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Scarecrow
I have a stack of bead orders waiting for me here but I jumped into another project of course. Here’s my little scarecrow art doll:
It’s almost 9 inches tall which makes it the biggest non vase item I’ve ever made out of clay. The head was originally hollow, broke and got stuffed and fixed (the poor guy has been decapitated twice in his short life).
NOW back to regular clay life!
Orchids
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
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.
Summer Weekends
The last day of school is tomorrow and that’s always marked the start of summer to me (yes, even now as an adult!). I made that big tray of flowers and slice beads to start refilling my stock and orders and projects for the show this week. In other bits of life, I stared at the pretty flowers that are starting to show up:
And the Mad House Renovator took time out of his schedule to help me find a picture of the nearby highway for another project. While the highway pics are boring I snapped a good pic of him and the car lit by the sunset.
Still Coming Up Flowers
It’s been a little crazy here in Tooaquarius land (we won’t worry about those of you thinking Isn’t it ALWAYS crazy in Tooaquarius land…) as I finish prepping for classes this weekend and my bead show the week after.
I’m still cranking out masses of beads, the overflow of which will flood into my online shops at the end of the month. Their shiny faces will be all over my table at the Oasis Bead Show in Calgary June 18-20.
Working on Everything
Here’s my latest dangly bracelet. Here are some of the flip flops – new and older ones – used in bracelets. Here are a few earrings from the last few days.
There’s one of the necklaces that I strung on a combo of suede and beading cord. I always like the mix of casual cords and pretty, fancy beads. Here’s another, with swirlies, pearls and little lumps of turquoise.
I love how much stuff actually gets DONE with tight deadlines on my horizon.
Freshly Baked
I haven’t really disappeared. I’m just trying to finish up what I can before the end of the month – and the monstrously huge show in Calgary, the Lilac Festival, pray for dry weather! – and have been a little lax in taking pictures of what I’m making.
Here’s a few of what got baked this weekend shortly before they get turned into bracelets and earrings:
Challenged!
A little while ago my friend Cindy and I decided we would take very similar materials – a set of my coffee tone pillow beads, some copper or brass wire / toned findings, a few bronze-y pearls and a little turquoise – and make a piece or two of jewelry. Why?
To prove that even with very similar materials and sources you could make very different jewelry.
I have this one pic of what I made because I made it at my Tuesday networking group and one of the members came and bought it! Which is great but means that I will have to make another because I quite liked it. Mine uses very traditional wirework links, the pearls, clay beads, turquoise and a few twisted jump rings for interest.
You can see Cindy’s here and note that apart from the beads, they look nothing alike! And I have one more idea for the same materials again that will look completely different than my FIRST piece. So stay tuned.
Mirror Mirror
An inevitable part of making canes and beads – at least for me – is a heap of scraps. I actually keep at least one or two containers on my table just to catch them. Now and then I go through those containers and sort by colour, add pinches of black, white or something sparkly and then make them into swirlies or mirror image beads like these:
These are mostly tab shaped mirror image beads. Half the fun of these is finding the little ink-blot like pictures in the beads. That one on the lower right? It has penguins diving in a tropical paradise of course.
Phew!
Last weekend we had company, my folks visiting for the Easter weekend. So I figured the blends that my helpful friend had done up for me would have to wait. Not so! The men went and did house fixes and repairs and put up trims.
My mom came and hung out with me in the studio and we chatted while we did our favourite things: she had a paperback and I had my clay.
It was a good start to the week and I finally finished my stack of canes from those blends:
