Fun Friday and Work in Progress

Since it's Friday, I decided to do a fun little post. This is a site I found on Craftymoose's blog. It's called Blogthings. It has some fun little tests. I did the name test. Try it and let me know what your name means. Boy, did it ever get mine right! Here's what it said about mine:

Aimee:
You are usually the best at everything ... you strive for perfection. You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive. You have the classic "Type A" personality.
You tend to be pretty tightly wound. It's easy to get you excited... which can be a good or bad thing.You have a lot of enthusiasm, but it fades rather quickly. You don't stick with any one thing for very long.You have the drive to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. Your biggest problem is making sure you finish the projects you start.
You are confident, self assured, and capable. You are not easily intimidated.You master any and all skills easily. You don't have to work hard for what you want.You make your life out to be exactly how you want it. And you'll knock down anyone who gets in your way!
You are friendly, charming, and warm. You get along with almost everyone.You work hard not to rock the boat. Your easy going attitude brings people together.At times, you can be a little flaky and irresponsible. But for the important things, you pull it together.

My favorite part is that I'm flaky and a type A personality. If they only knew!

Here's a look at my latest work in progress. It's going to be a necklace if I ever get it done. Not pretty right now but you get the general idea of what it'll be. I wanted to list it this week, but I probably won't get listed until the first part of next week. It's a necklace with an Asian inspired bird pendant.

Misplaced creativity

Finally got my supplies in. Yay! It's sad to think how much money it was for not a lot of supplies. It's sad too that I still need more. Maybe this will give me the push I need to get back to jewelry creating.

You see in the spring, especially with this house, I have a lot of creative urge to be in the garden or working on the house. I want to get things done and work every minute. Perhaps if someone actually forced me to do that I wouldn't have anymore creative energy in that field. While this may be all fine and good, the rest of my creative life suffers. I've made one new thing in approximately a week which is a long time for me. I'm going to see if I can make my two creative lives share time.
With all this creative surge, I did manage to decide what was going in my garden at least with flowers. I don't know what they will look like together, but you know I don't care. At least, I'll have lots of pretty flowers and some seed pods to do electroplating with. I decided on chinese lanterns, globe gilia, ornamental grass, chamomile, bee balm, baby blue eyes, oriental red poppies, a mix of clarkias, crimson king, verbascum, maltese crosses, and a mix of columbines. I do have a slight fear of all these seeds because they will have to be started in the house so the birds and ants won't eat them. I've never had a seed actually grow outside. I should've built a greenhouse because my sunroom is going to look like one. I think it amounts to like 3 or 4000 seeds. I got good deals. What can I say?!

Well, I suppose I should get down to business. Orchid has been updated with that lovely owl pictured and a few jewelry supplies and a pretty frosted blue glass mini vase both not pictured. I even finished my challenge item at Jewel Street Designs which is also pictured. A lovely pair of earrings inspired by Art Deco design with birds flying from wire. It can be found in my shop.

birds

Thanks to those of you that hearted and checked out the shop yesterday. I really appreciated it. I am frequently updating it so I can get things in the shop and find the right time to list. Last night I listed those pretty gemstone flower beads I found in my stash.

If you read my blog last year, you might be familiar with my trials and tribulations of birds in my chimney. I think I might have another bird in the chimney. The problem is this time it must be stuck in the actual chimney because I can't see it or get to it. It could also be just a piece of the chimney flapping around making noise. I am torn as to what it is. I'm going to feel awful if it's a bird because no one can get to it to get it out.

I keep hoping that he will figure out how to get out. I mean, he got in on his own, didn't it? Then sometimes I think it is just the flu or whatever rattling around. The house is falling apart, and I haven't been able to get to remodeling that part of the house. Steve says he's checked and fixed the guard around the chimney. I don't know how they keep getting in. Maybe it's not even a bird, but some animal.

Okay. I'm freaking myself out now. I'm going to be terrified to go in that room now.

Pink Flamingos

I thought I would use these two older pics today as I didn't have a chance to take other pictures because of a very large remodeling project that is going on. I chose these pics for the photopalooza because they are a little exotic even if they were taken at my zoo. Maybe they will inspire you to do an exotic piece or something.

I like pink flamingos, and I don't know why. I think some of it might be the color, and I know some of it is their shape. I just love shapes that their necks can make. it's really amazing. The second pic is of a banana tree leaf. I just love the shape of it, and I like to stand underneath of it and pretend I'm in the jungle. There's not enough good pretending that goes on in the world these days if you ask me.

Well, almost done for today. I will be updating my shop tonight with a new piece of two. So, come by around 10:30EST or so and check it out. Maybe today I will get some work done.

Birds, Birds, Birds

Well, the topic has been decided- the birds win- although I thought I would throw a few of the other suggestions in as well. Thanks to Craftymoose for giving me a suggestion for my next project! It's actually got me thinking quite a bit.

So, the majority of this post will be about my little bird friends. I have no idea what kind of birds they are, but there's a few of them. I have tried and tried to get a pic. So, I looked around and the closest I could find was a pic of a house sparrow. I have a whole flock of these birds because the original flock all had babies last year. Can't imagine how many I will have this year. They had been roosting in my being remodeled addition, but we thought we had gotten all the places where they would nest. Not to get rid of them completely, but so they wouldn't use my new studio space as a home. Can you imagine?!

Somehow, though, they still find their way in. They are tiny enough to fit through the door without a doorknob. I did mention this room is not completely done, right? They thoroughly believe that this room was built just for them. It's like their own personal atrium. Every morning two or three come in and fly around checking things out, pulling insulation out of the rafters, and playing tag. It's quite comical. I enjoy them immensely because my now workspace looks right onto this room so I can see everything they do. Most mornings they will come right up to my window and chirp at me. I like to think they are just my wild friends. You should see them in the summertime taking baths in my pond. I just know one day I'm going to have to go out there and rescue one of them from drowning.

I will save a Home Improvement Roundup for next week because I have a really big project going on, and I might even have a tutorial for you in that department. Not too exciting, but something that may come in handy one day.

Well, that just leaves me with my latest piece. "In the Shadow of the Toucan" ring was inspired by my creative challenge thread in the Etsy forums. Shadows was the theme for this week. Truthfully, this ring started out as one thing and morphed into this toucan creature complete with pierced eyes. He's completely created from sterling silver and can be found in my shop.

Not a terribly exciting post lengthy as it is, but it is what you asked for. I'm rather glad I wrote because I just realized it's all about birds. I didn't even think of that when I started typing. Well, until we meet again....