More than Fish and Hammocks

Past projects are interesting things.  I keep all my old sketchbooks specifically so I can look at past ideas and see if maybe any of them can help with current problems.  Past projects on the internet are especially interesting, because frequently they never go away, and if they're public, they often stay that way even when you've moved on to something else.

Before I found metal and glass, I was a Fiber Artist.  I still am, a little bit.  I have a spinning wheel tat I turn to in times when I really need to de-stress and think.  I'll probably be a spinner forever.  My other great fibery love was netting.  I learned it in order to make hair nets for costume purposes and then just sort of ran with the idea.  If you've ever been to the nightshaderose.com main home page, you saw under the Studio link a logo for More Than Fish and Hammocks, my netting web site, that I set up when I realized that while there were a lot of pictures of how to net, there was something of a lack of any really good color-coded illustrations.  The problem with pictures is that people tend to take pictures of their own projects-in-progress and when you're showing rows of interlacing and even simple knots, having all the thread the same color makes it difficult to see what's actually going on.

Sheet bend knot illustration from F&H

So anyway, I put up this instructional site, largely as a precursor to possibly writing a book on the subject, did maintenance, periodically added new info, and then life got crazy and I got distracted, and I ended up mostly abandoning it.  As life went on, and I moved from TX to Seattle I didn't think about it much, but I didn't bother taking the site down.  It's not like the information would go out-of-date.  Maybe twice a year I'd get an email praising the site or asking for more detailed info/advice on something, and I answered politely with the best advice I could give, but I didn't think anything of it.  Flash forward to the last couple of months.  I've got the studio site up, and Analytics installed, tracking how many visitors I have and where they're coming from (not a lot, and generally direct), and it occurs to me to put Analytics on F&H, "just to see."
Apparently F&H has been quietly gathering notice while I wasn't looking, and is now considered a standard internet reference on net-making...particularly the illustrations about how to make the knots.  It's getting 30-50 hits/day, with referrals from all sorts of other places.  The most entertaining thing to me is that while I made it thinking on the scale of lace and hairnets, a lot of my traffic is from fishing and utility-related sites.  Apparently everyone needs good illustrations.

Long story short (I know, too late), past project might be current again, simply because the internet kept it from just going away when I was done.  It won't be a lot, just a couple hours here and there to keep things fresh that might eventually add up to enough to publish in dead tree version.  My main focus will still be metal and glass, but you might end up seeing me work silk in on occasion now, too. :)

Back from the dead

Ok, so I have a confession to make, and an apology to go with it.    I have been known to suffer from the occasional depressive episode.  Sometimes it's triggered by weather, and sometimes by other things.  I have, over the last few weeks, since I returned form Texas, been having the worst episode in years.  The fog started lifting yesterday, and I realized I'd basically been sleepwalking through the last 3 weeks.  I apologize to what readers I may have for dropping off the face of the earth like that.

One of the few things that keeps me getting out of bed in the morning when I'm that far off the cliff is that my world is full of things that need to get done, but I don't particularly want to do when I'm feeling energetic and creative.  So I cleaned and organized both my studio and my office at home.  I hung shelves that had been sitting around in boxes for months.  I unpacked all the art I shipped back from Texas.  I framed and hung much of the art I'd bought over the years that had just been sitting around wrapped up.  I painted a lot of my furniture, so things aren't quite so mismatched. And yesterday, as the gray fog started to dissipate, I made these:

they're 1.5" pin-back buttons of some of my elemental illustration pieces.  I happen to have a button press laying around, and have been meaning to get around to these for at least a year.  Something about the image editing needed to adapt the art to the format, along with the physical work of pressing the buttons made the fog dissipate a little bit faster, and now I'm mostly ok.  Expect the buttons (and buttons of some of my Different Worlds) to start showing up in the ArtFire shop fairly soon.

Success and failure

This is going to be a short post, since I'm writing at stupid-o'clock AM.  Pictures will be added later.  The great giant news is that I picked up the kiln on Friday.  I've been using it all weekend and it's awesome.

In other news, I attempted to re-make the Green Man enamel piece, and this one self-destructed, too, albeit in a completely different manner.  I've taken the hint , and changed the Earth elemental piece to an ouroborous (snake biting it's own tail.  Symbolizes infinity).  It will likely be done in time for Norwescon, but probably not in time for prints.  I've finished Air, as well, but I'm not particularly happy with it.  There are some perspective/proportion issues that make it look funny, and I'm not particularly inclined to show it at all.

Ok, time for bed now.

Late again, but with good reason.

