Well I’ve finally gotten the chance I always wanted to teach jewelry making at our local bead and fabric store. If you live in the area please make plans to come to one! The store is an amazing place to look around and you can visit their website here. Just email me at jewelrybyjill@live.com or the store at gfw@iowatelecom.net to register in advance. Click here for the complete class schedule. Thanks!

Although being a vegetarian would be extremely difficult for me because I really don’t like vegetables too much, I could live forever on fresh juicy fruit. Strawberries, raspberries, watermelon, limes, blueberries, you name it… I love it! So, to honor some of these exquisite natural beauties, I created this lovely reading glasses case. If you like it, you can buy it on my Etsy here.

I first painted it blue and then decoupaged on the fruits. After a couple coats I did the detailing with a blue scrapbooking pen and then I glazed the whole thing with a gel medium. I really like how it turned out! There are more pictures on my flickr if you’re interested.

Peace, Jill

First of all I must sincerely apologize for my delinquency lately. I have fallen off significantly in my posting after my recent family reunion and I need to get back into the swing of things

I recently started selling at a store called Varieties in Newton, Iowa. It is an AMAZING store to visit if you’re ever in the the area and over %90 of the stuff they sell is handmade in Iowa. They also have a great website and they feature all their artists online. See what they say about me here!

I’m really excited to be selling there and I’m actually taking them some more inventory this afternoon. In other updates, I just got another lovely package from my very good friends at Fire Mountain Gems and Beads this week and all the goodies inside are still keeping me busy. I’ve added decorated hair sticks and hair clips to my line this week, as well as some SUPER cute foam earrings I made out of Model Magic. I will post pictures soon!

Hope you all are doing well and having a great day!

Peace, Jill

This site has an awesome step by step picture set of someone making a super tiny orange out of polymer clay. Very cool! Good picture tutorial for working with clay too, if you’re interested in technique.

Peace, Jill

Sidewalk artist Julian Beever is one amazing man. He can do with sidewalk chalk what %99 of the population couldn’t do with the best paints in the world. He needs no further introduction… except that yes, that is just a sidewalk. Check it out.

Peace, Jill

I was super excited when I stumbled across this website. The Box Doodle Project has one rule: ” Rearrange a box to make any kind of figure or object. Make the most of the least.” There is an amazing gallery of repurposed and redesigned boxes, as well as a tool that allows you to doodle a box online. Be sure to check it out here. These are two of my favorites.

Peace, Jill

Although I don’t know much about this guy, I know that his work will make you go “Hmmm…” Ingenious and often irreverent, his work is at home on the streets, in nature and inside. Be sure to check out all the galleries at his website here.

Jeff Jordan is a surrealist painter with some stunning work. Beautiful colors and unique concepts. Visit his site here. This painting is called “The Stranded Muse”.

Peace, Jill

These magnets are about the sweetest things I’ve ever made. I found this priceless ad for baby dolls in a magazine and there you go! A few globs of glue and scissor strokes later I had an adorable set of baby face magnets. Too cute! They’re for sale on Etsy here.

Today’s rather unorthodox art feature is from a website written in a language I don’t read, so I can’t tell you much about these pieces, except that they are very cool, whatever language you speak. That’s the beauty of pictures, isn’t it? So hop on over and check out a bread beggar’s hand, an apple butterfly, a banana dolphin, an egg baby buggy and other assorted awesomeness here.

That’s my favorite! Isn’t he amazing?

Peace, Jill