Thursday, February 26, 2009

Books!

For Christmas, my boyfriend and I each picked out out own presents off amazon. He himself is quite the bibliophile, and I really wanted a couple of books. I got myself Mary Hettmansperger's book 'Wrap, Stitch, Fold & Rivet' and Susan Lenart Kazmer's 'Making Connections: A Handbook of Cold Joins for Jewlers and Mixed-Media Artists'.

























I would highly recomend either one of these books, as I am immensely enjoying the both of them. I am loving the ideas and style of Susan's book. It is very found-object focused with STUNNING pictures of projects she has created. Turning bottle caps into bezels, how to create funky trapezes to dangle objects from, pictures of mini-lightbulbs with little paper messages inside... what's not to love? I just wish I had been able to take my 'found object' art supplies with me here to Seoul. I have a whole bunch of stuff sitting in Canada that would be great for this kind of thing but i had to leave my stash behind (but safely tucked away in storage!).

I also am loving the project based aproach in Mary's book. There are many techniques discussed at the beginning of the book and then it turns to project creation. I unfortunately lack many of the tools needed for both books. I sadly still don't have an anvil, a dapping block, or a torch :(. Give me time... and a good hardware store... Mary seems to have a strong following for her book, as I have seen many of these projects being discussed on blogs and such. I am looking forward to getting started, but am still in the material and idea gathering phase for her first project of a 'spinner necklace'.

However, I have created a couple necklaces that use ideas discussed in the technique sections. Mary's book discusses how to create these swirls and pound them flat. Lacking an anvil, i am ashamed to admit i have been using a hard ruler and a towel.... sigh. However, the wire was fairly soft and it worked fairly well for this! This necklace was created while practicing how to make these fun swirls discussed in her book.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

OWOH winners!

Congratulations to the two winners of my OWOH giveaway! I am pleased to announce that the winner of my bracelet was 'Unique Commodities' and the winner of my miscelanious jewelry supplies is MarieNeige. Thank you to everyone who participated. I had the most wonderful time, and i was so excited to see that over 160 people commented on my post! If one out of every 20 people who stopped by come back again... that means another 8 people reading my blog! I find that so very exciting, as i love getting the comments.

Thanks for the fun :).

Saturday, February 07, 2009

Music book necklace: project number 5!



I've finished the next post in Stephanie Lee's fabulous book "Semi-precious Salvage". I have been having so much fun with this book. The descriptions are fairly detailed, and i have been learning many techniques through this book.

I made a couple small changes to the bracelet as i went along. While Stephanie discussed and displayed more of a rustic style, i decided to go for a cleaner, more 'sterling silver' type look. As opposed to having burnt edge text, i went with clean edged sheet music. I really had a great time making this project, especially creating the little 'book'. It is such a neat idea to me that the bent metal provides such a perfect spine and binding for the papers. So much fun. As well i like the orriginality of the idea of putting little 'books' onto necklaces... how wonderful!

The white links you can see are posted from a tutorial by the wonderful Deryn Mentock on her blog. I made the links here for this necklace and also for my nest necklace (see previous post). So great.

Speaking of having fun, I have been having so much fun with my OWOH giveaway (see three posts down. I am amazed at all the wonderful people that have been entering the draw. Good luck to everyone!