Creative Break

As the semester rolls to an end, spurred by a whole week off for Thanksgiving, I've been in a jewelry frame of mind. In the midst of the semester, as I was juggling two jobs, working on my MA thesis, and grading student papers, my jewelry got sidelined.

Now, though, now I've been spending my free time at my desk, catching up on missed TV online and beading. It's a vicious cycle, too. I start a necklace, start an episode, and they never entirely sync up. I finish a necklace, but am still mid-episode, so I have to start a new one. I finish an episode, but I'm not quite done with the necklace...

Another side-effect is that, as I find myself with more and more free time (at least for a few weeks), I find myself in the mood for more complicated jewelry, too. No simple stringing for me these days. No, I need chain and headpins or lots of seed beads and some bead weaving.

Two days ago, I had to thin out my necklace board to make room for the new pieces. Christmas wish: more storage for necklaces.

Fun With Chain

I've been on a chain kick lately, using it for dangles because I like the movement it creates in a piece. The pictures, I know, aren't great. I took them in faded afternoon light, but I do kind of like hanging them from my mailbox.

Necklace 1: Purple glass beads, oil slick glass pony beads, brass spacers and silver chain.


Necklace 2: Blue coin pearls, black faceted glass beads, gunmetal seed beads, and silver chain.

ABS Entry

Long time, no blog, I know. I've been busy with other things and, while still making jewelry, not taking photos. To help build jewelry momentum, I entered this month's Art Bead Scene contest. My entry is a finished piece built from one of my Coryl series beads.

Some Custom Work

Since my parents moved to Colorado right after they got married, we don't see the relatives that often, with them all pretty much being back in the state of our origins, Ohio. This week, though, my dad's sister Marie is visiting with her husband John and my cousin Tony's kids, Madison (10) and Nolan (8).

Today they came to visit my house. My aunt and Madison are into jewelry (though I found out that Madison is very much not into Chris Isaak, who was playing on my stereo). I'm into jewelry. We had a big jewelry festival. It was fun.

Aunt Marie asked if I'd be up for doing a couple of custom pieces. Her plan was to have me make a necklace for her and for the kids' mom. Well, then I said we'd do something with a pendant and of course the kids each liked a different one and there was no compromise to be had, so we did two necklaces, one for each kid.

I've got to say, it was pretty entertaining. It's been a while since I've done collaborative work, and collaborating with kids that age makes me smile. They each picked out their pendants and we spread out some beads on the floor so they could pick accents. Then we picked out each kid's favorite accent beads and I strung everything together. Then, my aunt and I picked out the beads for her necklace, which brings my jewelry total for today up to three necklaces in one go.

Not too shabby for a day's work, I think.

Coryl Series Launch

I'm catching up on experimentation and took some new pictures today, deciding there's no time like the present to put some new pieces in the Etsy shop. To start off, I've added one of the pendants I showed you all the other day, as well as a newly-finished necklace featuring one of the Coryl beads - though this one is a bit more evocative of raku than coral thanks to the coloring and lack of "barnacles."

What I've Been Doing The Last Week

The past days I've been immersed in the new beads. With the use of an extruder, I was on a roll. These beads are the most labor-intensive I've ever made, but they also have a great deal of potential for experimentation. There's color to play with, the use/disuse of the beads, patterns of the coils... the list goes on.

A Personal Aesthetic: Part Three

A while back I was on a candle holder kick, and after half a dozen, I started trying to think of something different I could do to cover the glassware. For some reason, the thought of filigree crossed my mind. A number of polymer artists do beautiful things with filigree, and I decided I'd try it too.

Since I didn't have a recent/clear picture in my head of what I'd seen other people do, I just started making it up as I went. Happy accident, that. Where most of the filigree you see (just google it) is pretty... geometric, my lines are much more abstract, which makes my style pretty different from what I've seen that's already out there.

I added little polymer beads and half-pierced them because it seemed like a good idea at the time. There was no real logic at work on that point. Another happy accident, because when you put the parts together, it becomes very organic. With the addition of color by way of pearlescent powders embedded in TLS, this is the result.

(Please pardon the lighting, I just now remembered that I'd better get pictures up, so these feature not-especially-strong afternoon light.)

The candle holder is where I started, but now I've become interested in jewelry applications. So, as I mentioned before, I began some experiments. This pendant is the one I'm happiest with.

In the end, I'm left with deciding on a name. It took a while, but once I noticed how much the "beads" remind me of barnacles, I noticed that the filigree itself reminds me of certain types of coral. As such, I think I'll call this my Coryl series.