Linda's Magic Workshop - Linda Britt Design

Cormorants Visit Santee Lakes and Hang Out! There is nothing like a weekend getaway to widen and relax one’s perspective.   We drove from Prescott AZ to Coronado Island CA and stayed at a friend’s lovely home.   The reason?   An early music concert by Concerto Koln http://www.concerto-koeln.de/home_welcome.php?lang=eng  at Irwin M. Jacobs Qualcomm Hall in San Diego.   What an amazing evening.   The baroque music was exquisite and the hall, designed for the San Diego Symphony, was perfect for the instruments.   The evening’s highlight for me was   Vivaldi’s ‘Concerto for Recorder, Strings, and Continuo in C, RV 443’ with Cordula Breuer playing the Sopranino Recorder.   I had not seen or heard this instrument before.   Picture the recorder you played in grade school and make it 6” long.   It was amazing to watch and listen to an artist playing with her fingers literally flying.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recorder Another day we went birding at the Santee Lakes.   What a show

One of the things I love about Facebook is being directed to tutorials concerning subjects of interest to me.   For instance, I’d been playing with swirls and lentil polymer beads when I spotted a link chock full of helpful hints.      https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6Oq0G54jIYk   Thanks to Cindy Lietz, my beads look much better and I understand about getting the colors more or less where I want them.   If you haven’t seen this video, you just might want to!   A few months ago, I made red and white and ivory canes based on a quilt pattern design.   I made them in various sizes of squares and put them away thinking they would be great for the Christmas holidays.   This week they came out of their box and I started making buttons and earrings. What to do with the scraps?   Lentil swirl beads of course!   I’m having such fun forming my polymer balls and putting the scrap canes in a band around the outside.    Then I take my clear acrylic sheet, start

Taking a day trip to Jerome AZ should not be such a big deal for three girlfriends since we live in Prescott – not so far away.   Finding a day that worked for all of us took a while!   I’ve wanted to go to Nellie Bly ‘the biggest kaleidoscope store in the world’ for 16 years!   They have been open for 25 years but I’ve only known they existed for 16.     We left at 10 a.m. and lunched in Jerome at ‘Grapes’.   Each of us ordered a different dish and shared great food and fun.     Sounds like a girl’s day out, doesn’t it?   We visited just about every store.   Of course, I stayed in Nellie Bly’s a long time.   I just missed the annual workshop teaching how to make those incredible tubes of color and changing shapes.   It’s on my calendar for next year. If you haven’t guessed, I’m crazy for kaleidoscopes.   Once when there were many things happening in my life, I took a class called ‘Changes’.   There was discussion on why and how changes affect us, what we could do to help ou

One of the benefits of taking online classes is building an arsenal of techniques that can be drawn on to produce the design that is in the mind’s eye.     After practicing making transfers to polymer in Heather Campbell’s class, a design idea popped into my head that could incorporate some of my own photographs into my polymer jewelry.   Looking through my photographs (I have hundreds..really) and deciding which images to use took a little time!   I made digital copies and turned them into black and white photographs, reduced them to contact sheet size and printed them using the toner printer.    Then I rolled out the creamy blend of white and Sahara Fimo polymer clay to #3, placed it on a tile and put a thin coating of clay softener over the clay.   The cut out images were placed upside down on the clay.   As you can see from the photo to the finished piece, the image is reversed.  If there is writing that is very important!  Learning to burnish the images with my fing

My good friend’s husband passed away after 11 years of fighting lymphoma and leukemia.   This past year was terrible for both of them as they struggled to be positive and useful and loving.   I visited with her one afternoon and I listened as she told me how she will miss his presence, his humor, his wit and his nightly, “Good Night, Beautiful”.   She is, of course, glad he is no longer in pain and she has removed the reminders of that pain from the house.   We both know the reminders live within her and will fade with time as the good memories take over.   A doctor once told me that losing a loved one leaves a hole inside.   That hole can be likened to the hole in a doughnut.   The hole is there with healing around it.    I opened my memory box to share some of the pain and some of the humor I remember so well from my husband’s dying.    My friend was concerned about getting the ashes to another state.   I shared the story of picking out the container for my husband’s ashes kno

