the rain has washed away the creative spark i need...

holy smokes this has been, even for kodiak, a wet wet winter. normally, i really don't mind the rain at all. stormy days provide me with the excuse to stay in and make stuff. when the kids were small i stuffed them into their miniature extra tuffs & grundens, and out the door they would go to build forts in the woods. rain in the summer just meant bringing extra blue tarps camping with us, along with dry firewood from home...

maybe i'm just getting too old to appreciate the 60+ days of rain in a row. i feel like this:

without the orange stuff in the background. i seriously need to shake this off!

i haven't worked on anything since xmas except the items for the vintage valentine swap i am in, but that's all a secret still. however, before everyone returned home for christmas i did finish a project i've been thinking about since seeing this post on the wonderful Calamity Kim's blog. i just loved that chandelier, and it got me looking at chandeliers other people have created - look on etsy, there are some amazing ones there. anyhow, i've had a collection of old - some might say vintage - silverware that until a couple of years ago when the kids complained about it, we used. all of it old & worn, none of it matched as i have collected it from thrift shops, yard sales, etc. since i was in college. it became my first soldering experiment, i attached jump rings on knives, butter knives, forks & spoons. the bowls of the spoons were pretty worn and not shiny at all, so i covered them with bits of tissue paper and words cut from an old children's story book using gel medium.

on some of the forks i bent up the tines and attached little dangles of things i love - a pewter mermaid, sparkling beads, a vial of sand from our favorite beach, and my fave, a little plastic cherub baby i put glittery butterfly wings on. (this totally creeps out my 14 year old son, who insists he can't eat with that thing hanging over him)lucky for me my husband works in metal, and after a bit of wheedling and assuring him it had nothing to do with ART at all, he made me two aluminum rings for the base of the 2 levels of the fixture, and drilled the holes in for me. i picked up some cheap chain at walmart to attach the 2 rings together, and to suspend it from the ceiling. those i covered with fabric tubes i sewed from my scrap basket.

once the frame was hanging and level, i made up a bunch of silver hooks and hung the flatware on, alternating each piece with an old plastic icicle (the kind our moms used to hang on our xmas trees back in the day - they were a gift from my wonderful friend cathy, the queen of cool stuff)
i wish i could master photography, as none of my photos really do the complete light justice - using the flash or not it just doesn't look as sparkly and fun as it is in real life. it was a fun project, and it's great to have my wonderful old silverware in view again. even though as i have found out, i have to polish it every few weeks.... maybe that's what i'll go do to get out of this slump.

i was surprised when i began this post to see i have been doing this for a year. wow, i didn't realize. i guess i have a "blogaversary" to celebrate...maybe mr. metal will cook dinner tonight... i will have to think of something to do for a give away, i have been lucky enough this past year to be at the winning end of a few wonderful give aways myself. even luckier to find so many new friends and discover so much new stuff to do. so i guess i really should quit whimpering about our weather, and get busy. any ideas?