natural skin tone and softens the image.
#3 is a camera bag, like this one that I can put all of these little goodies into to keep them safe.