The Jamie Knot and Silver Sticks

I decided on one quick post before I finish packing. For those of you familiar with Nina Bagley and the "Nina Knot", you will appreciate this. In preparation for my class with Nina on Saturday, I lovingly picked out scraps of vintage material to wash on the delicate cycle in cold water inside of a zippered bag. I took extra care and made sure the machine was set to delicate, used the cold water detergent for delicate items, etc...

I even checked in on the scraps while they were washing to see how they were coming along. It all looked good until I went to pull the bag out of the washer. Lawdy, law...I have NEVER seen such a wad!

This is what I call "The Jamie Knot"...



Too funny. It took me a good 45 minutes or so of snipping threads and unwinding material all the while fending off the cat who was very eager to 'help'.

I also fired another handful of beads today. These are my first attempt at making hollow beads with an organic core. I used twigs for the long ones and wood clay for the round ones.

Before they went into the kiln:



After they were fired and scrubbed with a brass brush:



And finally after they were dunked in the LOS patina:



I brushed parts of the round beads with steel wool and burnished the high points to bring them back to a shiny silver but I left the twigs as they were. I must say that I love how the twigs came out. I'm hoping to use them in a piece of jewelry I will make at ArtFest. Ok, that's really all for now. Clothes are packed but tools and other random art supplies are strewn about the house in four different rooms.

Charmed

It's down to the wire, literally because I am out of wire. I'm leaving in the morning for Seattle, then it's off to Port Townsend for ArtFest. I've still got to pack all of my art supplies and some wool socks. These are some of the charms I finished. This year's ArtFest theme is "Woodland Forest" so I added a few mushrooms in for good measure. The rest of the charms are loosely based on that same theme with impressions of leaves and flowers and such in the silver. I've also got 20 special "Festal Virgin" trades that aren't in the photos. I'm sure I'll have lots of fun stuff to tell about when I return. Woo-hoo! I hope I can sleep tonight...

You can click on the photo to get a closer view. Not the best but you'll get the picture. All that work for a handful of charms.

Fired, Brushed, Tumbled, Tarnished & Polished

Here are 45 of the charms I finished today in all of their imperfect handmade glory. "Finished" as in, fired, brushed, tumbled, tarnished and polished. Now comes the real fun part - matching them up with beads and wire wrapping each one to attach to my moo cards for ArtFest trades.

First thing I did after making coffee this morning was set up my Ventilated Patination Station. That's what I was calling it anyway. It's actually just small dishes set out on the back porch with Liver of Sulphur and water. I had it set up from right to left: hot water to heat the silver, then the LOS in warm water to patina the silver and finally, a cool bath of water to stop the chemical process. I used a piece of wire and dipped each charm in all three dishes. Some I left lighter than others. The darker ones were dipped a few different times.

I was so excited and jumped right in to the patination process that I almost forgot to take photos of the shiny charms before they changed colors. Here are a few of the shiny ones with some I had just tarnished. They are bright and shiny because I put them in the rotary tumbler with mixed steel shot last night for about 40 minutes.

More tarnished ones. I like how some of them got that iridescent mixed color. I don't know what it's called but it sort of looks like the top of oil in a parking lot after it rains. You know the look I am talking about? Is there a word for that other than iridescent?

Here's a handful of them after I had polished the high points with a very very very fine steel wool. I would have used my Sunshine Polishing Cloths if I could have found them. Yes, my studio is still a mess! Reminds me of a cross stitched pillow that my mom has: "A Clean House is the Sign of a Misspent Life."

I realized that I didn't have anything in these photos to show size relationship so here's a shot my husband took of me laying them out on a stool outside.

(Pssst...BIG, one of your photos made it onto my blog! Thanks for helping me. You're the best husband but I won't let it get around to your friends. ;-) )

Got Trades?

My art room is trashed (as usual) but I've been having fun! I've got about 60 charms in the works for ArtFest. I leave one week from today so I'm feeling pretty good about being ready in time.

Here's the first round I made the other night. 25 fine silver charms, all stamped, dried, cleaned up and ready to fire. That's my new Moo Card sitting with the charms. I had 200 printed special for ArtFest.



A couple other shots from my studio. Wolf Trap Radio has been keeping me company on iTunes. It's under the Eclectic genre on iTunes Radio. I think you can also stream it from their website if you don't have iTunes. Who doesn't have iTunes though?

Sweet Inspiration

I had dinner (Yoon Sushi) with an artist friend of mine tonight who happens to also be my favorite neighbor farm girl. Somehow the summer got away without us seeing each other except in passing on the road going opposite directions, arms waving out the windows and horns honking. I don't know why we waited so long. She's always such an incredible boost of inspiration to me. So full of life, energy, and just general goodness. We talked art, life, animals, travel, work, jewelry making and all that fun stuff. I'm ready to get back into my studio and make some more jewelry.

The photos above are a few of the first pieces I made using silver clay. I was really itching to get my hands into Precious Metal Clay so I took an Introduction to Metal Clay class with Barbara McGuire. The first time I put the clay in my hands I was hooked. I used part of a rubber stamp from Zettiology for the necklace. Since then, I've taken an intensive 2 day class and am now a Certified Metal Clay Artisan. Whatever that means! It basically means that I can now purchase the raw materials at a discount. Time to get back into the studio and fire up the kiln again.

These others are the five pieces I completed for my PMC Level 1 Certification in April of this year. Bad shot but if you click on the photo you can see a hi-res version that shows more detail. I think the ring is my favorite, followed by the amphora which is a hollow vessel. I wear the hollow bead pendant a lot. The other pendant has embedded dichroic glass and lovely little sparkly CZ at bottom. The earrings need a little more love. Maybe a nice bead dangling off the bottom and some silver earwires. I actually learned a lot in that class now that I look back at these pieces. Plus, it was loads of fun!



Visit The PMC Guild for more information on their certification classes. The class I took was taught by Linda Kline at Carol Augustine's old family farmhouse in south GA. Linda was a great teacher and Carol was the perfect host! I'll put together more links in the future for anyone else who might be interested in delving into the world of Precious Metal Clay. I truly love it.