Numinosity Beads Meets Altered Art

"Derive" by Kimberly Rogers

I have been meaning to start using some of my beads in my altered art projects. I had just picked up a handy little metal hole punch at the Tucson Gem and Mineral show from the gals at Beaducation that were at the To Bead True Blue show at the Doubletree Hotel in Tucson.

I had a goodly batch of rusty bottle tops that needed holes punched for my bottle top earrings.

While I was at it I got inspired to fasten on of my beads to a rusty aged metal tile that I'd picked up next to our desert property near the Chiricahua Mountains.

So with some old coins, buttons, beads mounted over the smuggler's burlap and asphalt roofing I found last week, I fastened them and added a bit of text and framed it in a thrift shop frame. One of my first finished pieces using a Numinosity Bead.

"Creative Handicrafts"

My last visit to the local thrift store netted me a 1938 book Called "Creative Handicrafts" by Mabel Reagh Hutchins which has the most basic overview of crafts from pottery to the art of dyeing. There are a few sweet illustrations but the most hilarious thing is an excerpt from the "Art of Dyeing" chapter.

After some pages of instructions on batik she includes some basic instructions on "Tie and Dye"
I quote... "This may be called the kindergarden class of batiks. It's a simple process---one really feels like an inmate of an institution for the feeble-minded while doing it---but affords much fun experimenting and many lovely effects may be obtained."

She obviously had never seen the complexities of shibori tie and dye!

My collection of rusty bottle caps is growing by day and I'm readying to create more bottle cap earrings.
Also my bamboo beads decoupage project is coming along nicely.

I'm spending a little bit of time down in the "Pure Torcher-South Studio" as I've just signed up for a local holiday bazaar at the Serbian Hall in Bisbee two weeks from now. I hope to have an array of goods since I've left the bulk of my inventory in Alaska.