Right, so, finals at school ate my life, time, energy, and brain.  The worst thing about finals in art classes is that it's not really an exam.  You basically take all the art work you did in class, display it, and stand up in front of the whole class and justify your existence...including your failures.

Epic Fail: Spirit of Earth

This was supposed to be "Spirit of Earth", AKA The Green Man.  It has bubbles, both ruptured and not (the popped ones you can see the base color in), as well as silver wire that has separated from the enamel.  This was mostly my hubris biting me in the ass.  Between the bad engineering decision that resulted in a face full of cracks (It's heavy enough metal that I can wait and counter-enamel at the end!), the physics-lacking jury-rigged solution (If I flip it over and counter it now, all the cracks will melt back together and everything will be ok), and over-firing at the end, the glass melted enough to allow the cloisonné wire to start falling out, and the glass to run down them.  It's a small miracle I didn't seriously damage the school kiln.  The only thing that survived were those totally perfect eyes...mocking me.



In happier news, Water is done:

Spirit of Water

I am pleased, especially with the metallics I got in the darker brown and the water.

New Year

Happy New Year, everyone!

Sadly I don't have a lot of new to report, as I spent this week battling The Head-Cold That Ate Cleveland, rather than actually working.  I got a little bit of clean-up done at the studio before I was felled, and my test-batch of commercial enameling blanks arrived.  Hopefully I'll get to finish with the clean-up, and do some test-pieces with the blanks tomorrow, so I can have some momentum back when school starts on Tuesday.  I'm considering, for school this quarter, doing a series of pieces based on antlers/horns.  We shall see.

Mirrors (finally)

So, of the mirrors I did for class, here are the 3 most spectacular.

"Fairest":  Chased Copper Knotwork Frame

This one is meant to have a 4"x6" oval mirror in the center eventually.  Modeled on fairy tale "magic mirrors".

"Creature of Air" Cloisonne Enameled Copper Hand Mirror

Putting this one together gave me fits, since the front is another formed piece.  The enamel went beautifully, though, and putting the face in the cloud was one of those decisions that was made just as I was starting to lay out the wire.  There is a 3" round mirror on the other side, and I used this one to do my makeup just before my presentation. 

"Earthly Concerns" Cloisonne Enamel Pressed Powder Compact

This whole design flowed from the stone, which reminded me of nothing more than a tree trunk.  I'd also been wanting to do a compact since I started enameling last summer.  I think I need to work on function a bit more.  Inside is a 3" round mirror and a place for a pressed powder pan.

Technical difficulties

This has been a week of technical difficulties, interspersed with moments of spectacular pure stupidity on my part.  Lessons learned thus far include: 1) never mix enamels, even when they're supposed to be the same thing, 2) the simplest solution is often the best, 3) Hotter is not necessarily better, 4) never use a hammer anywhere near enamels, 5) never underestimate the power of a good adhesive, 6) never underestimate the power of a well-cut stencil, 7) never underestimate how long it takes to cut a stencil well, and last but not least, 8) when dealing with pitch , never, never, never forget the mineral oil.

As you can guess, I've had some enamel contamination problems.  My best clear is coming out speckled white now.  I've made the best of it on the project in question.

 This is what they were supposed to be:

and the finished, assembled piece in my hair:

I'm going to be doing more leaves, probably holly and other none too complex things.

I've made some decisions about setting the different worlds pendants, and enamels in general.  Just needed to modify the original idea and lower the firing temps.
As for the pitch, that was just a hard lesson.

It's been another one of those weeks.  I had my first Etsy sale.  They bought the two best items in my shop, so I've been scrambling all week to replace them.  I don't think I've mentioned previously, but I'm still a student, currently attending 3/4 time (taking 10 hrs this quarter).  So between class and various forms of homework, I only get about 3 days a week in my own studio making things to sell, and things end up taking longer overall. I ended up making 4 new pendants, 2 planets and 2 moons.  One of each is now listed on Etsy, and the others have gone into a "Miniatures" display case that the Art Group at school is putting together for a few weeks.  At least this way more folks will see my stuff.  I'm also going to have quite a few entries in the silent auction at the end of November.

Anyway, back to what I've been up to:
I'm continuing to play around with engineering.  I'm bezel-setting everything right now, and it doesn't look quite as bad as I thought it would, though I'd prefer to go without the frames if I could.  The pieces for the moon-phase bracelet turned out to be scaled wrong, so that one's gong to be a choker/collar instead.  I completely forgot to take an in-process picture yesterday, but I should be able to do so tomorrow or Tuesday and then add it to this post.  I'll probably scale everything down and attempt a more bracelet-sized piece in a couple of weeks.

Business problems I *REALLY* need to work out soon:
What's next after Different Worlds?
What can I do at lower price points?