Lace transfer in center of ornament I did it!   I finally got the transfers to work!   Last Friday, I told you about the class I was taking on line (Heather Campbell and ‘Lady Luck Pendants’) and how I did not have the clay softener for the transfers.   If you missed that, please go back and read about how I decided to do Christmas Ornaments my way instead of making the ‘Lady Luck’ Pendants.   Also check out the other classes on this site: www.craftartedu.com    Lace Photos Transfered to Unbaked Polymer Clay   There doesn’t seem to be much sense in taking a class unless you try all the techniques.   This week I have all the ingredients and decided to follow the instructions for transfers!   Yes, putting the clay softener on the rolled out clay and placing the toner based lace designs face down on the clay with the softener between generally worked.   I had to really burnish the back of each design and as you can see from the photos some worked better than others.   I was abl

There are differences between the South Rim and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon   that go beyond direction.   The North Rim is lots less crowded, has higher elevation (8200 feet) with a spruce-fir forest, takes longer to get to and has fewer amenities.   It is well worth the trip!   There are lots of hiking trails and spectacular scenic views with a different perspective. We stayed at the Grand Canyon Lodge in a charming cabin.   Dinner was delicious at the lodge and the sunset spell binding.   Dawn found us dressed and ready to walk out to Bright Angel Point Trail.   The weather changed mid morning bringing dark clouds, thunder and rain.   Pretty dramatic! Today the forces of nature are at work slowly deepening and widening the Grand Canyon.   There is much information on the geology and history of this place at http://www.nps.gov/grca/index.htm And oh yes, it closes Oct. 15 due to the weather!  

I signed up to take Heather Campbell’s class, “Lady Luck Pendants” through http://www.craftartedu.com/ .   The ad for it looked so intriguing and I love the ornate look of her pendants.   It was worth the $25 cost of the class!   I selected left over clay in a variety of colors and gathered canes that blended with them.   I pulled out sequins, crystals and bead caps.   By now my desk is piling up.   Did I mention that it was late evening and I really wanted to try these techniques right then!   Patience?   None!! I read the tutorial again (I had watched the video earlier) and zeroed in on the transfer section.   The transfers needed to print on a toner printer.   We have that.   But I did not have images I wanted to transfer. Hmmm… I take photographs and I have an album of lace photos that are black and white.   After selecting 8 images, I printed them on the correct printer.   What? no clay softener ?   I thought, “why not try Sculpey Bake and Bond”.   I bet that would wo

Ok!   I’m back!   My blogs will get back on schedule. In case you forgot, Tuesdays are nature and things important to me.   Fridays are usually about jewelry techniques and what I’m doing. It is so nice to be home in Prescott AZ.   I’ve been to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and stopped to see the Condors.   Then we went to Mexico to Rancho Esmeralda for training in locating and surveying birds.   Next I went to Kansas City to see family and last to Tucson for the fall Reptile Show.   Each place I visited held special memories both past and present.   In Kansas City, I visited my brothers and their families.   Lots of memories revisited!   We reminisced about growing up and about our parents.   There are 5 ½ years between each of us three kids.   We talked about how each of us remembers and experienced our lives with the same parents.   And of course, our parents were in different stages of their life with each of us.   I find it fascinating that the same set of circumstances

Just back from traveling and here are a few of my recent favorite photos. Swallowtail Butterfly Dragonfly Dragonfly Not settled down enough to share my travels but here is some some inspiration.  Talk about natural color and fall color trends!

Marble Canyon On a recent visit to the Grand Canyon, we stopped to see how the California Condors were doing in Marble Canyon.     These birds can have a wing span of 9 ½ feet and weigh up to 26 pounds.   They are BIG and magnificent in flight.   I spotted two on a ledge and watched them take off down the canyon.   I t started to rain as I saw three fly under the bridge below me.   I hung (more than leaning!) over the sides to see if I could get a picture.   The birds hopped from strut to strut keeping dryer that me.   They mate for life, lays a single egg every other year, and can live 60 years.    A wildlife recovery program brought the California Condor back from the brink of extinction. The last time a wild California Condor was spotted in the wild in Arizona was 1925.   By 1982 the total in California and Arizona had dropped to 22 birds.   They were all captured and a captive breeding program was started.   You will notice the numbers on the

September seems to be my vacation month and it is going into October!   I’ve had short trips one right after the other and I want to share some with you…but they aren’t over yet and it takes time to write about them the way I’d like to. So upcoming posts will be about: California Condors in Marble Canyon The beauty of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon Learning to survey birds with Sky Island Alliance Rancho Esmeralda in Mexico    Visiting my brothers in Kansas City MO Tucson’s Reptile Show Yes, I know there is nothing about jewelry or techniques but we all know that our everyday experiences influence the work we do.   My jewelry posts will show up with influences from these trips.   Count on it!