Week 28

Well...I was planning on tonight being my big worknight this week, but then Bob went and cut himself and we've been trying to stop the bleeding for 2 hours to no avail so...i'm going to post what i have. It's not a lot, but it's fairly detailed. Two glasses.

First, a green man design- i'd like to perfect it a little further, but Bob says he calls dibs on this glass anyway.

The second glass I made this week- was my final attempt at translating the daggers design to a wine glass. I've only done 1 so far, but I will probably make the other 3 for the original commission.

Sorry the pictures are a little blurry- i had the flash off and wasn't paying enough attention and really don't feel like re-taking them at the moment.

I also made another ear cuff- i think this one is kind of fun, but i'll have to add some glue to secure the gold rings to the green beads so they dont slide around:

I may find something else to do yet in the night, but there's only an hour and a half left in the week so I think I'm just going to shoot for a heavy load next week.

Week 27

I suppose I should apologize now, because you're going to be seeing an awful lot of glass in the next month in order to have some semblance of an inventory at the craft show.

The first thing I made this week is a henna inspired martini glass which i'm really happy with. It's all freehand so it's not quite perfect, but then again henna isn't ever perfect either yet is always beautiful. This is my first one and I love it- enough that this particular one may just be for me. It was really bad for my hand- one of these leaves my hand feeling the way it does after 4 of the others.

later in the week, I made 2 more of these. Each differs slightly, but I am definitely getting the hang of this particular pattern. I plan on coming up with other patterns, but for now I'm perfecting this one.

I really want to make a wedding set in this style- one of my henna books has pictures of wedding henna where one hand has the face of the bride and the other the face of the groom, and it's really beautiful.



I almost hesitate to show you the commissioned set I made this week, because I feel very critical of it. I must have washed these glasses and started over half a dozen times. I even cracked one and had to grab a fresh glass. You've seen a martini glass and shotglasses in the "Daggers Series", but I grossly underestimated the difficulty I would have in transferring the same design to a wine glass. It wasn't until the 4th or 5th try that I finally hunted down a roll of electrical tape to get the outer triangles as true as I possibly could on a curved surface. Due the amount of frustration I had with this set, I feel a bit of unwarranted bias against it and don't imagine i'll be making another of its kind for quite some time. Though I still feel like i can get a sharper angle than that so i might give it one more go....

Week 26

Week 26. Halfway. In the past 6 months, I have made over 100 headbands, about a dozen hairflowers, half a dozen copper feather pieces, 2-3 dozen handpainted glasses, and an assortment of silver and copper jewelry including pendants, chains, hair pins, and ear jewelry.

 In honor of this halfway point, I'd like to share that I got into a craft fair. October 23rd and 24th at Hunter's Valley Winery, I'll be setting up a little stand with wine glasses and jewelry. Not sure if I'll bring my headbands or not- i feel like my hodge podgey way of making whatever i feel like doesn't necessarily mesh real well for an art show, but we'll see.

This week, I made a set of glasses in the tree bark series. They're hard to take pictures of because there's SO much black, but in person they have a really cool optical illusion effect from the lines going every which way around the glass. These were commissioned, but I'm sure I'll make more. I want to take at least 10 sets of glasses to the craft fair plus a mix of single glasses.

I also decided to finally play with ear cuffs this week. I finally have silver wire in an appropriate gauge, and they came out pretty cute. I apologize that my ears aren't more photogenic :)

Bob wants me to make a bracelet we saw at Artsfest so stay tuned for that.

Week 25-Scratchglass

I needed a break from pewter- it was bugging me- and while hairflowers are fun, I feel like I need to do something else. This week we played with glass.

The main reason I stopped painting glass is that i find the lack of detail really frustrating, so I created what I call scratchglass, where I color block and then scratch away the pattern. The process is really trying on my hand though (my thumb goes numb.I stopped doing these over an hour ago and my thumb is still numb. Working on hunting down a different scratching tool with a thicking grip.)
I made a set of 4 wine glasses:

They still need cleaned and clearcoated, but i couldn't resist putting them up on etsy.

I also made a martini glass:

And I'm still working on this little glass for Bob for his port wine. I free handed it, so it's not perfect, but I'm really proud of it. Obviously it still needs cleaned up, but I'm not done with it yet.

I also started playing with beach glass this week, but there aren't any particularly cool results yet so we'll save it for another day.

I made some more stuff friday and saturday. Another martini glass:

Martini Glass-Dagger Series

And some shot glasses:

Shotglasses- lava series

Shot glasses- Dagger Series

Week 24

Update on the pewter front: We're fighting. Will continue to fight with it. That is all...

So...naturally I went to a tried and true project that I love- hair accessories. I did a few more hair flowers, this time I started wrapping the bases so they look a little less like i just yanked them off of a wire stem (since that's exactly what i do) You've seen the yellow, but i made another and the picture was just so cute I couldn't help myself.

