Actions speak louder...

Well, I'm back after a brief hiatus. I don't have a particularly dramatic reason for my break from blogging during most of last week. It was a combination of not having projects in the pipeline, pushing myself really hard at work so I could get caught up, trying not to go crazy and get sick, and technological difficulties. Last week was a bit of a turning point for me with respect to how I think about my blog. As much as I've enjoyed doing it over the last several months, I need to slow down. The challenges mentioned above are probably going to become more severe over the next several weeks, as I finish preparing for surgery and then recover from it (during the Christmas season, no less) and then get back to work in late December. My goal until mid-November is going to be a few posts (2-3) per week, which will probably be followed by a substantial break lasting through the holidays. I hope to pick things up in early 2013 and get back to my regular schedule, but it's early to be making promises like that.

This is a good opportunity to thank all of you readers for reading! I never would have continued on this adventure for so long without knowing you're out there. I am so lucky that you've chosen to read my ramblings on this little corner of the internet, and I hope you'll stick around through the doldrums ahead. Thanks also to those of you who have been supporting me in countless tiny ways (and huge ways too!) as I've been dealing with these health issues. My friends are the best a girl could ask for!

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The great news is that there is a real post buried in here somewhere! 

You might remember a project I did earlier this year where I made a piece of art for my living room. If you want to read more about that, click here. This is what it looks like hanging as part of my gallery wall in the living room: 

It had always been my vision for this project that there would be something around the edge. I was kind of hoping for bling reminiscent of a theater marquee. It took my a while to find the right supplies, and then even longer to actually apply them, but this project is now totally done. What do you think? Do actions speak louder than... bling? 

I'm not sure about the answer! What I can tell you, though, is a little bit more about how I added this bling effect. 

Here are my supplies: 

I found these rhinestones in the aisles adjacent to the jewelry supplies at JoAnn's. I was initially thinking I would use some kind of sticky rhinestones, so I shopped the scrapbooking supply departments at every place I could think of and never found anything quite like I was looking for. Finally, I ran across these while I was looking for some jewelry making supplies. The bad news is that they are not sticky on the back, but this tacky glue pen was just the right thing to get a teensy little bit of glue on the back.

The other tool I used was these angled tweezers. I have them as part of my jewelry-maker's tool kit, but they are great for working with rhinestones. If you're considering a project like this, definitely pick up a pair!

Given the otherwise-rustic character of this project, I decided I wasn't going to go nuts about measuring to make sure the rhinestones were perfectly evenly spaced. I don't regret that decision, but this method might not work when applying the stones to something more precise.

I spaced the stones by simply dividing each space in half. So, here we see a space that's not yet divided...

... and now that space has been split in half by a rhinestone.

I didn't know exactly how many would fit or how far apart they'd need to be spaced, so I started by making a first pass, and the canvas looked like this:

I counted up the spaces and then made sure I had at least that many rhinestones remaining. Luckily, I did! So, I finished up by placing one additional rhinestone centered in each space. And here's the finished product!

Yay for bling!