ETA 10/25/10:
The moon-phase choker in progress.  Hopefully it will be done tomorrow.

Collectors, engineering, and other things

Quote of the week:
"I wouldn't do that today, but at the time, I did, and now it's there."--Klaus Burgel on adding sapphires to a ring.

Firstly, apologies for the late post.  It was a ridiculously busy weekend, what with Seattle Metals Guild Symposium, working in the studio, and trying to not completely lose all contact with friends and acquaintances.

Symposium was interesting, but also a lot more about theory than practice.  An interesting question has been raised about art jewelry collectors and why there don't seem to have been many new ones since the boomer generation.  The discussion included suggestions that there's a current perception that "art"="expensive" and "kept behind glass to show off," so the folks who are collecting (and maybe they're at the $35 earrings stage, rather than the $2000 ring stage, and that's ok) don't think of themselves as collectors, and many of the folks who could start being collectors never go into galleries on the assumption that it will be all $2000 rings and no $35 earrings.  Also, the Boomers still control quite a lot of the money. 

It's been an interesting week in the studio.  I'm working on an 8-piece moon phase enamel bracelet, the linkages on which have been giving me fits.  I think I'm just going to have to suck it up and bezel-set the pieces.  I also made my first Etsy sale!  There are inquiries about clip-back earrings and brooches in the Different Worlds enamels, which brings up thorny technical/engineering problems having to do with moving parts on the backs of these enamels.  The answer here may also end up being "bezel-setting," but I'd really like to avoid the frame if at all possible.

This week in the Studio

I give you this week's big learning experience:

Oops!

Yes, that's a hole in the top of my bench.  The lesson here is that an Ikea hollow-core desktop is not designed to withstand a disc-cutter being pounded directly on the surface.  That's right, kids.  I went straight through the copper and into the desk.  I've got a rubber cutting mat laid in that area now, and the disc-cutter doesn't seem to bother it at all.

Now, to counter that particular crowning moment of oops, I give you this week's crowning moment of awesome.  2 of them, actually, both having to do with my "Different Worlds" series of enamel pieces.

First, I managed to get some weather detail on one of the blue planet pendants.

Stormy Weather #1

Secondly, I've started doing moons, too

Full Moon #2

This one got featured in an Etsy treasury, which was pretty awesome because it meant someone a) saw it, and b) liked it enough to tell others.  Now if only someone would like something enough to buy it...

In the Beginning...

I know, not a terribly creative title.  Take it as a warning.  Words are not my strong suit, so there will be a lot of pictures here: pictures of finished jewelry pieces (both for sale and not), pictures of work in progress, pictures of inspiring things, pictures of my sketchbook, and probably the occasional picture of things that just made me laugh (or think).  I think we'll start with my studio setup.

This is my studio.  It's in a building run by an outfit called ActivSpace that rents out small craft/hobby/business spaces on a monthly basis.  I'm in a section of the building officially known as "Potter's Alley," but I just call it the "heavy industry district" since these units come with 2 kinds of built in ventilation and 220v electrical outlets.  Most of my neighbors are, in fact, potters, but I know there's at least one screen-printer down the hall.  It's got like 12ft ceilings and a concrete floor, and was a cold white box when I moved in about a month ago.  The lovely cafe au lait color on the walls was something I picked up from the mis-tint section of my favorite paint store for $5 for the gallon.  What you're looking at here is the half of the room containing my bench, solder station to the left of that, the pickle & patina area on the far left (there is a vent fan directly above), and to the right is the great big rolling tool chest with my laptop on top (mostly used as a jukebox, since I don't have internet in the studio yet).  The white patch on the back wall is a piece of clear mylar (that I hadn't pulled the tissue off of yet) that I stuck to the wall to make an instant dry-erase board.

This is the half of the room containing the storage shelves/enamel station and, in the back where you can't really see it, a utility sink.

This is my bench, in it's usual state of disarray.  In my defense, I took this picture midday, and I try to always tidy up before I leave in the evenings.

This is my enamel station.  It's on a set of Ikea Ivar shelves, and the adjustability and solid-wood-ness is wonderful.  I've been doing my enamel sample board of all the colors that came in the complete palette sample pack from Thompson Enamel by doing the sample on copper strips, sticking lightweight magnets on the back, and hanging them on an expanded steel sheet that I've hung from the back of the bench.

So, that's the studio.  Maybe next time I'll talk a little more about myself.  For now, I'll finish up with a pic of something I'd like to sell, but don't know If I ever will.

 

"Entwined"

Hammered sterling silver necklace and post earrings, set with a whole lot of 4mm peridots.