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.

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 :).

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!

Nest Necklace: Project number 4!

A couple posts back, i posted a teaser post with a glass jar of beads and wire. At that time, this necklace had been pretty much finished... only lacking a drill. After much searching, i finally found and bought a drill over the weekend. A couple quick holes and jump rings and voila! I really did have quite a productive long weekend, finishing off 3 necklaces! One i showed in the previous post, one is in this post here, and one i will be posting next. This one here is project number 4 from Stephanie Lee's book 'Semiprecious Salvage'. I have really been loving this book, and i am so pleased to have finished this piece. Stephanie's book is lovely, as her her fabulous blog, and you should check her out here.

I did stray somewhat from the design layed out by Stephanie, but my main goal was to learn the skills offered in the creation of the necklace. In her piece in the book, she used one of the fabulous porcelain doll arms. It reminded me so of the porcelain bisque dolls from germany. I would love to have something like this, as they speak to me so strongly, but as of yet it is not in the cards. Instead, i created the bird nest similar to one discussed later in the book (ok... yes... i peeked ahead hahah). I also decided to add the links i created, linked from a tutorial posted by the lovely Derryn Mentock (I had so much fun creating these links... you should go check out her easy to use tutorial on how to creat them :) here.

So, for those of you who have not seen stephanie's book, the square part of this piece was created using a square of copper sheet metal. I then did a simple transfer of a reversed book image, of a bird in a tree. After thus creating a resist, i put the square in Ferric Chloride (an acid) which etched away, creating a nice bird pattern. If you have any questions about this, post me a quick note in teh comments and i will help you out :).

Good luck to all who are entering my 'One World One Heart' draw.

Challenge entry

I stumbled upon the Art Bead Scene blog not too long ago... i was intrigued by their idea of having a monthly challenge. This month, the challenge was to create a necklace based on Van Gogh's 'Irises'. I have always found this to be a beautiful painting... I decided to enter.

The point of the 'Art Bead Scene' blog seems to be to promote using hand-made beads (they call 'art beads') in jewelry as opposed to using the factory created beads. I do see where they are comming from, but i am glad they are not so hardcore about it that it feels limiting. MANY different mediums for creating the beads (including wood carving as i used in mine) are accepted, glasswork and polymer clay seeming to be the most common. This is my submission to the challenge.





















I was inspired in a variety of ways for this piece. My first point of inspiration here came from the blog of the lovely Daryn Mentock, from one of her lovely curled wire journal pages. I saw it and i just knew i had to make one myself. The idea for the beads with the wrapped wire came from a flickr picture i'd seen while surfing around, but i forgot to write down who it was or a link (too bad, as hers were gorgeous). The ideas for the pendant bead was all my own. I had stumbled upon a super cheap wood carving kit at a local stationairy/art store, and even though i have ZERO experience or training with wood carving i decided I couldn't resist. I had a lot of fun, keeping it simple, carving the 'leaves' into the wood here. I then painted it up with a mix of paint and pearlescent medium.

I finally bought a drill this weekend and, as it was a four day weekend here in Seoul, i have been having so much fun drilling to my hearts content and finally finishing a couple of projects that were just waiting for the drill. More necklace posts to come!

In conclusion, wish me luck having my name drawn from the contest, as i would win a wackload of handmade beads if they pull my name. I am so excited to see what the theme will be next month!

One World One Heart

Well, i'm a week after the official beginning, but i guess people still have close to a month to come visit my blog and comment... I have decided this year to participate in the 'One World One Heart' blogging event.

For those of you who are not familliar with this event, it is where a bunch of bloggers all have giveaways on their blogs. In order to be eligable for this giveaway on my blog, all you need to do is leave a comment on this post. In order to participate in my giveaway, you must have a blog of your own that you keep, but you do not have to do a giveaway of your own. Please make sure to leave some way to contact you if you are the lucky winner! The point of this event is to increase traffic to artist blogs, discover new blogs and to generate more of a 'togetherness' feeling among artist bloggers. If you want more details, please visit the 'One World One Heart' main site here.




For my giveaway, I am offering two things. The first person who wins will get a bracelet i created myself. It uses links and swirls from wire that i wraped myself, and nice green beads that spin around on the swirls.


For a larger picture, you can click here on the picture.

The second winner will get a selection of jewelry supplies such as chain or beads, scrabooking papers, ribbons and other such miscellanious stuff useful to a jewelry artist, or to a mixed media artist.

Good luck everyone! Remember, post a comment on this post (only this post) to be eligible to win. You must post before February 11th, as I will be posting the winner on February 12th.

One World One Heart

Oh no! The One World One Heart contest has started and i don't yet have something to give away!! I knew i wanted to sign up this year. I checked it out last year and looked at a couple blogs. Even if i did not win anything, i enjoyed seeing all the giveaways, and looking at all the new blogs. Give me time, and i will get something up for this soon! I just need to finish off a project to give away. I feel like i have about 3 projects but they aren't done yet.

If you haven't heard of the 'One World One Heart' event yet, you should check out the website here