UFO's - Un Finished Objects

This is a reliquary of objects found on the nearby migrant trails close to my house. We're quite close to the Mexican border.

I think I'm going to capture this colibri in a frame

I got this bread box at the thrift store and I'm decoupaging images from an old social studies and a physics book. Needs a special knob I think.

I had been reading Altered Bits blog about her huge list of unfinished projects and had to analyze my own pile of unfinished projects.

As a lampworker/beadmaker I'm accustomed to quite short projects of under 30 minutes each although I usually dedicate an afternoon to the torch up to four hour stretches, max. I find I need to take a 10 to 30 minute break every hour as it is quite a focused sort of craft when actually torching. These breaks are the perfect time to have some ice tea on the patio or check in on my internet goings on.

Lately though it seems since my retirement and my snowbird seasons in Arizona I am incredibly drawn to the altered art and collage and working with found objects since there's such a wealth of resources for cool stuff either in thrift stores or on the ground as I rummage about. It was harder in Alaska as far as the easy fabulous finds go. People tend to hang on to their stuff and there just isn't the population base that you have in the States.

Since my retirement I have come to look upon my bead and jewelry designing business as my "real job" and my hobby is the assemblage/collecting/ altered art. In reality they are all melding together in a wonderful flow of expression for me.

The collage and decoupage projects are the ones that are tending to be in a state of evolving.....OK, OK, they're just not finished! Some I started last winter when we were here.

We were so inundated with visitors from the northland that wanted to taste our Arizona sunshine that my creativity took a back seat to entertaining. Oh, and then the little matter of my folks coming to visit and my father's heart attack and ensuing quadruple bypass on the last day of their visit. Actually one of the reasons I took an early retirement was to have more flexibility in caring for my aging parents. How convenient of them to have the crisis at my warm sunny Arizona abode rather than cold and wintry New England.

My friend PJ that's a member of the Bisbee Fiber Arts Guild says that they call the unfinished projects UFO's for Un-Finished-Objects.

Here are a few of my own UFO's-