Day 5 : An Oil a Day 30 Day Challenge . . .

Day 5

What did I learn today?

That it's okay to wipe off a painting and start over, once, twice, and three times.

What I was working on was a fading gravel road with a gold and green field.

Another distant horizon.

But it was all wrong. Color wrong. Grass wrong. Gravel wrong.

I wiped it off and went back to what I knew to work and maybe that's the key.

In my metalworking, when I try to hard to get detailed and intricate, I miss the mark.

But when I let my design go broad and expansive, I hit it almost every time.

So here you have another little painting of the expansive Nebraska grassland.

A big farm with two silos that is dwarfed by the vastness of sky.

Detail : Oil on canvas

6"x6"

Goodbye etsy - hello BigCartel!

Yep.  Slowly moving my work off etsy and onto a cleaner, more modern site.

I'll admit that I finally got tired of seeing the same things on the landing page day after day, week after week, year after year, in spite of all of the complaints and ideas proposed to make etsy more sleek.  What began as a site for handmade and unique has finally turned into a site where everything is welcome to the point where anything handmade can mean truly artisan work created from start to finish by a single artist to cheap charms hung on a cheap chain.  Don't get me started on the dishes from the garage sale next door.  I just can't compete.  Worse, I can't be found.

So I find BigCartel.  Sleek, modern, easy to use.  Gone are the teens and tweens and any mention of Hello Kitty.  If these people were craft and art show people, I would be proud to have my tent parked next to theirs.

Not sure my rant is over but do take a look and cruise through the BigCartel site - even my own shop site, if you have a few minutes to spare.  Tell me what you think.  I think it's a good fit.

Feeling a little schizophrenic . . .

Ocean Jasper + enamel on copper

I know, I know.  Can you not just settle on one thing already?

Here's the skinny, Minnie.

You've seen some of my watercolor lately and I'm not giving that up.

I need a bit of stimulation to get my creativity flowing.

Watercolor is doing that so that's not going away anytime soon.

Then I discover enamel and fall in love all over again.

I am reclaiming the artist I always thought I was.

I am.

A little articulation, please . . .

Necklace

Orchid enamel

Pinned and articulated

Nearer horizons and open possibilities

Happy Valentine's Day . . .

Happy Valentine's Day!

Simple : sweet : everyday Valentine

I've been slowly collecting different little jars of enamels, absolutely fascinated.  I have been doing my own lapidary work and amassing beautiful stones for such a long time and now this colorful addition has me oohing and ahhing at the sweet, soft combinations.  I'm using both copper and silver and playing with some success that has even me excited to combine enamels with metalwork and stones.  

I am finding that different gases produce different subtle effects - wanted and unwanted!  I particularly like the sugar phase of the sifted enamel powders transforming and the two pair of earrings here show exactly that.  Rough texture and deep, deep color.  Fun to watch the enamels as they transform and a trick to get them to stop just where you want.  Practice practice.

This pink and white pair of earrings shows that colors are not blended like paint.  Rather, combining two or more colors of enamel will give you speckles and another dimension to pieces.

I have a wonderful show on the schedule for 23 Feb in Omaha - Art & Soup - and I've been creating piles of earrings and pendants in the last month.  Gotta admit, I'm pretty excited to see if everyone else is as enamored with enamel as I am.

Fingers crossed.

I'm out of words today . . .

 Honest.  Do you ever just run out of words?

I'm busy getting ready for a show in Omaha next weekend and I'm cranking out the juicy stuff and loving every minute of it.  Reminds me that what I really love is cutting and polishing my own stones and hand-fabrication - metalwork - fire - hammers.

So here you go.  A little bit of lavender color chalcedony cut from a band of blue agate, translucent and glorious.  Set in sterling silver and accented with a little drop bead of sunset color carnelian.  For my money, nothing is more satisfying than taking a little bit of pretty stone and making it prettier.

The end.

Oh, for sale.

Montana Agate . . .

Ahem.  Now that I've gotten over my 'pique.ed.ness' from the last post, I'm ready to move on.  You must be so grateful.

Back to the bench!

Instead of doing a wholesale clean up of the whole mess that taunts greets me every day, I decided to simply work myself through it.  Sure, my little space to work gets smaller and smaller but as I turn out lovely work like this, space increases day by day.

I'm in love with Montana Agate, have I told you?

I cut and polished some for a friend last year and this slivver was part of an edge that didn't have much promise as a primo piece but see?  A little lovin' and it turned out great.

Certainly on the milky side, the inclusions and explosions tend to the rusty color and accenting it with copper rings just seemed right.

