HappyDayArt!

etsy!

A "HANDMADE MOMENT" for Etsy.com

Posted to Etsy Handmade Moment by TZTUDIO on July 03, 2009

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This video was made by my team member Teresa Swanson! She's an animator in her day job. Jewelry artist TZTUDIO in real life!  PLEASE rate or vote on this video.

It's just faux.

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Wait, that was only one friend, here's another.

Ruth Baillie has been on my team for a while now.  She even lives pretty close to me so I sometimes see her at Hadar's place or at my silver clay guild meetings.  She's so nice and she has an English accent, so everything that she says sounds special and proper and important.  She's been working on giving her jewelry pieces more interesting names than the usual offerings.  Maybe that's why I like her shop.  I could really use some help naming some of my pieces.

Well she has some friends coming from Canada and we are all going to go out for dinner and then to a metal clay work session over at Hadar's in a couple of weeks.  I think I am going to take some of my things and ask her to name them for me.

Aren't these the cutest?  (you can find them in her shop - there's the link)

Bird Perch

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And I LOVE these!

Fly Birdie Fly

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She just got into the new PMC Annual on her first try.  I am calling her my "emerging artist" art friend, Ruth Baillie.  Here is her website.  So professional!

I have a couple of friends I want to talk about.

First of all there is Zoe Nelson.  She's a new member of my Etsy MetalClay Team and she gave me a "One Lovely Blog" Award a few days ago.  

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She has a blog that is pretty lovely too and if you go over there she's got a gorgeous photo of a Luna Moth up that she saw yesterday in her yard.

Zoe lives in North Carolina.  Really more than half a continent away from me but we are getting to know each other through our blog posts and communications among our etsy team members on a daily basis.  She is a wonderful jewelry artist, I must say. Her shop is called "Zoe Nelson Artwear" and she makes some beautiful things to wear.

Look at this "Fine Silver and Ruby Pendant"!

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and my favorite, her "Dogwood Earrings".

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Zoe, thank you for the award!  I feel like it is a nice connection between the two of us.  She says I have to pass this on, so I will.  

Here's how to do it: 

To accept the award, post it on your blog and give acknowledgement to the person who awarded it to you. (Just did that... TOO!)  Now, pass the award on to 5 (sorry Zoe, I changed it for my sanity - whoever I tag can acknowledge whomever and however many people they want) other blogs that you have discovered and contact them to let them know they've been chosen. (Doing that now...)

Here are the 5 that I chose:

Artemesia's Studio

paper ~n~soul

WaVu Designs

DANKEN

Artifice

and they are very different from mine.  Enjoy them!  I do!

Etsy is having a video contest

Here is a video produced by Jen Kahn of my Etsy MetalClay Team.  She is showing how to fire silver metal clay with a torch and the steps from making to wearing.  I love it!  I've watched it like 11 times.

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To see all the other submitted videos, go here!

or here:  http://www.etsy.tv/video/Etsy-Handmade-Metal-Clay-Moment.google.com/

Rate it!  If you have your own etsy spot or shop, you can sign in and vote on your favorite video.  The entries that win get prizes!  

Hmmm, maybe you should make a video yourself?

When I turn on my computer and bring up my browser, I open up the day on iGoogle. It's my home page and it's pretty cool because you get to pick most of the content that you have on it and there are hundreds of things you can add. I have the monthly calendar and clock, the weather, a translator (just in case - I don't want to seem like a total boob and you never know when some one is going to write something in French or Spanish). I chose the movie listings for my area, Google Docs, Craft Magazine headlines, Font of the Day, Google Map Search, Random Color Scheme (that is handy for adding colors to photoshop), 

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Daily Literary Quote, and the Eiffel Tower Mini Cam. You can choose a theme and order it all in a nice grid just the way you want it. My two favorite widgets are "Oil Painting of the Day" and "Art of the Day".  (I've provided a link to the list of painters.)  With "Oil Painting" they show popular work by Klimt and Kandinski and a little more modern type of painting. 

