patrikkusek

My friend, noted interior designer, decorative painter and TV Host, Shannon Kaye is going to appear on a new TV show called Blog Cabin. The premise sounds really cool. The show follows the building of log cabin BUT the twist is that bloggers get to help make the design decisions. Sounds like a lot of

A very sad day today. We had to put down Max today . For those of you who knew him he was spunky and very protective in his youth. In his later years he reminded me of a stately old man in a huge fur coat gliding around the back yard. Nothing much phased him

I so excited I won the Saul Bell Design Award in the PMC Division. Here is a pic of me in my studio showing off my award.

Venice is a dream. We spent 5 days exploring Venice. Here are the highlights. Venice at night, gondolas, a mask shop near San Marco and a flea market find at Campo De-Fiore. Proseco, long lunches, exploring boutiques, getting rained on, buying rubber boots that don’t fit, hating the Dollar to Euro conversion, long dinners, Italian

Found this fantastic restaurant while exploring the hills in Umbria and Tuscany. Great food and wine. Fantastic Vin Santo and Cantucci. One of those rare finds, while exploring the countryside. The owners invited us into the private cellar and to their private museum!! Who know places like this existed? Restaurante Fattoria Pulcino. www.pulcino.com

Spent the day exploring our first day in Roma! had dinner at the Hotel Excedra. www.boscolohotels.com Just to be clear, we didn’t stay here, just dinner! Although I think dinner probably cost as much as our hotel. We stayed at a great B&B, the service, location and rooms were all excellent! http://www.enjoyromebb.com highly recommended, close

I’m spending the day taking a class at Castle in the Air, in Berkeley on 4th Street. One of my closest friends Paulette convinced me to take the class because of the beautiful reliquaries that we saw in the shop last Halloween. Little did I know how fun the class would be. www.castleintheair.biz

My kinda place… the Castle In The Air store had things for us to buy at the class, like a BUG COLLECTION. So of course, being interested in all things from nature, I had to have some for use in my reliquaries.

Close up of one of my reliquaries. I used a coral branch and wrapped it with some text.

Being over achievers, so Paulette and I decide that instead of doing the usual plain back of the reliquary, we HAD to do a two sided one. Twice the fun! And almost twice the work. This is an image of a heart with type layered behind and on top. The whole thing is covered in

The back of number 2, with a sea theme.

Reliquary number 3. I LOVE this bee, especially the type on the specimen tag. The gold leaf is a fitting tribute to her short life. Did you know they only live about a month?