The Answer To My Prayers...

I had the loveliest day yesterday. I drove down to San Diego to see my friend Tonya Davidson who was teaching at Sha Sha - A Bead Spa (what a great name). She had just finished a three day Rio Certification class and was doing a one day all about resin. No metal clay - just all types of resins and mold making. I got there just in time for lunch (how convenient), got to see her teach (I love seeing how other teachers do their thing) and then had a wonderful dinner out afterwards. I'm trying to convince her to come back for a couple days of plain old vacation and fun with girls. Wish me luck.

Sha Sha is usually closed on Mondays, and I had the time to wander through it and look at all the goodies to my heart's content. And what to my wandering eye did appear, but the BEST little box filled with little containers just the right size for.... Jump Rings!!! Louise (the owner) sells the tiny containers separately so you can arrange the storage just the way you want to. I got 11 small, 11 medium and 11 large. There are actually more sizes including one that runs the entire length of the box, but the ones I chose are perfect.

So that's 33 containers. And didn't I fill almost all of them with my hoard of JR's. 32 to be exact. Now, I ask you again... WHY do I own all these jump rings when I hardly ever use them? Some must be 10 years old from my stringing days. There are closed (soldered) ones, split rings, triangle shaped ones... I could open a store myself. And yes, I had many duplicates. I used my calipers to check inner and outer diameters and my B&S wire gauge to check the gauges so I could consolidate them.

Did you know that some manufacturers of jump rings (I don't make my own) label their packets with the inner diameter and some with the outer diameter? So you might order a 4mm jump ring from one source and a 4mm jump ring from another source and get two different sizes entirely! And even though they might say 4mm they might actually be 3.9 or 4.2 or some other funny fraction. Frustrating. But now I have them all organized, labeled and put away and I feel so fancy free and easy! Ha! If she'd had more in stock I'd have gotten some extra's for myself and a few for friends. But no luck. Maybe when she gets more in she'll ship 'em up north. Now I just have to think of what I can put into those other boxes I thought were so great last week.  I'm fickle aren't I?

Weekend Eye Candy - Body Shots Edition

1. MaggieJs-Flutter earrings, 2. hands with rings, 3. Corno Napoletano 7., 4. Neckpiece # 2: Stained Cell Series, 2008, 5. Fru and COUPY ring, 6. Comissioned Clip On Earrings, 7. mywordmyhandsarehorrible, 8. Tree Earrings, 9. Lonicera Morrowii ... Freeform Crochet Scarflette, 10. neck collage :), 11. Orbit Brooch, 12. Vascular ring  Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

I love photos of jewelry taken on the body. I'd love to add some to my Etsy shop, but I have no "models" who live close enough for my eclectic shooting schedule (I usually shoot on my bed, in front of a window at 8 in the morning). And I'm not sure a pic of my work on my own body would entice anyone - seeing as how I seem to have acquired more than the usual allotment of chins (when did that happen?).

What do you think? Are you more likely to buy something if you see it worn? Think about it as you're enjoying a loverly weekend.

Come Play With Me!!!

Aw, c'mon. We'll have so much fun. Where else but the PMC Connection Retreat at Arrowmont could you have a week long play date with metal clay! No lectures, no exercise (unless it's self imposed), no one but fabulous teachers telling you what to do. And all in a beautiful getaway camp in the Smokey Mountains of Tennesee. I'll be teaching Little Altars on Monday, April 27 and Technique Sampler Bead on the 28th.

For Little Altars we'll be making an open box form using draping and dry construction techniques.  After it's fired and finished, we'll complete the pendant by setting beads, organic material or found objects in UV resin to tell a personal story. 

The Technique Sampler Bead was designed to give you a really good overview of the wonders of found textures - things you might not have considered using when designing with metal clay, along with the opportunity to learn to set fire in place gems 6 different ways.  Later we'll join our sample tiles together with heavy jump rings to form a unique box pendant.

You can also take the opportunity to become certified, have meals with some of the stars of the metal clay world and just hang out with like minded people for a day or two or the whole week. Hope to meet some of you there.  Be sure to introduce yourselves to me!

Great Deal

I just noticed that Whole Lotta Whimsy has Tammy Powley's book Picture Yourself Creating Metal Clay Jewelry on sale. It's marked down to $22.00 from $29.99! 

I think this is a terrific book, mostly for the encyclopedic information it contains.  Tammy's projects are really simple, but there are guest projects which are more advanced and the pictures are great. There's even an entire section devoted to setting up a studio space with lots of examples from crafters all over the country.

If you're just starting out, this is the book for you!

Got Storage?

All of these cute little boxes are filled with jump rings. Each different. Each labeled with gauge, inner diameter and outer diameter. Some labeled with price per ring, some not.

These are even more baggies of jump rings for which I have no cute boxes. My best guess is that there are duplicates which were purchased from different vendors. I haven't checked yet.

Will someone tell me why I have so many jump rings when I use so few? I used to keep them in the baggies they had been shipped in which were in turn housed in those plastic sleeves designed to hold photo slides, but plastic slides on plastic and they were always falling out - so I'm hoping that keeping each style in it's own box will help to keep them organized.

How do you store all your little components? This is not an idle question. My inquiring mind really does want to know. Has anyone figured out the pièce de resistance of storage solutions? Share please.

My Trash To Treasure...

It took me all day to gild these dang crosses!  But I think they turned out really well.

The only difficulty I had was trying to thread the hemp fiber through the holes.  The base was made from corrugated cardboard which formed a little maze inside. I glued the end of the hemp to stiffen it and that helped some, but it still took about 6-8 tries to get the job done - on each bead! 

You can see some additional process shots here.

Make sure you check out Mike, Rachelle and Alisa to see what they came up with!

Waste Not - Want Not

What this should really mean to me is don't waste time and you won't want more of it. Not that I really *wasted* my art time this week. I had a play date, taught some classes, straightened up my life (which of course must be done to have the energy to create), but I didn't have time to think about this week's One A Week challenge until the weekend. 

For some reason this one by Jeffery Sebelia was only the runner up. But really, how cute is that?

The theme is, indeed, Waste Not - Want Not. In Season 3, Episode 6 the Project Runway designers were taken to a city dump to collect trash and turn it into treasure (along with an extra $25 to spend in an art store).

I wasn't really thrilled with my pendant last week, but am totally into creating some recycled bling. I had a couple of ideas and finally decided upon one which I think will be really cool, but it's taking much longer than I anticipated. I'll definitely be finished by tomorrow. The only hint I'll give you is that 7 year old faux gold leaf sticks to it's protective paper and thus is a big pain in the patooti!