After flowers, I decided to fiddle with feathers. It could have gone more smoothly- i won't be selling this one as it's messier than i would like (though part of that had to with the fact that i thought a part of the accessories was actual grass/twig/plant material when it was really plastic which meant some accidental melting was involved.) I think it's pretty. I'll probably make another. I only had the one comb to play with though so i will have to buy more.

Since I was playing with glue, I decided to make some marble magnets- you've seen them, they're everywhere- i have several from different places. I was playing with glue and silk flowers so...naturally i backed mine in silk flower- it's a cream and green marbled leaf pattern that kiiiiiinda looks like a watermelon rind:

On a side note, I obviously didn't do this (seeing as i don't have the equipment, etc.), but I had a ring plated last week. My dad gave me (and my sisters) a lot of beautiful jewelry growing up, most specifically a diamond ring when each of us turned 13. I treasure all the jewelry I have from my father, but I don't wear it very often because it's ALL yellow gold (which i just don't happen to love with my skintone, i prefer white gold). I mentioned to my sisters i was thinking of having it reset and one them told me I could just get it dipped/plated to be white gold (which had never occurred to me seeing as i don't think a whole lot people plate over gold) I got it back on my anniversary and it is BEAUTIFUL! See?!?!?See?!?!?

Also note that I am clearly taking pictures with my kodak camera- so much better aren't they?

Also- just to throw it out there- it's wallflowers season again in our house (at the first sign of fall, my house smells like cinnamon, lol) and I realized last winter that i could refill my wallflowers. I only buy cinnamon stick fragrance oil, but if people would be interested in having me refill their wallflower bulbs at $1/pop(as opposed to the $5 minimum a new refill bulb costs with the added benefit of recycling/not tossing all that glass), I'd be happy to. Obviously, it'd be best if you save your caps if you decide you'd like to start refilling them. I kept almost a dozen from last year, and bought a few this year, but wallflowers need replaced so much quicker in the wintertime with the heat and everything.

Week 23: Part 2- Fun with Pewter

So...today was my first day with pewter. ::big sigh:: All told, it could have been worse and I feel like I learned a lot in my hours of melting and pouring and mold making. over and over and over again.

The molds: My past experience with casting has all been silver lost-wax-casting. I currently do not have any wax (ordered some) so I had to play around with other types of molds. Ideally, I'll like to cast nature pieces- specifically leaves, because I find that kind of detail hard to fake in carving. Naturally, all the molds I made today were of leaves. I had a few sculpey molds (imprinted with real leaves), severals molds where i made a base and border around a real leaf (in case you were curious, no they do not in fact burst into flames) and a couple of silicone molds. I do have a leaf in some plaster, but it needs drying time.

The pouring: From the get go I had issues with pouring. I was heating the metal for as long as it said to, but it was just pouring thick- way thicker than i wanted. The first sculpey mold i filled came out ok with decent detail, but was almost a quarter of an inch thick. At the end of the day, i can honestly say that basically the given time for heating was wrong because eventually i got the metal to pour just fine, if not always in the direction i wanted.

The results: I would say I spent a good 4-6 hours melting and pouring and mold making today. I give you 1 photo:

This is the only leaf I was happy enough with to photograph. It took many many tries to get a thin pour that covered the entire mold (leaves make shallow molds). I might have been happy with it if not for the fact that the mold was blemished- which i knew before i ever used it though i'm not sure how it got that way (if you're looking for the mark it's the little round spot mid left). In the whole day, i probably only managed about 5 leaves in general- one was too thick, several were surface damaged (from the water boiling out of the leaves when the metal touched them), many were incomplete (the metal didn't cover the whole pattern). I certainly would never sell this one though i might keep it (rather than remelt it) as a sort of first day token. I haven't melted down that first pour of a quarter inch leaf either. Can't wait to see how it goes with wax...

Week 23

Among other birthday fun, Bob took me to JoAnn Fabrics last week (it's probably a good thing that it's kind of far away, because i always spend way too much money there). I bought some really fun beads and some pretty clasps, but naturally i also bought flowers: Can you tell from the colors that I'm ready for Halloween? (It IS my favorite day of the year).

This is a silver bracelet for my niece, Lily. Her parents bought her a souveneir bracelet on vacation and it broke, so I took the seashell/stone out and made her a new bracelet. It's not perfect, but I hope she'll like it.

My foray into pewter casting began today, but i haven't really been happy with any of the results so far so no pictures. All I have been truly successful at with it so far is to melt down a 1lb ingot and pour it into much smaller blobs to make it easier to cast smaller things. I made a sculpey mold with a leaf imprint- worked just ok. Poured ontop of a leaf, the prints aren't very deep and it's hard to get the metal to spread out, it likes to pool. Will be making molds tonight and later this week for more fun experimentation. we shall see.