Fire, glass, and metal chapter: I'm going to the Street Fair!!

Handmade Metal and Glass Jewelry!

I started torch firing with a new technique after reading "painting with fire", by Barbara Lewis. There is a steep learning curve, and I would prefer to take a class or workshop, but I haven't seen anything like this offered in the Bay Area (though I haven't looked at The Crucible yet).  So, there are a pile of failed "experiments" at that back of my bench. I really believe that training as a bench scientist was perfect preparation for this sort of thing!

Anyways - in May, the owner of my local bead shop, Bead Inspirations, offered customers who'd spent at least $100 this year the chance to set up a table in front of the store at the Spring Park Street Fair. I had been making a lot of bits and pieces and trying new techniques, but didn't have enough pieces or time to prepare in time. But Vicki said I'd have another chance at the Art & Wine Faire July26-27 - that's this weekend!!

Here are some pieces as a preview:

These are the most intricate using many little enameled bits.

I made a series with just the larger pansy form as a focal piece:

And I made lots of earrings - some with enameled filigree beads or discs, and many pairs that I fashioned from Vintaj natural brass blanks or copper blanks. 

They've been embossed, shaped, hammered, enhanced with inks and patinas, polished, and combined with beads and other elements to make the finished jewelry pieces:

I made the earring card holder from two old frames (another post maybe). The photos lost some resolution in the iPad post-writing experiments - the earrings look quite lovely in person and not at all fuzzy!

Some of the earrings above use old clock faces. I made a pretty fun steampunky necklace too by riveting metal elements together:

More enamel pendants, most are made from copper discs or pennies (pre-1981).  Several have images from enamel decals fired into the glass:

I also made some bracelets using memory wire, others with handmade pottery focal pieces...

Another enamel piece - I want to make more hand cut shapes and pieces. Hopefully I will be able to sell some things and be encouraged to continue playing with different techniques and designs.

I have a couple of beaded necklaces, and many more beaded earrings that I haven't photographed yet. 

I hope some of my friends will stop by and say hello this weekend - I'm excited!!

The Fair is on Park Street in Alameda between Lincoln Ave (the Bead Store and my table will be there to the right of the bandstand) 10am-6pm - check it out!!

xoxo, janet

Adventures in jewelry making

 When you don't blog for a long time, stuff happens. hopefully.  That is, if you are extremely busy and you only have so many hours in a day, you'd probably spend your extra couple of hours each week working on something craftsy rather than blogging about how you have no time to work on anything craftsy, right?  Well, that's been my MO for the past, oh, I'd say at least 5 months - since I took on some additional work responsibilities, moved Teen Wonder to college, and started a new school year with Wild Thing.

But I have done a few things while I've been  not hanging out in blogland.I've loaded photos for a couple of posts so I can just do some blogging on the fly while I'm traveling this week.

Today's post includes some jewelry pieces I've worked on over the past few months, starting with my most recent - the "Elegant Twinkling Lights" pendant. You'll see this pendant one more time this week because I designed this for a little online contest at the Vintaj blog and I'll ask you all to go vote for my piece!

This piece is made with natural brass pieces from the Vintaj line combined with crystal facet beads in sort of a shimmery greenish topaz hue. I'm really happy with how it turned out!

Next up some "scrabble tile" pendants.

I bought these tile pendant "kits" on pickyourplum.com probably a year ago (?). I've been trying to go through my craft stash and work with the impulse buys I've made and either make them into things or give them away. These are cute, but I guess the scrabble tile thing is a bit passe. Oh well, they make cute little gifts and accent pieces to wear. I glued bales to the backs of all of these, but have only added a chain to a few. Gave one to my mom and one to Teen Wonder, and kept two for myself (below)

Fall Leaves - made with Japanese paper from the Diaso store (love that place!)

This sugar tile was cut from my biochemical pathways poster

These next two are copper enamel with my butane torch, plus some stamping. I have some additional enamel pieces that I haven't turned into jewelry yet. It's a good way to get out of my head and play for an hour or so in the garage!

The red disc in the second pendant is the same size as the purple disc in the one above - both were made with old pennies.

I hope everyone has a great week! Tomorrow I'll post a link for my twinkling pendant and ask you all to vote for my design (if you like it). I'm off to Switzerland tonight for the week.

