Art Show Last Saturday

I participated in an art show with both paintings and jewelry last Saturday. My twin sister, shown in the photo, likes to come and sit shows with me since that is the only time we seem to get together for "just us" sister time.

I had a good day overall, meeting many people who appreciated my jewelry, but people certainly are not buying at this point! This was a much different sale than those I have had in the past.

My next jewelry/art show will be on Thanksgiving, hopefully people will be in the buying mood for Christmas!

Nice to be listened to...

...by someone I admire so much for her wire-wrapped jewelry style! I stop by Tela's Formosa's blog daily since she often posts her work and it speaks to me so grandly. She adores working with cab's, I do too, and always am inspired by her wrapping style. I am sure my "style" has improved greatly since following her excellent blog.

I stated that I was looking forward to see how she wraps a square stone since I have a parallelogram-shaped cab that is begging me to create something for and I have not come up with any good designs. The tips she offered for creating new design shapes is priceless to me and the sample she wrapped because I asked is wonderfully original and absolutely gorgeous.

What an honor!

More Turquoise and Copper

I have had all of the components for this design floating around in my head for awhile and finally got it executed. I am trying to decide whether to patinate the copper or not, I find it difficult to get away from enjoying the copper while it is shiny but appreciating its vintage look as it oxidates. Still pondering!

Fun Assortment

This is just a fun assortment I have been working with in getting ready for an upcoming art show. The Dancer on the left is from a tutorial by Tela Formosa.

The next earrings to the dancer's left  is a pair of clip-on earrings I made as a gift for someone who doesn't have pierced ears (imagine that!).

The rock fellow sitting to the left of those earrings is holding a sign that say's "Hello". I thought that would look cute on my display table amidst the jewelry for sale. I got this tutorial by Feelingstone Gifts, LLC, provided in the  jewelrylessons.com website.

Zipper pulls

These are the latest zipper pulls I have finished. they will be offered on sale at the upcoming art club Oktoberfest here. I like the idea of fancy zipper pulls and it will be interesting to see how popular they are. I think these will look great on jackets and vests this Fall and Winter.

Copper/Jasper/Carnelian

This is my latest creation, made up as I went along and without a tutorial. I started out using 12 g copper wire, which I hammered and fashioned into a textured free-form pendant. I then decided to use that as a frame for a jasper cabachon I had. I decided I liked it and made it into a necklace, matching the cab with some carnelian beads I had. I had a great time "designing" this.

Darlene's Druzey

Darlene was referred to me by a beading friend who does not do wire wrapping. Darlene had this stone and wanted it wrapped with silver wire to hang from her omega. She sent the omega and stone to me and this is what I did, pending her approval. I received the approval (she loves it!) and will send it today.

I don't like this photo as much as the one I sent her, but now cannot find that one so this is what I got before I sent the package to her. This angle makes it look sorta wonky, which it isn't.

9/11/11

Darlene called me today to let me know that she had received the pendant and necklace and was so very pleased, in her words "it is so much more than I expected!". How encouraging were those words to me!


I have started working on some free-form/my own design pendants using undrilled stones and cabachons, great fun and will start photographing them as I complete them.

Three-Wire Bails

I downloaded a tutorial by Abby Hook at jewelrylessons.com the other day and immediately made these simple pendants. I love the simplicity of this design, even though I added the spirals they are very clean and simple.

Big Sister Necklace

Aubrey saw this cat pendant in my bead stash while visiting last year and admired it. I told her, then, that there might be a special occasion when I turned it into a necklace for her sometime in the future! Well, when her little brother, Zane, was born I tucked this into the package of onsies I sent for him as a big sister necklace. I think she was very pleased, hooray for being a Grandma!

New Workbench!

Okay, how many other old ladies do you know with a hardwood workbench in their master bedroom? Hmmmm? For my recent birthday, my husband decided I should have one to work on with my jewelry. We do home hemodialysis for him in the master bedroom and I usually work on jewelry there while he is dialyzing, so it makes sense to us! I got it at Harbor Freight and think it makes a real nice furniture piece in addition to being so functional.

I will soon take a photo of it after I got it loaded with my equipment, supplies and tools. So far, I like it a lot!

Stromatolite Wrap

This cabachon is of stromatolite, sent to me by Bob Hale. I finally got brave enough to wrap it and like the resulting pendant. I will attempt some more of the stones he sent soon as they are all just gorgeous.

 Here I torched and hammered sheet copper to make this dangly necklace. I made the chain by making bead connectors and wiring them together to form the links.

This is a pendant I made from a piece of jasper I rock-hounded in Deming, NM and then tumbled and polished it. I then wrapped it in antiqued copper wire to suspend from a simple wire neck ring. I love the colors in this stone!

