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.

Whatcha Up To Today?

The answer is, sadly, not much. This was one of those amazing and rare days when both of the kidlets were at play practice until 5:30, which should mean I would have a lovely looooong day at the studio to do piles of stuff.

Sadly, however, my parenting and dog owning duties mean I didn't get there until about 1:00, and I had finished a bunch of stuff and didn't have a good sense about what I was going to do next. I was also listening to an audiobook, which meant I wasn't going to write, because I had a head full of somebody else's style.

On the plus side, I did figure out how to print envelopes from the computer, and got the studio rent, the parking fee and a letter to my friend in Washington all sent out.

Harlequin Shrinky Doll

I recently rediscovered my trove of Shrinky Dink plastic, and decided to go back and play with it some more. (BTW--isn't that the dopiest name you've ever had to say about an art material?)

I found this jointed doll pattern online aliciag.com, downloaded it onto white cardstock, and then used black plastic Sharpie to trace the lines onto the plastic.



















Here you can see the pieces I traced and colored. At this point, I have baked them and they all fit on a 4"x4" ceramic tile.














This stuff does shrink down pretty small--here is an uncooked arm, and the cooked companion, arranged next to a quarter for scale.
















I had to replace the head I made at first, as I managed to punch through the jaw line, so it would no longer attach to the rest of the body. I outlined one of the blank heads, complete with hair, and drew my own face onto the plastic. The holes are all 1/4" from the hole punch. The plan is to attach this head to the body and then make wire curly hair to attach around the head.



















And here is the finished doll. As I look at her, I think the wire hair doesn't really work--it's out of scale with the rest of her. I am planning to go back and make yet another head and leave off the holes for hair.

Paper Dolls

I have started working with paper arts recently, and I am finding a ton of neat projects to do with paper.

This is a paper doll I made with the Son Of Doll Parts sheet of rubberstamps from Alpha Stamps. I call this one Dahlia--the face just looks like a Dahlia to me.



















I started with a head stamp, a corset stamp, and four separate stamps for the arms and legs. The leg stamps were already patterned. After I colored in all the pieces with colored pencil, I discovered that there were no shoulders to attach to the head, so I just cut something freehand to see how it worked.

As you can see, she's got a bit of a linebacker build--not too heinous, but not really delicate enough for the rest of her. The sleeves are made from trimmed off gaffer tape border that I got from the $1 bins at Target. I made the skirt from some gauzy pink ribbon that was left over from something, and the ribbon across the top of the skirt is from an embellishment fiber set from Michaels.

Dahlia is just glued together--she is not mobile at all, so I decided to make some others with jointed bodies. The Twins are the result:















Basically, they are the same technique and materials. I cut out something that better approximated shoulders and neck for these girls I also added small crystal brads for their hips and shoulders. You can't tell from this photo, but I also used Aleene's paper glaze on their hair bows and waists to hold some opalescent glitter.

I think they all look like circus performers, with their gauzy skirts, patterned tights and corsets.