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"Art of the Day" is really the one I get the most entertainment from. It's always from one of the old masters like Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Michelangelo and many times it is some sort of religious painting. They do repeat over time and I have found that in the 2 years I've had that widget I really like a painter named Rogier van der Weyden who lived between 1399 and 1464:

Mary Magdalene - van der Weyden (1450)

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and Jan van Eyck who lived around the same time from 1390 to 1441. 

Angels Singing and Playing Music - van Eyck (1432)

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Van der Weyden was a South-Nederlander and van Eyck was Flemish (from Belgium).  Those years were near the end of the middle ages which was somewhere between the 5th and 15th centuries. It was also called the medieval period.  

The Virgin of Chancellor Rolin - van Eyck (1435)

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Van Eyck was one of the first to test and use oil paint "by not letting one layer dry before the next". They were both considered innovators of Dutch fine painting during that time and if you look closely you can see that van der Weyden was strongly influenced by van Eyck. The faces are amazing to me.  Their paintings were religious and full of symbolism. I'm not going to give the whole history lesson here but I did want to tell you that there is usually a biography of the painter and a bit of history written next to each painting online. I wanted to show you these paintings because every time I see them they take my breath away.

The left and right panels of The Crucifiction Triptych by van der Weyden (1445).  I'm not showing the center, it's quite sad.

Mary Magdalene  - left side (1445)

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St Veronica - right side (1445)

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That's your lite art history lesson for today.

Thank you for reading.

Kaleidoscope Obsession!

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I discovered a kaleidoscope app for my ipod touch that was free over at itunes a couple of months ago.  I had played with it a bit but it couldn't take snapshots of the screen itself and I kind of lost interest but then I took that enamel class with Richard Salley and the other day the light bulb went on for me and I got so excited about the app that I was just sitting there for about a half hour taking photos with my camera of the screen of my ipod.  I only had that free version so I thought I would go check and see if any more had been added because I found I had this unlimited resource for patterns in the photos I have taken of MY ARTWORK and loaded onto my ipod. YEAH, you can get photos of your artwork and bring them into the app and let go with the kaleidoscope mechanism and it is mesmerizing!I took more than 600 photos.  I'm going to use them for patterns in my new exploration in enamel work.  

Then I decided I had to have all the kaleidoscope apps for my ipod from itunes and... THEY ARE ALL DIFFERENT!  Some are like mandalas, some have different shapes moving and changing and I haven't even tried them all.  I think I only spent about $16 and I keep having to charge my ipod because I've been using it so much. With the other apps that I have tried you can take photos by clicking on the screen and saving.  Then you can load them back onto the computer and do anything you can think of.  YOU CAN ALTER THEM.  Patterns!  I'm obssessed.  

Look at some more (you don't know how hard it is to choose from the many - maybe I need to make it a movie) :

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These two above and below are my favorites today even though the black and white ones have been most interesting to me before this

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and I really like the flower shape in the center of this next one.

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So now I have to unpack my new enamels, which came today, and start sifting! ... as soon as I finish cleaning out the garage.  I am almost done.

AND then I have been taking part in a Wrecked Journal group roughly inspired by Keri Smith's book "Wreck this Journal".

I had three of them to work on at once by some weird twist of events but it turned out to be a good thing.

my cover:

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and some of the beginnings of the inside:

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Real life dialog at my house:

husband:  what time did you finally come to bed?

me:  5 am

husband:  you're insane!

me:  I was in a zone.  I wasn't tired and I was having fun and making art.

husband:  Yeah, I can see that would be fun.

me:  You know the birds start chirping around 5 am?

(whew!)

