I take an art class at a small strip-mall business that is technically a music store that offers music lessons. We get some nice (and very repetivive) music reverberating through the art room-- Peanuts' Christmas, Pachabel's Cannon, and The Entertainer are some of the songs that are now forever stuck in my head.

Several weeks ago, I was inspired to try making some jewelry using guitar strings. (UnkamenGifts sparked this inspiration with their string jump rings). The problem: my family is not musical and we don't have any discarded guitar strings.

So, a dear and super awesome friend sent me some broken harp strings! The first project I made was the hair jewel above (it's still in progress, but when it is finished it will work like this hair skewer). However, harp strings are very, very sturdy and are difficult to do detailed jewelry with.

I wanted to find some smaller strings...

On a whim, I asked my art teacher if she knew whether the music teachers kept broken guitar strings.

I hit the jackpot!

What a dreary evening. The girl sighed deeply and pushed her homework away. She was finished. Normally she would be joyful at this moment-- the first moment of true freedom. 

But it was too cold, too wet. Too dark.

The smell of old binding-glue became overwhelming.

Words grew into mountains before slowly warping into beautiful pictures. The pictures hestitated, then burst into dimensions. The girl's eyes wrinkled and sparkled as she gazed on the forest-gilded mountains.

It was raining in the book, too, but the ferocious word-rain could never depress her. There was magic in it.

She heard her name. She turned around. She started a story.

And she brought the magic of wonder back to the rain that cast dancing shadows on her homework.

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See more book art {here}!


All images belong to Shealynn's Faerie Shoppe. Link back if you wish to share them. If in doubt, ask. Click for full size.

A few months ago, I made some wirewrapped rosette rings and posted a tutorial.

The pictured ring is the first one that I made. My purity ring broke (and unfortunately I don't yet have the ability to fuse sterling silver back together), so I have been wearing this rosette ring almost continuously since March 2011!

This ring was made out of plain old aluminum wire. Although the shiny-ness of the original aluminum has slightly dulled, the ring is still in tip-top shape. Which is impressive, considering:

-I wear it all the time

-I don't take it off to wash my hands

-It has gone through the wash... twice.

-It has gotten stepped on

-It has been lost five times

-and I have gotten blue acrylic paint all over it

Overall, this is one experiment that has one wonderfully well.

The only thing that's kept me from listing the rosette rings in my Shoppe is that I'd have to buy a ring mandrel to measure sizes. I'm thinking I should invest in one of those soon and get a ton of rings made, because Christmas shopping season is just around the corner! Thoughts?

This November.

Many of my friends will be spending over an hour a day writing novels, as part of the NaNoWriMo challenge.

I don't do well when it comes to writing an entire novel in a month. (I didn't make it past 20 pages last year, and the year before, my 50,000 word story was gibberish).

However, I can't let them one-up me. I have to prove that I am crazy, too.

And so I am going to do a drawing each day.

For 30 days.

And I'm going to share it on my blog.

Care to join me? It doesn't matter how bad (or good) you are at art. It doesn't even matter if you can't manage to do it each day. Just try it. I hear that drawing every day is good for you (and really good for you if you are an artist like me).

And I'm so not picky that you can go right ahead and not do each day's theme, or do photos instead of drawings, or make a different finger puppet each day-- just do something creative!

If you'd like to join me on this crazy adventure, feel free to leave a link where we can see your art (a blog, flickr, whatever). Use the linky list at the bottom of this post. (The linky is open until the last day of November-- one link per person, please, just link to your main blog/flickr. Daily linkies for individual projects will begin on the first of November).

Now... don't forget to remind me, come November 1st. I'll probably want to forget, or procrastinate, or battle a dragon instead.

The challenge has begun!

Click {HERE} to see all the art!

Today I was blessed with several hours with nothing planned...

so I headed outdoors to do my first oil and first en plein air painting.

Isn't the view from our backyard gorgeous?

I recently began an oil painting in my art class, but one hour a week is precious little time for a painting! So today I found an unopened set of oil paints that I had gotten when I was ten (the prospect of using turpentine scared me away from oils) and opened them up for the first time.

The painting didn't turn out the way I wanted, and I am completely humbled by artists who can create masterpieces using oil paints. I have a lot to learn. I finally decided that if I touched the canvas, I was going to completely mess it up. So I'm calling it an "impressionistic" painting and leaving it as is.

My seven year old sister came and painted with me (she used acrylics). I left her to her own devices... she only came to ask for help with making mixing a "light green that's not yellow." Isn't her treeline cute?

School.

That's pretty much all there is to it.

I'm working on midterms and getting caught up (I got a week behind in two subjects). And I have several large projects to work on. The blog is going to have to take a little bit of a break. Just a couple weeks.

On that note, I'm welcoming anyone who would like to do a guest post!

Big blogger, little blogger, not a blogger at all... I'd love to have you!

I'm open to pretty much topic... this is primarily an arts-and-crafts blog, but we musn't forget the sprinkles of fairydust. Plus my huge range of favorite activities-- unicycling, reading, books, writing, theater, fantasy, deep musings, random brilliant ideas, archery, old-fashioned stuff, decorating, history, films.... I could go on and on.

The guest post doesn't need to be very long.

You can see some previous guest bloggers {here}.

If you are interested, please email me at Shealynnsfaerieshoppe{at}gmail.com 

(replace {at} with @)

And if you are reading this after I am back from my short hiatus... I always love guest bloggers!

Thank you!!!

This is one of those "just because" projects.

Just because I wanted a little something pretty to look at while writing all those essays.

I started with one of those boring freebie mousepads with a plastic film top.

And I just tore the top right off.

Step One:

Trace your mousepad (or corkboard-- of any shape! be creative!) onto the fabric.

Step Two:

Cover the lines with a layer of Mod Podge. This is a nifty trick I learned from Mod Podge Rocks-- if you put glue on the fabric edges before cutting, they won't fray.

Just be smarter than me and lift the fabric up occasionally as it dries. It's very hard to unstick it from a table.

TA DA! Talk about simple. :)

warning: very mild scariness. make sure you don't have any super-sensitive little kids looking over your shoulder. (sorry, sis!)

I have something to admit.

I have a phobia.

It's not arachnophobia (fear of spiders). It's not barophobia (fear of gravity). It's not even xanthophobia (fear of the color yellow...?!)

Nope, I'm scared of breaking my right arm and not being able to draw/write/type/etc for an entire month or two until it heals.

I conciously use my left hand when I have to put my hand into something mildly creepy, like when I have to clean out the drain in the dishwater. Because, you know, there might be monsters in there.

I even bought a $30 pair of wristguards to wear while unicycling. Just in case.

(I just need to teach myself to be ambidextrous. Then this wouldn't be an issue.)

Last night I had a nightmare.

(I know it was a nightmare because it was black and white and not colorful.)

It went like this:

Yesterday my brother and I went biking on the mountain trails by our house. My brother is a speedy daredevil; I'm not. Clankey clankety clankey clunk, hit a stump, clankety bang, hit a rock, clankety ooomph! yell and make my brother wait for me to get back on the bike.

(It was a lot of exhilarating fun in real life, but in dream life the speedy mountain biking was downright scary.)

Then this happened: