My friend Grace turned 50 the day after I turned 35.  I am a little late in giving her a birthday present.

When she was in her twenties, she did some modeling.  Quite a few months ago, she gave me a copy of one of her headshots and asked that Chuck make some copies for her children.  He made three color copies and three black and white.  I turned one of them into a beeswax collage.

I wanted to create something that embodied her beauty and style.  I had a ball digging through my stash and finding vintage gloves and millinery, rhinestone buckles, buttons and beads to decorate her piece.  It took me a while to finally figure out that the crummy little tulip iron I bought wasn’t getting hot enough to heat the wax.  The gals at Mystic Paper hooked me up with an amazing craft iron and I was a lean, mean, melting-mama machine.  (Tee hee.) 

I used our kitchen table as my work space and it still looks like ground zero.  Thank goodness Chuck is so tolerant of my messes.  (Yes mother I know he won’t always be.)   I was a little worried whether or not Grace would like it.  I gave it to her this morning and she got teary-eyed.  Chucklebutt said she would but I didn’t believe him.  😀  She showed it to all the residents and they oooed and ahhhhed.  Special thanks to Mike P. who taught me everything I know about beeswax!  And of course thank you to Chuck for the awesome photos.

Here’s to my friend on her 50th birthday — a woman  who has both style and grace!