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It's supposed to look wrecked and it is going to go all over the US to 9 other artists before I get it back a few months from now.  I shipped mine off in some plastic saran wrap and a big label.  I wonder how it's doing now?  My back cover ⬇

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And here are a couple of my spreads in the other two books I had:

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Blick had a big surprise close-out sale on PMC and I got some of the syringe kind! Not nearly a lifetime supply but 8 packages will do for now.

My son Jack graduated from middle school, 8th grade to be exact.  He was so handsome in his sport coat!

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This year I swear he grew 6 inches.  I was standing next to him and he was a giant. He even grew taller than my daughter and she is 5'11".  Can you believe it?

So among a few small gifts I got him a little pile of jelly lenses (this is what they look like):

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We found them on ebay and have been messing with our cell phones and cameras with them.  You can use them on anything with a camera lens.  Here is a shot of him and I through the 6x lens attached to the little photo booth hole of my Mac.

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They come in sparkle, starburst, 6x, 3x (that is like a little kaleido - told you I was obsessed), heart/blue filter, star/antique filter, wide angle, close-up, polarizing... I think there were 12 in all.

And then here is my daughter Grace at the end of the year at one of the high school swim meets.  This is her, strong and capable.

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She is at a swim meet down the hill from our house at the community pool right now swimming hard and working as a junior coach.  Her social life has taken off big time and all we do is keep handing her $20's so she can go out for food with the other coaches, and to birthday breakfasts and to the movies.  We have been keeping in touch by phone.  She's getting a paycheck every two weeks!

I'm thinking about going off to Journalfest because it is happening after my kids get back to school.  It is being held at the end of October.  I can't really decide yet.  Are any of you going to go? 

Also, I was thinking about having another class here at my house because I have had a number of inquiries.  I was thinking maybe the middle of September once it gets cooler so our clay doesn't dry out too fast.  What do you think?  If you are interested, email me and I will work on getting it all together.

The latest quote I have been mulling over:

Follow your inner moonlight;  don't hide the madness.

   ~Allen Ginsberg

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Thought Cloud

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I found this over at Wordle.net.  I pasted in some text from my last post - the important bits.  (It's all about ME!)

Go make one of these for yourself.  There are different fonts, layout options and color schemes.

It's pretty!

If you were going to write down the things you were about

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at this particular moment or day in time, what would they be?

In an effort to get organized, find out what I wanted to do next, given all the choices I have in front of me and wondering where to put all of my current energy, this is what I wrote:

I'm all about:

line drawings

the heart shape

patterns

scribbler

the moving picture

action

a break in the action

adventure

red

turquoise

black

open eyes

feelers extended out

making some money

ready for the next thing that grabs me

always wishing it were so

the adhesive

layers

what's hidden

the texture

swirly lines

COLOR!

metal

understanding it

finding out for myself

it's not over yet

at 70 I want to be as excited about life as I am right now

still loving the one I am angry at

willing to try anything

cutting loose when nothing more can be done

asking myself what I think regularly

the electronic age

finding the solution

listening

fixing it

finishing the job

sleeping in whenever I can

meeting a new person

being excited

doing what's right

absorbing information, pictures, color

working hard if that's what needs to happen

bouncing ideas back and forth

working best when I am alone

I mean, what if with all the great choices in front of you, you still can't decide what to throw yourself into next?  What then?  Do you spin a bottle?  

Do you write another list?

Do you just wait until someone asks you to play with them?  

Sometimes I sign up for things that I think will be fun and then I just let the project sit until I get another offer.  Then I have two projects.  Then another offer, three projects.  Then I get another and my stress level goes up and FINALLY when I can't put them off any longer I jump up and start working on all of them at once.  THEN I know I am excited and there are deadlines and I'm writing lists and crossing things off and finishing something and starting something else and finishing two more.

I like a certain level of stress but when is it enough?  When is it too much?

I was thinking about having a show and sale at my house soon.  I just don't feeling like loading all this jewelry I have up onto etsy.  That doesn't get me excited AT ALL. It would be SO MUCH WORK!

