Driving, Illness, and Resin

One thing about living in Packwood, you have to be ready to drive if anything happens! This week my mom was in the nearest hospital with pneumonia for a few days and we had to pick up my mother-in-law's glasses in Tacoma.  As a consequence, we have spent a lot of my non-work time driving, not my first choice of activities.  Fortunately, Mom came home yesterday, so we could take that day to run down to Tacoma and turn right around and come back.

Meanwhile, everyone across the creek where she lives has a really cruddy virus.  It sounds like a hospital ward over there.  So far we have been lucky over here, just tired and cranky, not sick.

I did get to play in the studio the last few days.  I have been experimenting with UV-light-cured resin. It sure is great when it works right away. I fear that I used it over a wet layer of another coating on a tile, because it just doesn't quite feel dry, even after a long time under the UV flashlight. I will be playing with this more, though. SO nice to have it be dry in minutes instead of days! I did the pieces above using the new epoxy.

I enjoyed making the owl pendant below and the cashier at Costco was very admiring of it yesterday.  Her mom used to love owls and apparently collected them.

The owl is actually embedded in the epoxy. This took a few layers to get everything level and covered, but so fast in between layers! I'm looking forward to finding more ways to use the UV epoxy. I love using up pieces of tings that might otherwise be wasted. The little owl came off of an earring blank. I think he's pretty cute as a singleton in the green with blowing gold leaves, don't you? 

Have a great week!

Penny

Life in the Mountains

We have had a wild February up in Packwood. The snow is variable in the  mountains, depending on the snow line and your elevation, so that it can several feet where we are and hardly anything or even rain 4 miles down the road.  We didn't have a white Christmas this year, but we are making up for it now.  I guess that we are just getting our fair share now. At least the temps have been tolerable!

When I was younger, snow meant going skiing and sledding, possibly building a snowman and making snow angels, definitely a snowball fight with the neighbors and siblings. I still get excited when it snows, but that is combined now with the dread of shoveling, outages, and worry about being able taking care of my disabled family members. I hope we are out of the snow line for the rest of the winter!

One of my surface patterns
from last year.

The weather has kept me away from my studio this week. I plan to spend tomorrow working on the jewelry photos, getting new pieces up on the website, and making new things to post later. I can't wait to get back to it.  Since I am new to this, I would like to hear in the comments which pieces are your favorite at the moment. Just to see what is catching your eye.  You can see what has been up this week at The Shop (www.pwmarcus.com).  Here are a few things coming in for the next couple of weeks.

Cheers,
Penny