Lisa--No Peeking Either!

My sister-in-law had a birthday a week and a half ago. I still haven't sent her the present I made for her. I'm a bit behind.

Yeah yeah yeah. AND I need to do something about my photography. These were taken the same day the last ones were. I WILL improve these, I just haven't had a chance to yet.

















These are glass pebbles which I painted to spell out her name. Fortunately two of the letters are the same when reversed, so I only had to twist my brain around for the L and the S, so that they looked right from the front.

The paint just a standard acrylic paint (Reeves, actually). It took three or four coats to get the letters opaque enough, and in retrospect, I think I should have outlined them in black for clarity.
















Once they were dry, I painted the designs across the backs, and then filled the last color across the entire back of the pebble.

















I used E6000 to glue on rare earth magnets, but those were so strong they pulled each other off the backs of the pebbles. I had to go back and use regular black magnets, which will probably work better at holding paper anyway.

Hey, Mom! No Peeking!

Exhibit A as to why I need to improve my jewelry photography.


















This is actually a set of four silver tags I made for my mother's Mother's Day present. Using a hammer and a 3mm set of letter punches, I punched the names of her four grandchildren into the blanks, then picked out a 4mm (I think) Swarovski bicone crystal to attach. The crystals are threaded onto a long headpin, and the end is wrapped both to secure the dang thing, and to give the crystal some roughness to better match the look of the punched letters.

Here is a slightly better photograph.

















Again, you can see that the unevenness of the letters is the result of my relative inexperience with the punches. But I think that also gives the pieces a certain rustic charm.

I created the holes at the top of the tags by putting each tag on a stack of balsa wood shingles and just hammering a nail through them. Rustic, but effective!

So, now I have four tags, which would make for a nice charm bracelet, except that she doesn't really wear that kind of jewelry. Instead, I put them onto differing lengths of chain, then built a double eye shank from silver wire which I ran through a large glass bead I had on hand.

















(Exhibit B in the need to improve my photography skillz.) At least, you can see the color of the bead, which is about 3" across. I took three lengths of jewelry cord (two turquoise, one navy) and threaded a silver cube bead on either side.

I tried a lobster clasp, but they kept breaking. Cheap material--I think I bought them for a Girl Scout activity three years ago, so I substituted a toggle and ring clasp.

















So, the final test is whether the entire piece is chunky and nifty, or entirely too overblown. The good news is that if it's the latter, I can just reclaim the components and create something else.

India Earrings

So, I went down to my studio, having forgotten the materials for what I wanted to do, I ended up making some earrings.

I love making earrings. They come together so quickly, and are a great medium for playing with color and combination. With my new mission of embracing my creative side, I can make all the earrings I like, without worrying how I can possibly wear them all.

These are the first ones I made today. They are base metal and glass, the dangles are peacock blue glass with a sort of peacock feather eye on them. I like the spiky swirl in the center, which looks kind of like a trippy sun.
















This second pair also have a peacock blue dangle, although a smaller tear drop shape. The silver component mimics hammered silver.

















Clearly, I would benefit from figuring out how to take better pictures!

The Second Wave

Yeah, I've totally let this blog slip. It's symptomatic of my indecisive life right now. Am I an artist? Do I really want to spend my days doing art--for why? I'm too chicken to open my studio and try to sell it. I went to the American Craft Council show two weekends ago, and I had such a range of emotional experiences.

• Wow. These people are good.
• Except for some--who had nothing different. Their stuff looked like everybody elses.
• I'll never be this good.
• Wow. That's a lot of capital they have sunk into jewelry raw materials.
• My stuff doesn't have high enough quality to sell, and I don't really want to spend thousands and thousands of dollar on gemstones and precious metals.
• Well--maybe I could do something like that.
• But so what? If I did it--would I show it or try to sell it? No.
• So, there's a lot of stuff here it's clear to me I wouldn't even try. What would I like to do?
• Am I really a visual person? Maybe I should just concentrate on the writing and finish something already, damn it.

So, I left that show feeling like I really didn't need to be spending my time in a studio. I needed to buckle down and finish some writing. I started planning to close my studio when my lease ended in June.

Then, last weekend, I went to the St. Paul Art Crawl, and "crawled" through two buildings out of about twenty. And in those spaces I found people doing things that really weren't better than what I was doing--or could do--and they had the courage to show it.

And I got inspired again.

So today, the sun came out after some cold and rainy days, and I signed up for a silver fusing class, and I went back into the studio, where I've not been in Quite A While. I meant to do some reverse glass painting--easy and silly stuff, just glass pebbles for my sister-in-law's birthday. And I didn't do that, because I forgot to bring the pebbles, and I didn't have the right paint anyway.

But I did do something. I made three pairs of earrings and a book mark. And I took pictures of the earrings. And I decided that the hell with it. I make whimsical jewelry using base metals and glass--which is pretty enough for costume jewelry AND I can sell it at very very affordable prices.

So I will be making some earring display screens over the next couple of weeks, and as I make things, I can put them up where I can see them and be proud.

So I am going to try again and see if I can resurrect my belief in myself as well as the blog.