All Wired Up Beads.com

I want to mention the recent wonderful service I received from All Wired Up Beads.Com. I had been eyeing the Wubbers bail-making pliers they offer for awhile now and heard from Sharilyn Miller's blog that they were offering one of her latest books and DVD's as a bonus when you order three pliers from them, for a limited time. that very day I sent my order in and within four days I received it! I have only had time to glance at the photos in Sharilyn's book, but the projects look fantastic and the bail-making pliers look to be just what I need for the many pendants I am wrapping right now.

Especially appreciated was the care with which my order was packaged, this is sadly lacking in some mail order companies and their special touch of a hand-written note, wishing me "happy Wubbing" on the invoice by the person packing it was a very nice touch!

New Mexico Stone 3

I am surely having fun using my New Mexico stones I have polished and wrapped. This one has such nice color streaks. As in the pendant below, one cannot do a classical, traditional wrapped frame around it as it is asymmetrically-shaped. But I like the organic nature of these stones; especially since I collected, tumbled and wrapped them myself!

I will start wearing these to test the market and road-test them for comfort and see how well they do. I have lots more raw rocks to tumble!

New Mexico Stone 2

This is another of my stones I collected, tumbled/polished and then wrapped into a pendant. Since it is smooth and has no drilled holes it is a challenge to wrap well, but I am getting better at it! This stone is not cut and shaped, it is what it is as it comes out of the tumbler, so I decided to go with a funky, asymmetrical wrap since that is what the stone seemed to need.

I apologize for the reflection on the stone as it is much richer in color in real life than is shown here.

I received my order of square and half-round copper wire from Parawire and was very pleased with their service so will order from them again. Here, I used their antique copper square wire for the frame and wraps. Nice stuff!

Stone Duo and Purple!

 While shopping at Gem World in Quartzsite, I found some of these luscious purple drilled cabs. When at art shows I frequently hear "do you have anything in purple?" So, I jumped on a few of these and like the combination of purple base with magenta flecks.

These are such fun drilled stones, they go together nicely and seem to be popular at sales. I am glad I stocked up  on the wire neck rings while in Quartzsite!

Definitely hand-made, all the way!

I can't remember whether I mentioned that my friend, Bob Hale (with whom I share a "rocky" relationship) recently sent me a care package with five wonderful cabachons for wrapping. I promise I will show you all these as I get them wrapped, but in the meantime I have to practice more with wrapping very smooth, sometimes asymmetrical stones to be able to do justice to the ones he sent.

A couple of years ago Tom and I discovered a place in New Mexico where the jasper stones are prevalent, particularly red and yellow jasper. We collected them, hauled a box of them home and I tumbled and polished them. I have chosen a few of them to work with for simple pendants. This one has some red jasper inclusions in the yellow jasper base. It is a very smooth result from the tumbling and polishing and I liked just holding it in my hand! It is about 2-inches long and had no rough edges at all to start my wrap. But, I found that by using half-round brass wire that I was able to get the basic wraps done for security and form the bail and then twist the "tails" together to form the simple swirl for accent. I don't want to overdo the wrapping on these as I want the stones to speak for themselves, as I think this one does.

PS...To my friend, Woodie, who recently challenged (he may prefer the term "inspired") me to do something more artisinal than just buying stone pieces and beads and then wrapping them, here you go! Can't get much more hand-wrought than rock-hounding the stone, tumbling and polishing it, then hand-wrapping it. I will give credit to God for the raw stone itself as I had nothing to do with that part, but from there on it is all mine!

SOLD

Turquoise Pendant 2

During a recent quick trip to Quartzsite, AZ I picked up some more turquoise donuts, pendants and cabachons (plus a few) other goodies! This was one of the donuts I saw and liked. I have lots to work with, gotta get busy now...

Arrowhead Trio

Due to home circumstances of either me or my husband's unhealthful state (mainly blaming my broken leg!) I have not been able to go back to Quartzsite to Gem World since before the holidays in 2010. When calling them last Friday I learned that they would be closing the following week...for the summer! So, we did a spontaneous trip to QTZ and Gem World so I could feed my inventory of good stuff before the summer. Tom noticed a basket of jasper arrowheads that I had missed seeing and I am so glad he did. I bought ten of these, now I wish I had bought the whole basket! They are rough-hewn  and lovely pieces of jasper. I am going to try for a very minimalist wrap for most of these since I want them to speak for themselves and have only enough of a frame to be securely wrapped.

Now, to see if there will be time to sneak back down there again before next Saturday. I can always use a few more goodies..yikes!

Newest Neck Rings

 At my recent jewelry sales, I am becoming convinced that my "bread and butter" pieces will always be my copper earrings and my neck rings with simple pendants, such as these. After my last weekend's sale, my inventory of both pendant neck rings and copper earrings is sorely lacking so I am dreaming up new designs and looking for more stones.

