Too Pooped

Too pooped to blog.  3 classes in 2 days with Nathalie Kalback at Bizzy B. 

Nathalie and me

As usual after a weekend like this, my brain is full to bursting with new ideas and lessons learned and I'm so tired I can hardly think how to untie my shoelaces, let alone type a blog post.  For now, let me just say we had fun, we made cool stuff, we learned a lot and we laughed even more.

Stay tuned, more details tomorrow...

Outside My Window

Buildings stand in the early morning mist like sentinels watching over those who sleep under the frost-covered roofs below.

Elizabeth's Jewels

This past Wednesday night, I attended a lecture at the Royal Ontario Museum given by Brett Sherlock, Senior Vice President, Managing Director of Christie's Canada, the auction house.  Brett had been involved in cataloguing and selling the 1,800 pieces of clothing, artwork and jewellery belonging to Ms. Taylor that were auctioned in December 2011 in New York, following her death in March of that year.  He met with her prior to her death to discuss the sale, the history of the items and her wishes for the disposal of the various pieces.  The sale raised $183 million, the proceeds were divided between a trust for her family and her AIDS foundation.  Brett showed us slides of some of the more famous pieces and regaled us with stories of a beautiful movie star and her extraordinary jewellery collection.

Such as the ruby necklace, earring and bracelet set given to her by her 3rd husband, Mike Todd (the only one of her 7 husbands she didn't divorce, as he was killed in a plane crash).  You can see them here, in this home movie taken just after he presented them to her while she was swimming in a pool in Monte Carlo:



Or the La Peregrina Pearl necklace, which features one of the largest pearls in the world, weighing 203 grains or 50 karats. It was estimated to garner $2 to 3 million at the auction, but the final selling price was over $11M! You can read a cute story about the time the necklace went missing here, on the site where I got this photo:

You can see the pearl hanging as the lower pendant.  The larger pendant and the pearl, diamond and ruby choker were made separately by Cartier, who had to find pearls of the highest quality for the design, which also featured Burmese rubies.  All the pieces detached so they could be worn separately.

There was also a stunning emerald and diamond necklace with matching earrings and bracelet. The pendant detached and could be worn as a brooch.

Photo from poshbeauty.com

Richard Burton gave the brooch to her on their first wedding day in 1964, in Montreal (they couldn't get married in Toronto because Ontario wouldn't recognize their recent Mexican divorces from their previous spouses).  The brooch was estimated at $500-600,000 in value, it sold for over $6 million at the auction!


Of course, the most famous piece of jewellery she owned was her diamond ring.
 
It was a gift from Richard, originally known as the Krupp diamond, now known as the Taylor/Burton diamond.  Apparently he gave it to her "because it was Tuesday". She wore it nearly every single day.  It is 33.19 karats in size and sold for $8.8 million at the auction, almost 3 times more than the estimated price.

During the Q&A session after the lecture, someone asked where she kept all these valuable jewels.  He told us she had a walk-in safe in her home but that she rarely used it.  She had several Lucite drawers in her bedroom and often, a visitor would find the jewels strewn across her bed or somewhere nearby to wherever she was.  He said she had been very involved in organizing the auction and was glad the pieces were to be sold to raise money for her foundation, that she felt no sense of loss. She thought of herself merely as a custodian of the pieces.  Her 4 children don't live the same sort of lifestyle she did and would have no use for these glamourous pieces and of course, it avoided any arguments over which one of the 4 would get which piece!

If you'd like to see more pictures of the various fabulous jewelry pieces sold in the Christie auction (the tiara Mike Todd gave her, the "Ping Pong" rings that Richard gave her after she beat him 3 times at the game, the brooch previously owned by the Duchess of Windsor and more, click here for the photos and written descriptions of the various pieces). 

It is only fitting that a Hollywood legend would own such fabulous jewelry and that each piece would have a story of its own to tell.  I, for one, certainly enjoyed hearing each and every one of them!

Tune In Tomorrow

I'm helping my friend Kate McKinnon proofread her almost-ready-to-be-published new beading book so I'm too busy to post tonight, but please tune in tomorrow when I will be sharing some amazing details from a lecture I attended last night at the Royal Ontario Museum.  The topic was Elizabeth Taylor's jewellery, all of which was STUNNING!! 

For example, this gorgeous tiara, given to her by her then husband Mike Todd:

Black and White Night - Part 2

Here are the rest of the inspired journal pages created by my fellow Journal Junkies group members, as presented when we met on Monday night at Bizzy B. (click on any of the images to see a larger version)

Diana did some cool things with bubble wrap and netting for the background of her page and used a magazine page for her text and focal image:

Bette used woven pieces of black and white paper to create the background for this zebra image - I love it!

Marilyn did about 14 different pages on this theme (!), here are just a couple of my favourites:

Both Laura and Kelly often use black and white for their journal pages, so this month's theme was a no-brainer for them.  Of course, that didn't stop them from creating some beautiful images.

Kelly was having a bad week and her first page said, "I will not keep calm and you can just..." (I'll let you guess at the last 2 words of that sentence). Here is her second page:

Laura collaged one page with bits of ribbon in the appropriate colours:

She also showed us these two pages:

There you have it, folks, the November pages from our art journaling group.  Now go make your own black and white journal page, just for fun!

Black and White Night - Part 1

Here are some of the very cool "Black and White"- themed journal pages made by my fellow Journal Junkies, as revealed at last night's meeting at Bizzy B.

Emma's page featured Marilyn Monroe:

Mitzi was the only one of us to mention "50 Shades of Grey" (I had thought there would be more!):

Chloe made this page with a maple leaf as the focal point:

James included a picture of a Korean king on his page:

Connie went with a black/white/grey theme:

Susan made this very cool window page with a hand on either side of the pane:

She also drew this awesome Zentangle (I especially love the people shapes):

Newest member Kerry made this page:

Colleen couldn't resist including a little pink on her page:

Tomorrow I'll show you the rest of the group's pages.  Stay tuned, there is lots more awesomeness to come!

Black and White

Given all the grey weather we've been having here in Toronto the past couple of weeks, the "black and white" theme for tonight's Journal Junkies meeting seemed quite appropriate!

I had a little trouble fitting my page into my scanner but you can see most of it in this photo:

The caption reads, "Unlike chess, life isn't always black and white."

I drew a grid and coloured some of the squares in with black and white paint like a chessboard.  I used squares cut out of security envelopes with black and white interiors for the rest of the black squares.  I printed out the chess piece silhouettes from the internet and glued them down on the bottom of the page.  The borders on the sides and top are black and white washi tapes.

Of course, the whole time I was working on this piece, I couldn't get that song out of my head.  You know the one - "the ink is black, the page is white, together we learn to read and write..."  It was a big hit for Three Dog Night back in the early 70's.