The Tiny Room

It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to update this blog.   Time flies when you’re busy moving and re-setting up household, studio, garden, etc. in a new location!  It isn’t all finished even now, but I thought I’d post a quick update for anyone who’s interested.  Gary’s been busy working on the shop and yard, so hasn’t been able to do any artwork in quite a while.  As for myself, I haven’t had a lot of time for creative work, either, but managed to produce a  dozen new jewelry designs in the past few months.  I’ve also just finished redesigning my website, which you can check out at   http://www.bonnievanhall.com.  If you look at the jewelry gallery, you’ll see more of my new jewelry designs  ( http://www.bonnievanhall.com/Jewelry/jewelrygallery.html ).

Here’s the latest colored pencil portrait from Isla, which won her a $100 award!

Jeffree Star

close-up

even closer

Here are just a couple of my new jewelry designs.  As I said, you can view all of them at the new website.

Beaded bracelet with Swarovski crystal

Beaded bracelet with Swarovski crystal

Beaded necklace, bracelet and earring set

Beaded necklace, bracelet and earring set

Hope you get to check out the rest of the website, and feel free to post any comments or feedback  here!  I’m planning on adding a guestbook and online store to the website, but haven’t finished with that yet.  Also putting the finishing touches on Gary’s website, which I’ll post a link to when it’s finished.  In the meantime, enjoy the spring weather!

Gary is close to finishing up the final sculpting stage on “Bubbles”, but since we’re still not quite ready to post those photos, I thought this would be a good time to show a few of my 14 year old daughter Isla’s recent works. As an aspiring tattoo artist, Isla is currently working on honing her drawing skills. She has done several designs already, which I don’t have access to at this moment. But I did find several drawings she did a short while back, which I’ll post here.

And here are a couple of the beaded bracelets Isla recently both designed and beaded for some of her friends.

This next one is Isla’s version of “Cold Fire”.

This one was the first version Isla did of the four elements in Chinese characters.

And then she did a different version with an opaque background and silver-lined color highlights.

I’ll see if I can get Isla to give us a look at some of her tattoo designs soon!

I can’t seem to work on only one piece at a time anymore!  This actually works well for me, though, because I can choose what to do depending on my mood. Today I’m thinking how nice it would be to be soaking up sun on a white sand beach in Hawaii. (Even us Arizonans crave such things from time to time).  But the next best thing to being there is to look at the soothing blue of this shawl….

Here’s a preview of the knit part of the shawl.

"Hokusai" handknit shawl

A closer shot of the knitting detail.

Knitting detail

This is a preview of the beadwork that will run all along the front edge of the shawl on both sides.

Front edge beadwork

And of course, a close-up of the beadwork detail…

"Hokusai" beadwork close-up

Tune in again early next week for a look at Gary Persello’s new ocarinas finished in bronze!