Sports a pierced and cut out back for no other reason than I love it that way.

Beautiful.

How how how . . .

Persistence paid off for a lovely lady in South Wales who searched thru my flickr pictures until she found just the right bracelet.  I made a number of these linked Orbit Bangles five years ago when sterling silver was cheap(er) and I could make a whole armful of them for shows and galleries but I moved on after that armful and went in another direction.

Lo and behold, this darling woman emails me that she wants one special made for her Silver Anniversary!  Who am I to say no?  No, I never say no and this one is shipped off today.  I'm just glad I still had the materials to work with.

I am still a bit confused that she took time to go through all of my (MY!!!) flicker photos until she found what she wanted.  I mean, with all of the metalsmiths out there and all of the incredibly talented folks posting on flickr, ME!  Maybe it's the New Year but I'm still shaking my head that she found ME.

Enough.  To the post office.

Copper love . . .

Okay, this was pure fun.  I started out not entirely sure where I was headed but with a 3"x6" piece of 20ga copper and lots of heat, I created this monster cuff that I love.  This sweet, edgy cuff is my very first attempt at fold.forming and I'm quite pleased with myself.

With a little more practice, more trials and more errors, and a lot more fire, this will translate nicely into sterling silver.  More.

Loading up the shop . . .

It's an experiment.  I am sending out six gift certificates over six consecutive weekends in giveaway bags.  These bags are going out as prizes at a local racetrack and as a 'thank you' to fans and supporters and will, of course, contain more than just my gift certificates.  In fact, people will be encouraged to pass along what they don't intend to use and I'm hoping these certificates will eventually get into the right hands.  So today was spent taking new pictures and listing listing after listing on etsy.  Fingers crossed.  We'll see what happens next. 

Mine, all mine . . .

Rosella Opal.  It finally has a name.  I saw that my blog-friend Evie, had set a gorgeous pendant and called the stone by name when I realized that I had a little sackful of this material and all I knew was that it was from Australia and it was an opal.  Sweet!  It has a real name!  I cut and polished a few for her then these for me.  I know I've posted this stone before but I have to say it again - it positively glows!

I love this simple setting for earrings and whenever in doubt, this is the way i go.  Easy hooks, so plain and unfussy.  My new 'go to' earrings while the turquoise earrings take a break.

These are mine, all mine.  Selfishly keeping them for myself.

Ice . . .

Coaxing the muse out of hiding with the tempting tinkle of ice, perhaps?  


Yesterday I made up my mind that I'd chain myself to the bench until something was created and with much distracted playing, this piece appeared.  I arranged and rearranged and rearranged again little bits of leftover pieces of silver around this sweet cab of Tourmalinated Quartz and I'm pleased with what appeared.

Simply set with an open back.
Moves easily.

I have a handful of these cabs, some just the size of your fingernail, and each one has the appearance of cracked ice.  Holding them in the palm of my hand looks like a handful of crushed ice.


Maybe it's the icy driveway and shrubs and icicles on the eaves this week that inspired me to set this as ice tongs holding a melting cube - no matter, I'm just happy that errant muse showed up.

Working not talking . . .

Ocean Jasper and Citrine pinned bead

Here I am with new work and not much to say about it all.  In my last post I said I was going to get back to what I love doing most of all and that is cutting, polish and setting my own stones.  Stop trying to chase what I think will sell and make what I love.  And here you have the fruits of my labors for the weekend.

The Ocean Jasper is a stone I've had in my collection for some time and it worked its way to the surface of the pile on Friday.  The Citrine bead I pinned to a cupped bit of sterling silver and like the way it reflects the golden orbs in the jasper.  Pretty.

Rhyolite and Moonstone Beads

The Rhyolite has the most gorgeous pink, aqua and gold striations - just like a Sonoran sunset.  This stone started life as a matching pair that I wanted to make into earrings but I dropped its twin.  That was not a good day.  However, this little guy, accented with moonstone beads still holds its own!

The last piece I finished is a teardrop of Amethyst Sage Dendritic Agate.  Sadly, the photo doesn't do it justice as the stone fades from deep amethyst purple into olive green so softly.  The dendrites frame the horizon and give it such wonderful interest.

Amethyst Sage Dendritic Agate

I'm happy to be back doing what I want and what I love.  

So there, Almighty Dollar!  I refuse to chase you any longer!  From now on, it's all about me!

Loose ends . . .

The Cricket Cage

I'll admit it - a lot of stuff (a LOT) has gotten pushed to the back of my bench for far too long and getting caught up in the rush of the Christmas with the looooong to-do list is just claustrophobic for me.  Now that things are getting back to some semblance of normal, I'm trying to take each project that got set aside and give the attention to those things that really satisfy my creative itch and not simply fill a spot on my show display.

