Linda's Magic Workshop - Linda Britt Design

  Canyonlands is a wilderness of rock.   It is vast and sculptural and colorful.   It is fascinating to see the various rock formations, canyons, and mountains that make up the expanse of this National Park. There are three areas, Island in the Sky, The Maze, and the Needles.   The Maze and the Needles were a little too remote and needed a 4 wheel drive, lots of water and supplies.   We explored the Island in the Sky.   From the broad mesa, you can see views spread before you that stretch for a hundred miles in front of you and 1200 miles beneath you.   Views abound that take your breath away and are difficult to comprehend.     Rain is scarce but it is spring/summer and when we rounded a corner we had to stop and look.   There below the very tall rock formation were a lovely variety of wildflowers blooming.   What a sight! Yellow and purple wildflowers Quite the View! Lizards find rock shelves where they can...

As most of you know, my Tuesday blogs for a few weeks will be about my trip to several Utah monuments and parks.   Friday blogs usually have something to do with jewelry and creativity.   I always take a sketch pad and camera with me on trips.   So many things I see spark an idea for a piece of jewelry I want to make.   This trip was no different and one of the ideas I had after seeing the magnificent rock formations was to combine the vertical slabs of rock with the angled layers.   Since I’ve been taking several polymer clay classes, I decided that would be the medium.   Rock colors (copper, black, white, gold) mixed with some metallic mica powder and pepper represents the minerals.   I made some canes that combined the colors and that I could flatten for the long vertical rock formations.   For those of you who don’t know what a polymer clay cane is, picture a long cylinder of clay that has a design running through it.   You slice...

The first day of our trip led us through Flagstaff AZ with the beautiful juniper and pine forests, past Sunset Crater, Wupatki National Monument, and Navajo National Monument.   We stopped at those three places on the way home.   The Little Colorado River has a dramatic bridge alongside the road where we climbed around on rocks to look down into the river.   I started looking at the dry river bed with the idea of making texture plates for jewelry.   This one would be great to imbed in wet clay. Spaces were vast and sometimes the placement of the advertising made me smile! With lots of interesting cacti and wildflowers!  We wanted to get to Monument Valley and camp there for the night.   Never have I seen so many rental RV’s as I did on this trip.   All the campgrounds were full and this was early in the season!   We drove through the monument and took some side roads when all of a sudden we saw a very large ...