Pins and pages

The pin above is for a friend, this is the third one she has ordered and I still have another one to go. Jo provides me with the raw crystals and then I wire them and add the rest of the beads and objects. The pearl drop was an old earring I picked up from the 'broken jewellery' oddments jar in the local op shop, it has rhinestones around the top. I bought a real crystal necklace,three strings of pearls (I think they were imitation, I have to test them) and a necklace that was made of carved cream beads that are in the pin, all for two dollars, true finds.

The pages are two more backgrounds from my altered book. They are the basis for more added texture and layers. The bottom one again uses old torn up pages from the yellow pages phone book.

We had a great day today, we went into Melbourne for breakfast at one of the numerous cafes along the Southbank, which is on the Yarra river. A glorious sunny spring day. Then we went to the writer's festival at a beautiful old buiding called the Malthouse, which is what it used to be. There we listened to a talk by one of my favourite authors, British writer Alexander McCall Smith, who's visiting here at present. His books are about a fictitious lady who started the first lady detective agency in Botswana. He writes from the female point of view and his books are extremely light and as he says, there is so much violence and action happening in the word today that his books area bit of light relief, not a lot happens but they are enjoyable reading. I'm reading the third one in the series and was able to get him to sign it for me, he's a very entertaining and jovial character, with a beautiful, easy to listen to voice.