Last Fall, my friend Linda gave me a little silk bag with old rings and pieces that held jade beads and cabs and she gave me free reign to create whatever I saw in them.  Removing them from their settings really freed them up and these are the pieces I'm sending her.

These little beads of jade were post-drilled and needed to be free yet somehow constrained so I created a Cricket Cage for them from wire and a hand-forged half-dome cap.  Now they can move freely inside their little cage pendant.

Lily Pads

The two jade cabochons are just a millimeter or two different in size so they really couldn't be matching earrings, I thought.  Earlier in the season, I had created a Peace Jade necklace for her to give her 11 year old granddaughter and I thought that perhaps down the road a ways, she might like to have matching charms.  So here you have two Lily Pad charms with watery, reflective, textured and curled edges.  What is wonderful about charms is that they don't necessarily belong on a necklace or a bracelet.  They are sweet accents on a watch, a little bag or anywhere that some color and flash is needed.  Love these.

I'm so satisfied.  Why again don't I do this more often?

Stinking Water Plume Agate . . .

Weird name

And a new leaf is turned - I'm finally getting my etsy shop back up and running.  I've ignored it for a long time and now that Summer is drawing down, I am bound and determined to get my new work listed.  

Gorgeous stone

I also will be listing the stones I've cut and polished and generally just thinning the herd.  Why?  Well, I attended the auction for my friend, Roger Pabian, who passed away this Spring.  A world-class published author and authority on agates, Captain Agate's house was full to the brim with agates in all shapes and sizes, in slabs, rough and polished stones.  

Roger taught me lapidary and I believe that's why I'm so picky about my cabs and how they are finished.  One scratch and it's all the way back to the beginning wheels for me.

His auction showed me just how much a person can accumulate - and I mean that in a nice way - and how little a person can actually use on their own no matter their intent.  Now that I've polished and loved on these little stones, it's time for someone to create something of beauty with each one.  I'll never get to them all.

I'll look at them this way : I don't own any of these stones.  I'm only the caretaker and when I've enjoyed them and taken pride in their beauty, it will be time for them to move on to the next caretaker.  Just promise me that if you buy one, you'll send me pictures of your finished product.  And then you'll be the new caretaker.

Weekend inspiration . . .

Montana Agate : can you see the circling hawk as she is being dive-bombed by the sparrow?

I've said this before but it keeps coming up in my day-to-day - I am easily distracted and working on it should truly be Priority One.  As if I've been forced, I've spent the last few days at my lapidary bench, dusting and cleaning cobwebs and finally finishing a big project (at least big for me) since I have had a few slabs on my 'promise list' for almost a year now.  I cleaned up the workspace, turned on the radio and hunkered down for trimmin' and cabbin' and I didn't come up until it was over.  And now I find myself renewed and inspired once again to get back to what I truly love - lapidary and metalwork.

Here are the pieces of Montana Agate that have been staring at me for months on end, taunting me to start/finish them for Christine.  Plugged in to the Genie, I saw them through yesterday morning and off they went Priority Mail to Michigan.  I do hope she loves them but it's more important personally that they really did inspire me to stay at the bench just a little longer and I turned out four more gorgeous cabs that have me itching to get back into the metalshop tomorrow.  Sunday - an entire day at my metalwork.  Itching.

For the last several months I've been distracted by enamels and don't get me wrong here, I've thoroughly enjoyed learning and experimenting with them but I think I've been focusing too much on enamels alone and not how I might incorporate that into my 'true' work.  The work that gives me satisfaction and huge pride.  As I progress through the stone and metalwork, I hope to find a way to blend all of this newness into beautiful pieces of adornment.

Nebraska through and through

Take a look at these two lovely pieces of unnamed jasper that I cut and trimmed yesterday and tell me you don't see lovely scenes in both.  The shield shaped one clearly has a tornado reaching for the prairie and you can see the horizon spread out ahead of you - the Nebraska Sandhills.

Praire cloudburst

The smaller lozenge of a jasper cab is another prairie landscape, this time a summer rainshower as the sunshine on the right gives way to the isolated cloudburst.  (I do wish the picture was better but I'm trying to not be distracted by learning photography, I guess.  *wistful smile*)

Maybe another time I'll figure out why I'm so distracted by other projects and things and stuff ('Oh look . . . a kitty . . . ') but for now, I'm feeling more at ease with my direction once again.  Lord, keep my nose pointed forward.