I think many ladies like to wear pieces that are of natural stone, but dislike the heaviness of a complete necklace made of the focal pendant piece and stone beads. Also, these are interesting and make wearing jeans look like you are being somewhat elegant, but casual. I am hooked on them myself! Casual but cool.

These last two are made from turquoise stones and embellished just a bit more on the neck ring. The earrings with this one were just hooked onto the ring for the photo, they are not placed there when wearing!

As I said, elegant but casual, too.

SOLD

Gettin' Ready for a Show

I am adding to my inventory of jewelry for an upcoming show at the Sun City Grand Art Faire this coming weekend. I am going crazy over these neck rings,  I just think they go with everything, from casual to dressy.

I have had this glass focal bead for awhile and found that I had a strand of smaller beads that just matched it perfectly, so voila!

These are from a piece of copper I torched to bring out colors, and unexpectedly got such an amazing array of reds and silver tones. torching copper is like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates...you never know what you are gonna git!

I had made a beaded-on-beading wire necklace out of these stone beads which were admired by quite a few customers, but when they tried it on they all felt it was a bit too heavy for their comfort. So, after considering what to do, I decided to take it apart and repurpose the beads into this neck wire ensemble. I like the lighter look now, too.

This set will not be available for sale, it will go into a private collection.










The necklace below was another one of the torched copper pieces that, as it was turning interesting colors, I finally said stop! I just loved the dark blues, violets, greens and reds that happened when torching this one. I don't think the true colors show up as well in this photo as in real life, but truly it is gorgeous. As Forrest said above, ya just never know!
                                                                            SOLD

Finally, new jewelry

 I know I promised to start posting more of my jewelry projects as I create them, but I foolishly fell down four weeks ago and broke my leg! I have not felt very creative as I have been starting to heal. Anyway, here are a few of what I have been working on.

The copper triangle earring on the right is convertible in that the gold tone portions of the earring are on a post which can be removed from the copper triangle and worn as a dangle by itself or with the copper piece behind the dangle.

You should try using a sawhorse in the master bedroom to pound copper while your leg is propped up and you are sitting in a wheelchair! Interesting visual, huh?

 My twin sister has requested that I make her a necklace and earring set with red beads, not warm color red beads but cool color red beads. I had coral beads that matched this request so used them, although in the photo they show up as being a bit orange; which they are not in real life.

These are some earrings requested by my sister to match a shell necklace she bought from me earlier. It is great to have a twin who likes what I make and requests specific pieces be made! Yes, I am giving her a family discount.....

Three New Pieces

 As promised (at least to myself) I have photographed three newer pieces that I had finished but not posted. I need to improve my posting of jewelry pieces to this blog! I am preparing for an artwalk at Toscana at Desert Ridge in a few weeks and wanted to have some new special pieces for my display.

This is another of my copper calla lily pendants. This one has silvertone accents. The others like this I have made have had turquoise beads for accents and I wanterd to do something different.

SOLD

 This pendant is a stone I have had for awhile but didn't have what I wanted to use to make a necklace from. I did find some howlite stone beads and used those, linked together in sections, to make this necklace.

This is something really funky I decided to try. I downloaded a free tutorial by Judy Freyer-Thompson from the ArtJewelry online website. It involves patination of metals using a process that in different steps involves the use of Kosher salt, white vinegar and ammonia. I really love the free-form designs on these discs, which I will use for some earrings. I am not sure how I will design them, but I do know I don't want to cover up this patination with anything fancy, it should stand on its own! I am thinking ahead now to pendants using this method, how cool is this?!

SOLD

Jewelry Give-Away

I am always interested to see the generous nature of those who give paintings or jewelry away on their blogs. Right now, Tish McDermott is giving away a lovely pair of earrings to the lucky one chosen from the comments section of her blog. Just click on over to her blog and enter...her pieces are lovely and so imaginative.

I promise to start photographing the pieces I am working on and begin posting them here again. I have neglected to do that for far too long!

Aubrey and Grandma Time!

We had the pleasure of a few days' visit from our youngest son and his family. This included my Ms. Aubrey! After raising only sons, it is such a pleasure to have a girly-girl to play with and have her participate in our activity planning! She came with her plans of what she and Grandma could do together. This included painting, bracelet-making and I surprised her with a chocolate chip cookie baking session. We had to have the energy to do all of these activities together!

She is developing a sense of design, whether it be painting or jewelry. She wanted a bracelet that matched the poorple in her pretty new dress. Of course Grandma had just the perfect beads in her growing stash. We both had a great time and created more wonderful memories together.