(almost) instant gratification...

I haven't been blogging lately. I've been squishing a little knitting in here or there (with mistakes, grrr) and I took another class at the bead shop here in Alameda (Bead Inspirations).  Last time I blogged, it was about the torch enamel class I took. This time it was a cold metalwork class - texturing, punching, stamping, riveting, coloring and patinas, that sort of thing. It was fun! There is a commercial line of brass blanks and ornamental findings and charms called "Vintaj" that is pretty addictive - this workshop featured those products heavily. But I wanted to learn about stamping, riveting and different metals or patinas mostly. I've had some design ideas in my head to combine enamel, metalsmithing, and beading for some simple jewelry designs - but mostly it's a good escape for a few hours to go somewhere where you've paid good money to have fun and learn something! Personal time for me has been in short order lately.

Here are the things I worked on at the class:

This pendant was actually the result of poor punching alignment on my first square blank - I was determined to make something of it! The blank was textured with a riveting hammer, and the peridot beads I did little wire wraps to attach to extra holes. I polished the blank under the flower spray piece just a bit to make the spray and beads pop a little.  It's very small and detailed, but I like it and have worn it this week.

A little book was our first project in the workshop - both the front and back covers are textured and hammered, and I stamped "SOAR" after choosing to put a bird on it (heh). My first attempt at stamping, so my "S" took 2 tries and you can see the stutter close up. I used sharpie for a faux patina - scrubbed off a bit. I need to put some pages inside and string it on a cord - maybe a little care package gift for Teen Wonder?

Next to a penny so you can see the small scale...

And these wee owls riveted to a little rectangular blank. I'm not sure they will stay. I have to complain a little about how the Vintaj rivets are too large for the Vintaj product holes - so you have to ream them out with an exacto knife - they were so thin - you can see they got hammered out from under the rivet, so I don't know if this piece will stay together yet. 

I got out all my old beads, findings, charms and tools too. What a crazy mess!  I spent one evening while obsessing thinking about stuff at work and being insomniac, sorting through it all and organizing it. It's amazing to me how sorting through materials can result in some fun matchings and discoveries in a short period of time!

First, I wanted to try my stamping idea with a little enamel piece I made in our new workshop (I have TWO crafting areas now!!).
A STAR is born:

Stamped on a basic washer from the hardware store and wire wrapped to hang from the chain, along with a tiny star bead (I'm practicing wire wrapping, which I've never really done before. Maybe a class for that would be useful.

When it is worn, the charms layer more like this...

I wanted to turn my little torch enamel pairs from the class into earrings too.

Cute!  And more ambitious wire wrapping - but Mr. Wonderful commented that he liked the wire work totally unsolicited - he said it really added a nice detail. He's so nice to me and almost always says the right thing without any prompting. Amazing.

Then I got to the pile of pieces of beadwork that had been damaged or broken and hadn't seen the light of day for years - so with a new confidence in bead crimping and stringing technique that may have been partly based in reality of new mad skills and partly fueled by a glass of wine, I restrung these beautiful dark blue-purplish beads that match above earrings nicely (and they've been in the bead stash for at least 12 years!)

And repaired this lariat style necklace (??10 years gone? 9?8?) - not a total re-string, just one of the lariat ends had come unstrung...

Lastly I got brave enough to select a strong beading wire and restring the pearls that Mr. Wonderful gave me as a wedding gift - I wore them at our wedding and many many times after. Then one day one of the double strings broke and I was too afraid to keep wearing them with a single string. They are so pretty and it's nice to have them back.

I have some other little projects that I need to photograph and post too - as well as a bunch of pix from my blackberry that I took in Basel early spring of a yarn bomb project there. Totally cool! since I'm not producing much lately by way of impressive projects, at least I'll have those pix to post soon. These public knitting projects are so fascinating - I had read about several before, but stumbled on the one in Basel completely randomly and by accident!

I will see if it's not too late to link up with Sarah's Whoop Whoop! Friday party and the TGIFF linky - I just haven't been in blog-land lately and I miss reading and looking at everyone's creativity  Don't you hate when life gets in the way of your craftiness? (sigh)\