Experimental Flowers

Here are a couple of more flowers I've made recently but haven't had a chance to post. The first is a purple poppy like flower; I was trying to figure out what would the size diffence in petals be if I used 15/o, 11/o, and 10/o beads for the same pattern. I also tried making the leaves with a reverse basic wire on the bottom so the wire can't be seen in the finished flower.

The next flowers are my attempts at some West Virgina wildflowers: fire pink and phlox. These were both made with Victorian technique. It seems to be better for very small, detailed flowers.

A lot of catching up since April!

Wow! It's been awhile since I've last posted!!! So here's a brief run down on my life since April. Our friends Mike and Kim got married in June in Kim's hometown close to Pittsburg, PA; Paul was in the wedding party. Lovely ceremoney! Congratulations to the happy bride and groom!

Mr. and Mrs. Michael L.

Paul & I at the wedding. Isn't he hansome!

After that we finally got all the hurricane damage to our house fixed, siding and all! Then to top it all off, Paul and I painted the ENTIRE outside of our house. Huge amount of work that took a good two weeks. The house came out beautiful! So, after that we needed some rest and relaxation and went kayaking on Red Creek (MS) for the day with a couple of our friends. Very neat, can't wait to get out there again.

Paul and James siding the house
Paul fishing on Red Creek

Also, good bars have been hard to come by since Katrina destroyed most of them as they were on the water, so we've found one in Pascagoula, MS that has really good bands--Buck Cherry, Nonpoint, Revelation Theory, Candle Box to name a few. It's weird how every small aspect of your life is changed by a natural distaster of this magnitude--who would have thought it would be hard to find a bar???

Getting ready to go to Thunders!

Now about my flowers! Since we've been spending every waking moment trying to fix our house, I haven't had much time to work on any. However I did make some poppies for one of my friends for her birthday. I've also sold my first arrangement!

Poppies for TashaMy first arrangement I've ever sold!

Paul's also accomplished one of the milestones as a graduate student--He passed his comprehensive exam's yesterday--YEAH! Congratulations! He's been studying for them for the past month. We went out to celebrate last evening with a few drinks. He's leaving this Sunday to go on a research cruise to collect larval billfish somewhere in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. Hopefully he'll get to do a little blue water fishing on the side and catch us some goodies for our freezer :) He caught a marlin last year--released it as it is not the best fish to eat.