Merry Christmas Everyone!

Kitty and I hope that you are enjoying a good holiday season. We are sitting here in our cabin, staying warm on a chilly Alaska winter morning. We just passed solstice, so even though the sun is not yet up the days are starting to get longer now. We have two months of hard winter left then things will begin the long slow warm up. This is when we will start marching toward another beautiful Alaska summer.

Our holiday bazaar season didn't work out for us. We worked our tails off to attend three bazaars, but were only moderately successful. We made the decision to forgo the final date to concentrate on what we do best. Let's hope it works. The type of art we create just didn't seem to translate well for a crafting show setting. People seemed to be more interested in small trinkets for stocking stuffers. Our best work has always been larger pieces that are difficult to display on a one table setting. I also don't think that most people really understand the concept of Recycle, Repurpose, Reuse. That's okay though. We did it and I learned again.

We may be down but we are still not out! We think we may have found an outlet to display our creations locally. Now, we are working feverishly yet again, to make even more Arctic Artique creations from the old cast offs of others. It's not quite finished but check out this serving tray we are creating. As always, this is being created from old things we (and by we I mean Kitty) found along the way. The tray frame has something to do with wine storage. I thought it was an old cigar box but Kitty assures me it has something to do with wine.

We started of by changing the color from black to Perfection, which is a festive red with just a hint of orange. This does come from the Country Chic collection of paints and I would like to say once again, thank you Pascale for this wonderful gift.

 

Notice the handles. They look like they belong in a country kitchen. We found an entire box of these a couple of years ago. The box had gotten wet, so instead of drying the handles out, someone tossed them out so they could go to a box store and spend more money. We have been using this box since we found it and will continue to use it for several years to come.

Do you remember the rhinestones that took all day to set in place? These were leftover from our first big project together...Farewell and the Golden Ring. If you have watched our blog for a while you will remember this beautiful piece that was entirely created around a small and very worn golden ring. If you don't remember him, just check out the blog archives...there are a couple of stories about him from last year around October or November. We carried them with us after he was completed and finally found the next project for them to help bring to life. This once very large bag was also cast off from someone who had great aspirations for them at one time but ended up tossing them out when their projects went by the wayside. All of these little pieces of plastic were destined for the landfill where they would set for the rest of eternity. They don't decay and are health hazards for the birds and small animals that come across them.

The only part of this project that was not cast off from someone else is the liquid glass that was used to encase the rhinestones. I had purchased and used part of this kit a year or so ago on a project that didn't work out. Keeping it around has paid dividends with this piece though!

As I said before, this piece is not complete yet. I wanted to give you a sneak peak as we both cannot believe just how beautiful this is looking already. This is our Christmas. Creating things together. Enjoying each others company. Most important, not worrying about all of the stress and issues we still face for just a couple of days.

Merry Christmas Everyone from

Kitty and Scott

ArcticArtique.BlogSpot.Com

Recycle, Repurpose, Reuse