Incredible Find

Ok, so recently, I’ve been pulled in a tonne of different directions. So far, the strongest tugs have been from my little home-made shrinky-dinks. That and paper. I have been working on various simple drawings that I can transfer over to the plastic, shrink down and ‘vwalah!’ they are little transparent pieces of art.

I was in the thrift store about a week ago and I found the most amazing thing. I quickly looked around to see if any other artsy-types were stampeding towards my find. I wiped the sweat off my brow and then snatched up my prize. A huge Zip-Lock bag full of various sized beads. $4.00 for this marvellous catch! The biggest ones are about a 2” diameter! Further more, the dark blue/light blue swirly ones brought back memories of a childhood toy. It was an elastic band strung with different beads and plastic canvas blocks with jingle bells inside which was meant to be strung across the top of the crib. This toy had the same beads as my Incredible Find, except they were about 1” diameter.

I have not decided what I will do with these amazing beads. They might just be put in my ‘enjoy-as-is’ pile…a clear glass mason jar perhaps…

Something else that has been pulling in the tug-o-war for my limited time is wire art.

The first time that I can recall playing with, and falling in love with wire was when I was about 9 years old. Mum had found the coolest store called Imagination Market, in Edmonton. (It no longer exists unfortunately). This store took ‘scraps’ from businesses and resold them. Besides vinyl labels of various colors (metallic included), film, document tubes, coil bindings and core plast, there was telephone wire. Wonderful, colorful, telephone wire.

That was the start of my relationship with wire. Since then, I have claimed the left over copper pig-tails from building projects, making little guitarists and fishermen out of them. I have about ¼ mile of galvanized electric-fence wire, bailing wire, copper wire, garden wire, a few rolls of craft wire (I tend not to buy the craft wire so much, because they are over-priced), wire from old motors, and silver wire. I don’t think there will ever be a time when I’m not drawn to the wire and pliers section of a store.

I will die a contented old lady who never missed an opportunity to bend a piece of wire and make something beautiful out of it.