My kids get out of school next Friday and a full summer looms ahead with the responsibility of giving rides and jobs at the pool for the swim team.  Also, we are all going with some friends of ours to Ashland, Oregon for a week to stay in a beautiful rented house and see some plays. 

I like the idea of taking along a kit filled with pens and magazines, glue, drawing pencils, a diary-type book, a couple of my little printers, my camera and laptop and some paper to print on.

Maybe it's time to let everything I've done over the last 6 months to percolate.  Oh yeah, I remember having the luxury of time for doing just that.

I'm going to tag some people.  You can do this or not.  I think it would be very interesting to know more on this topic.

What are you about right now? 

Write down as many things as you can until you can't really think of any more.

Tag as many people as you want.  Link back to the person who tagged you so they can see what you wrote.  Write a comment so people can go see your list.  No pressure. Let's see what this will bring.  I am curious as always...

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Third post same day if I'm quick about it.

This is what was waiting for me when I got home!

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LK Ludwig's newest book, "Collaborative Art Journals and Shared Visions in Mixed Media".  And the biggest surprise of all was seeing my first fatbook page ever when I opened the book to page 82.  It was for an Artfest Fatbook a few years ago that Carol Parks hosted.  

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I remember making about 30 or so of these and having such a fun time with all my creative decisions.  The window and what was going to show through it on each side because it was going to be a fold out.  The picture of me flying and the placement of each rubber stamp.  The quote by Anais Nin says "Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."

Sweet!  There are also 2 other photos I have in there with my "Project 8" cohorts and also one that is a funny piece I made for the same project but just a single shot of it.   Ya, ya, ya , ya, la, la, la, la!  Singing, dancing happy art days.  These are the best times of my life right here and now.

And I got this book too because even though I am into metal, I am interested in paint and color and texture too.  There is always time to learn something new.  It makes my life worth living!

Last, I made these and haven't posted them yet, so here goes:

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Mona Lisa Necklace,  metal clay face and collaged eye, 39 charm (a very special number) and a small square hollow bead.  Pearls and swarovski fireballs in BLUE. Tiny green pearls and a faceted green amethyst.  The chain and clasp in the back of the necklace are handmade with fused fine silver links and hammer textured in minute detail.

earrings to match and an extra pair in another color:

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Finally, a couple of pairs of earrings I made with some bezels I got from Susan Lenart Kazmer years ago and ready to use now.  There is old lace inside the bezels and silver balls and then 22K gold balls on the top of the resin, suspended as though in mid air!

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I love them and can't decide which ones to wear first!  Isn't it time you made something you could hardly wait to put on?

A little something from Asilomar.

Enameled leaves from Richard Salley's class called "Turning Over a New Leaf".  He taught us how to do this with a torch.  It was a wonderful class!  I learned so much and I have so many ideas, I just want to sit down and start making more things.

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These first two pair are earrings now.

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I was mixing colors in layers and loved the results!  

A pin of colors and textures.

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red heart pin

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red flower pendant

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red gold spiral heart pendant (can you see my red theme here?)

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This next one looks a bit like a shield.  I was just tossing different colors on and the white on top of copper that I had textured with some protruding dots.  FUN!

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This last one is really great - to me.  It's a piece of coiled mangled copper wire that I made into a bead with loops on each end and enamel fired on in many layers - about 4 layers.  

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I am going to try this again because I have some favorite colors of enamel here at home that he didn't have and I can see a necklace made of beads like this.

I had a very nice roommate named Helen who was at her first retreat.  We had a good time telling each other our stories and laughing.  Hi Helen!  You were a great roommate!

Here's a page I did in class with Misty Mawn.  

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Okay, I glued another face over mine. It was too, too ghoulish.  My faces still need some work.  BUT she did teach us all how to draw faces with a pencil and mine turned out pretty well, it is just that I think I am face paint challenged.  Back to the drawing board as they say.  

