Classes Galore!

Posted on July 31, 2010 by Elaine

Historically, my summers are my slowest periods for work, both computer and art. This year I prepared for that by booking extra shows leading up to the summer and a week of classes in each of July and August! Phew. Plus the 20% off sale in my Etsy bead, Etsy cane and ArtFire shops. That ends today.

Here are some of the excerpts from my week of class. I had returning students and all new ones:

One of my regulars is a die-hard football fan (the local team is the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the team colour is pretty much Premo’s sea green):

One of the adult classes we covered small bottles to make wish bottles. Combinations of embellishment, canes and imagination were on the docket. One of my first time students whipped up something awesome right to order of course!

A rerun of a popular kids project class for a local day camp were the Turtle Rocks. We had neon turtles, winged turtles, fanged turtles… and lots of fun:

Of course, after all that over-planning and over-preparing for a “slow summer” it hasn’t gone slow yet. Go figure. How’s YOUR summer going?

Meet Catswire

Posted on July 30, 2010 by Elaine

The ArtFire Smoosher of the week is CatsWire, from Germany. CatsWire is primarily a wire crocheter who frequently uses polymer clay to embellish her pieces.

Some of my favourite pieces are the wire only ones, particularly these kitties:

and these lovely pearls:

She uses a mix of her wire crochet and clay talents in some of her pieces like this little miniature basket of fruit:

You can visit her on her blog: http://www.catswire.blogspot.com/

Follow her on Twitter: http://twitter.com/CatsWire

And definitely visit her studio: http://www.artfire.com/users/catswire

Orchids

Posted on July 29, 2010 by Elaine

I mostly make imaginary flowers or highly stylized ones. Sometimes I’ll take requests for identifiable flower canes – pansies, lupine and forget me nots are a few I can recall – and this week I had a request not only for the flower but a flower shaped bead. I was commissioned to make orchid beads.

No specific type of orchid… just orchids. I discovered there are LOTS of types of orchids. Most of them look like little alien flowers by the way. I picked Rothschild Orchid (vanda rothschildiana) since I could figure the petal design and a bead from there.

This is the slice flower cane – I make them right down at this size, about 5/8″. It results in these little beads:

The beads are around 3/4″ wide. I quite love them.

Floral Exploration

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Elaine

I bravely signed up to do the Art Bead Scene’s Blog Carnival. Every month one of the two groups involved commits to blogging about a theme based piece they’ve made.

August’s theme is exploration which is oddly fitting given my spring and summers activities! I went with the less literal interpretation of exploration and focused on pieces that were a little off the beaten track from my standard neatly symmetrical jewelry.

I’d gotten comfortable making craft fair and production work and only recently reminded myself that I’d GOTTEN popular by doing interesting and different work and how was I to keep that unless I explored a little?

The little shaped flower beads are made from my own canes but then slightly sculpted into a flower shape and they act as an excellent embellishment. You can see my regular slice beads, the little flat white flowers, mixed in for accents. At a bead show where I debuted them this summer, one of the teachers bought a few to use with her vintage lucite flowers.

I like how you can get a whole garden on your wrist with these or add a little more in the way of bling and keep the flowers and leaves for interesting detail.

I’ve had requests for other versions of the flowers so we’ll see what I can figure out. Pansies and orchids, oh my! I guess you could say I’m exploring my flower garden this month.

Meet Valerie’s Stuff

Posted on July 24, 2010 by Elaine

The ArtFire Smoosher of the week is Valerie of Valerie’s Stuff. Valerie is based in Columbus, Ohio and has been working with polymer clay for about six years now. She primarily creates beads to use in her own beaded jewelry and accessories.

A few samples show how Valerie prefers a simple jewelrymaking style that puts the emphasis front and center on the handmade clay components: