Green Lightbulbs

I've been reading Suzan Lennart Kazmer's book 'Making Connections' and have just been loving it. I love looking at the pictures of pieces she has created. I was especially fascinated by her use of mini lightbulbs with messages inside. However, i am still not familliar enough with Seoul to find these on my own, as hardware stores are seeming to be especially elusive.







Still, what did i find on my walk to the cab from the flower market, a couple weeks ago, but a discarded strand of beautiful green mini-lights! I was so stoked. I swear, after starting to make art i find that i've been watching the ground as i walk to not miss any 'treasures'. My man just sort of shakes his head, but i get so excited each time i find something interesting. I was so excited about these little green lightbulbs.



I had made a trip to Dongdaemun (the GIGANTIC market here in Seoul where you can buy pretty much anything... if you know where to look ... which i don't). I picked up a lovely varied selection of green beads, chain, and these cool long stick looking beads too. I wrapped the lightbulb bases in the wire and then attached them to the wire and wired on all the beads. The finished result is quite a long necklace... i am really pleased with how it tured out. The lightbulbs are such an interesting touch, i find.

I had initially planned to 'Kazmerize' them (as i believe the phrase has been coined), and give them some rust, or a collaged message, or just a little extra 'something', but then decided i liked them there just the way they were.

My kindergarten are baffled seeing lightbulbs on my necklace, but they are now getting used to seeing so much odd stuff on my necklaces that are not 'korean' that they've chalked it up to me being canadian. I think they think all Canadians wear necklaces like this hahahha.

roses necklace

I've been having so much fun going through Kazmer's book 'Making Connections. One of the techniques discussed is how to make your own prongs for holding objects that don't have a hole in it. I couldn't wait to try it out, and i decided to use it on these pretty paper roses that my mom picked me up from germany. It took me a couple tries, but I eventually figured out the cutting of the tabs and how to correctly bend them to perfectly cradle the roses.

It was also my first time using both ribbon and 'chain' together as the necklace. I am pleased with how this one turned out, with a button added on the bottom to pull it down. Hope you like the little necklace i wanted to show you guys :).

In this lower picture, you can see the backs to the rose-holders.

Sunday Laundry Shirt Dress GIVEAWAY!!!!

Wow. I've discovered this fabulous blog. I just love the beautiful clothing she is creating! Who wouldn't love a beautiful dress like this :). I'd highly recomend giving this site a good perusing.


Sunday Laundry Shirt Dress GIVEAWAY!!!!

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.