So I worked on some backgrounds and I like the way this one is heading.

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Then I got these at the art sale one night:

earrings from Stephanie Lee that say "go out on a limb" - perfect for me!

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some gorgeous handmade papers from Albie Smith that are even nicer in person!

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and then I got together with Syd McCutcheon (who is always so nice to me.  Wow!  I always feel so good about myself when I am around her.) and Susan Bezek (who I just met on the last night at dinner and feel like I have known her for much longer) and we had a nice time coming down from all the fun we had.  Syd gave me this piece:

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she made in class and I really like it, the colors, the texture and the bird and branches.  It even has gold rolled onto it by an interesting technique she explained to me.  Thank you Syd.  Until we meet again.

On the last night I finally said goodbye to everyone and told my last stories, hugged my friends and left in my car around 11:00 pm.  It was only a 2 hour drive and I am a night owl you know.

My husband was so glad to see me that he woke up around 1:30 am just to talk a bit and asked me about 30 times if I was getting in bed yet.  I was and I did and even though it was a school night he let me sleep in until 10:30 and took the kids to school for me.  Ahhhhhhhh, what a nice place home is.  I am so glad to be back and I think I am going to stay put for a while.  

Fanime Con - photos

Fan of Anime?  It was a lively and fun time.  I think I might be...

This is a Moogle from the story "Final Fantasy".

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Link from "The Legend of Zelda".

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SPAM

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Samus is a woman fighter from the video came "Metroid Prime".

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The following six photos are of characters from one of my daughter's favorite stories called "Soul Eater".  Kids posed on the command of a young woman who knows all the stories and characters.  Everyone was enthusiastic and the crowd cheered.

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Konan from the story "Naruto".  Her wings were covered in paper and she is a character who has paper jitsu which means that she can control paper.  She gave me a folded paper butterfly.

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Sasuke, another character from the story Naruto who... oh yeah, nevermind. Interesting hands huh?

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Below, characters from the story and video game "Disgaea".

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I LOVE the next photo!  Just legs walking fast and me taking a picture following as fast as I could while walking through a crowd.

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beautiful colors

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characters from the video game "Final Fantasy"

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Zombies from the same game.  Creepy!

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Too cool!

WHAT IS EVERYONE DOING OUT THERE?!

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I am here, back from my travels, unpacked and laundered.  Do you want to know what I am doing?  OK, you twisted my arm, I'll tell!  I'm easy.   

First, I have only 3 zines left!  WOW!  What a fun project!  Thank you everyone for supporting it and making my life easy by getting one, following my crazy shipping instructions and waiting patiently the first month or so when it was a bit chaotic and I was getting ready for Artfest at the same time.  I am touched and so thrilled that you all thought that it was interesting and worthwhile.  Thank you, thank you and thank you again.  These paltry words don't convey how I really feel, so multiply it by 300 or so and it may come close (so subjective, I know).

I have been working on stuff.  So here is some stuff to show you and I'll write some words in between as explanation.

I got this totally great starfish pendant from my friend Wendy Malinow:

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Back

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It is made from silver precious metal clay with a piece of pale green sea glass for the center and the detail in the back is polymer clay. I have admired Wendy's work since she won first prize in the PMC category of the Saul Bell Award in 2002 and then she was a finalist in 2005 and won again last year (2008) in the Swarovski category.  I met her in person at Art & Soul in Portland the first time I went and then again last October and we were both in the book "Metal Clay Beads" when she contacted me to ask me if I was excited about it.  I love this starfish, as much for what it is, a lovely replica of something in nature and a symbol of a new beginning friendship that I have with someone I admire and have been inspired by for many years.  Yay!  Thank you Wendy.

