Unique Insight

Antique optical lenses allow you to make the most unique pendents. You can cut and adhere any picture, collage, or stamped image. Personalize them further by adding beads, baubles, and metal tags.

The lense on the left is an arrangement of stamps, including a lady that looks uncanningly like my mother when she was young. The back to the pendent is cut from Foofala cardstock. The metal tags are engraved with the words, "love" and "cherish". (I love you Mom!)

The lense on the right is a copy of a painting by my favorite artist, Adolphe-William Bouguereau. I used micro pearl PearlEx to highlight the wings, and the words on these metal tags say, "love" and "believe". The back is Basic Grey paper that I printed Psalm 91:11. "I will give my angels charge over thee." Everyone has a guardian angel, thank goodness! My guardian angel and I are now going to go eat chocolate. Mmmmm. . .

Nature's Royal Beauty

I recently took my annual hiatus to Montana to re-energize. I always love going "home", but going in the fall is especially nice since I now live in the heat of Mesa, AZ. We just don't get those beautiful fall colors, or that crispness in the air. My friend Beth and I took a drive out to the Bear Paw Mountains one afternoon to soak up some peace and of coarse contemplate the meaning of life. So which is the Royal Beauty, the gorgeous leaves or my precious friend?

I created this layout using three pieces of cardstock from the Steel Toe Mary Jane collection from Prima. I also used the matching chipboard embellishments for the title piece, the bottom piece and the nature piece. The Orchid girls originally had "ADVENTURE" in mind, but why not cut apart the letters for "NATURE" instead? See the list below of all of the words I came up with. Happy Creating Coniseurs!

ADVENTURE

Advent (perfect colors for spring/Easter)

Venue (rock concert anyone?)

Rad or Red (even though the papers are pink, my red leaves look great!)

Dent (oops)

Neat

Vader (as in Darth)

Net (www.)

Read

Dear

Ten (very cute for a birthday girl!)

Tea (and cookie party)

Tan (great colors for a summer or pool layout)

Tear

Denture (sorry, I couldn't help myself)

You get the idea, the possibilities are endless...