I've been making these.  Five 2-sided heart pendants before firing (click for a larger view):

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I built them on cork clay forms I made.  The other sides:

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How I set them up for firing in the kiln with some beads described below:

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What it looked like in my kiln:

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After I fired them and brushed them with a warm soapy soft brass brush:

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And then oxidized, polished and with some red metallic and blue metallic resin inside.  The front:

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I have only ever used red and always wanted to try the blue color which I added by putting some Pearl Ex Powder into my clear resin.  It turned out very vibrant.  The flip side:

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And then the beads.  The tops:

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and their flip sides:

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What the beads look like after they were fired and brushed with the soft brass brush and dropped into a tumbler with steel shot.  I covered them with warm water and a couple of drops of liquid soap.

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Done tumbling after 3 hours.  I then used liver of sulphur for a patina and polished off the high spots so my detail shows perfectly.

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You know what I am going to make with them?  RINGS!

And then:

I got these gems on ebay from a seller called World Gems.  The quality is better than I even imagined or could get from their photos.  

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They are located in Murrieta, California so they took almost no time getting to me.   The gems are big.  The smallest one is 8x6 mm and the largest is 12 mm round.  I am going to make MORE rings.  I am all about rings right now!

More ring ideas and I have only just begun!  I have been drawing them as fast as I can think of them.  I am crossing my fingers that this summer I can get some things done.

These are the tops.  I have to add the shanks, or the part that goes around the finger. The loopy one is going to have a gem set inside the oval recess.

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below I'm showing the part that will have the shank added:

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and finally getting to building up a chain I started some time ago:

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Now this is a cloisonne owl I made a few years ago in a class up at the Mendocino Art Center.  

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I always planned to make the setting for it so I could wear it as a pin or a pendant.  I didn't have the skill to figure it out before but I think I will tackle it now. One day I dropped it on the floor and it has a few hairline cracks in the enamel.  All I have to do is put it back into my kiln at approximately 1450 degrees for about 3 minutes and it will all melt back together.  

BUT,  I was wondering if I could do it with a torch.  So I am heading off to Art & Soul in Asilomar on Sunday and I'm planning to take a class from Richard Salley on firing enamel onto metal with a torch.  I signed up for this class so long ago and it's finally coming around.  I am really looking forward to it.  

A couple of days before that though, my daughter and I are going off to the Fanime Convention down in San Jose.  She is into Anime and this is where all the people who are into it go and get all Anime-geeky together, uh, kind of like I do art.  A bunch of her friends are going too so she won't really need me except for a place to sleep (hotel room), money (bank of mom) and someone to check in with (that's for me) so she doesn't (or I don't) get lost or lonely at night.  She probably doesn't really need me, but I thought I would go and make sure she is all right.  I am PG  (parental guidance).

So what are you doing out there?  Huh?

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I love NYC...

and I love the MOMA there.  this was the third time I had been there and I get inspired every time. 

view from the inside out onto the New York streets... 

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I went on a trip across the country to visit my friend Marie.  She was such a nice host and made sure I got some sleep, had breakfast in the morning and took me into the big city two days out of five.  On the last day we met her husband after work and went to a fancy restaurant called Blue Fin and then to an off-Broadway play (I love those plays just a bit off the beaten path but popular none the less) called "The Norman Conquests".  Oh!  It was very funny and the seats were all in the round and you could almost touch the actors so it felt like we were quite nearly in the play ourselves.

One day we made art Marie's way and I am keeping that a secret for now because she is experimenting with a medium that is pretty new and I want her to be able to show and tell when she is ready.  

On our other full day of art we made jewelry pieces and parts with PMC.  I had pretty much packed everything I could fit into half my suitcase so I could show her how my metal clay medium works, fire it and finish it all to our satisfaction by the end of the day.  What fun!  Here is what we made:

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Marie's ring first.  

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I am so proud of her!  I love the way it looks old but is new.  She made all the marks on the heart herself.  It fits her and I am especially happy about that because we didn't have anything to size it with except our wits.

Here is my ring and I made a spiral for the very reason that we had no ring forms or any mandrel.  The heart on mine is hollow!

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It can be adjusted to fit any finger.  We fired everything in the Ultralite Beehive Kiln for 2 hours, so I know it is sturdy.  With a little wear and bending gently and slightly back and forth a bit, or hammering it on a metal mandrel with my rawhide mallet, or even tumbling it in my tumbler with steel shot it should harden up quite nicely.

I also made this heart pendant.  

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It is hollow and has little patches of script attached onto it.  Both of my hearts were sanded before firing so that now they are finished they feel very smooth and worn.

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Then I had some clay left over and wanted to show off for Marie by making two coils and then attaching the ends like donuts.  I rolled them down to flat circles and then trimmed and sanded those pieces until they were uniform.  I had never done this before and was trying it to see if I could use less clay and have to trim less of it off later when it was dry.  I love the earrings I made from these parts and by accident really they look very good on and they make a nice tinkling sound.  Try it!

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So I am now in the process of taking photos of my work from the past year to submit to the next PMC Annual.  This will be the third year that it's being published.  I was very happy to be included in the first two annuals and I am hoping I get mentioned again.  If you think that you'd like to send in some work, I encourage you to do it.  Take your best pieces, photograph them and send the photos in on slides or on a CD by the 16th of this month to be considered.  Good luck!

A MEME, some current work and a funny photo at the end.

I got tagged by my dear friend Marie Otero, while she was far away in Australia, to participate in her MEME.  So to stay on her good side I though I would.  I am going to go visit her in New York next week and leaving late Sunday night on a red eye flight.  Here goes:

I'm thinking...

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What is your current obsession?
 

altering my photos with the apps on my ipod touch  

Which item from your closet are you wearing most lately?
 

Some soft brown knit pants with hook and eye closure front 

What’s for dinner?
 

sushi  

What was the last thing you bought?
 

a paper mache cupcake box and 5 pairs of earrings in styles I don't make  

What are you listening to right now?
 

my son's alarm beeping, and beeping, and beeping

Favorite vacation spots?
 

London (really!)  New York (Yippee!) and Hawaii (at Christmas when the weather is perfect!) 

What are you reading right now?
 

Theo Ellsworth's book "Capacity" and a book I found at a white elephant sale called "The Spoken Word Revolution" (poetry). 

What four words would you use to describe yourself?
 

open minded and opinionated 

What is your current guilty pleasure?
 

being completely alone for a couple of hours a day 

What would you do if the internet was irreparably damaged and you had to find another way to connect? 

I'd get on the phone I guess. 

Where are you planning to travel next?
 

To New York on Sunday night, arriving bright and early Monday morning. 

What was the best thing you ate or drank recently?
 

Vueve Clicquot champagne  

What flower are you most anxious to see bloom this spring?
 

hmmm, I want to see Marie's peonies 

What are you most happy doing?
 

playing my new favorite song over and over and singing to it  

Care to share some wisdom?
 

If you are in a bad mood, tense or nervous, go towards something good. 

Rules of the meme: Respond and rework. Answer the questions on your own blog; replace one question that you dislike with a question of your own invention; add one more question of your own.  I am tagging Dneese, Lynn, Beth, Julie.

A new birdhouse necklace for another dear friend:

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Detail

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Calling on Springtime - the words "JOY" and "SUN are carved on the back of this pendant below.

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A mixture of silver and bronze:

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I went to the Northern California Bead Society show last weekend and met up with old friends and found some new ones.  Here is a beautiful pin I found made of ceramic and raku fired.  It was made by Gail Splaver who works mostly in ceramic and is also a bookmaker and print artist and teaches over at the SF Center for the Book.  Isn't it perfect?!

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She also made this face bead I just had to have.  I drew the picture around it because I was inspired.  Gail approves.

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Here is something I found that sounds nice. 

"Look as long as you can at the friend you love, no matter whether that friend is moving away from you or coming back toward you."  - rumi