More Iowa Bead Society Projects ........

We have a meeting tomorrow ( If you are in the the Greater Des Moines Area, and would like to attend it's at 630pm at Valley Junction Community Center) so I thought I'd post pictures from meeting projects/challenges today. The top picture shows the earrings I finished a week or so ago, from a pattern that Cheryl Erickson demo'd at July's meeting. It's brick stick around a ring. I'm proud to say I made the rings myself out of sterling silver wire. Cheryl actually sells sterling rings made by me in her shop just for this pattern.. Her store is 2-3 down from the community center in Valley Junction in fact.

Every month this year the Bead society has a color challenge... In July what could be more natural than red, white and blue?? I made the frame with 18GA sterling wire, then beaded around it. The lampwork heart I bought at a bead show a few years ago, and fit perfect in the color theme!
this month's challenge is near and dear to my heart.... Silver! I made the below pendent in 20 GA sterling square wire, and I sold it yesterday at the art store art show, so I've made another one today for the meeting. However this morning I got a GREAT idea for a all ( or mostly) silver piece, and I've started working on it but I'm not sure I'll get it done in time for the meeting. Here's keeping fingers crossed!!

busy busy week.......

And I've gotten very little done in the studio! Had soooo much fun last night though... we had a surprise birthday Party for my little girl.. her birthday won't be until Sept, but she's always wanted a surprise party.... and my sister was going to be in town, it seemed absolutely the perfect time to try it! The look on her face as she walked into her grandparents house.. with most of her family there yelling Surprise! and singing happy birthday. We got her good!










The top 2 pictures are in Niobium, and are part of a series I did some months ago. It's 16 GA that I shaped into "goddess" like forms, and then colored. The top one is "she loves to dance" and the 2ND one is "she loves to give"

This last pendent is from June, it's actually my "yellow" project for the Iowa Bead Society. My mother loves Tulips and she loves yellow, so I made this thinking of her!

Quickie Pendant Post!

OK, I thought I had all the older pictures posted, but I've tripped over these 2... done in sterling silver wire. Both Pendants already sold I believe, but if you are interested in these, just pop me an email I can make you something similar all your own!

More Musings......

The show in Amana went OK, it was Hot and Humid.. and yes it deserves the capital H on that.. but the breeze made it mostly bearable, and of course all the people were so nice, as they usually are at art shows.
It reminds me that situations are almost always better than my sometimes gloomy speculations would make them. Something to remember better in the future!

I'm sort of between new pictures right now, I've got some new ones loaded into the computer, but not edited.

This weekend is the art show at The Art Store in West Des Moines. ( http://www.shoptheartstore.com/ ) Me and 9 other artist hang out all day in the parking lot, and last month's was sooooo much fun! If you are in the West Des Moines area on Sat, come by... 9-5pm. Since it's such a small group, you really get to chat with both the customers and other artists, it makes it a fun bonding experience.

My sister is going to be in town This week, and she's very humbly pleased, she's reallllly into stamping, and she won this award... here is someone's blog about it: http://stamping411.blogspot.com/2009/08/big-woo-hoo-for-selene-and-gretchen.html I'm very proud of her! Can't wait to see her on Weds!!

With her in town, tonight and Tues are my only nights to really get any jewelry making done this week, so I'm going to make it count.. I have a couple of pendant ideas lurking in my brain as I type this.

Amana Art Show, Middle Amana Park, IA 10-5pm + musings....

admit I'm not looking forward to my show this weekend. I normally do- I like meeting with my customers and other artists. I like seeing all the wonderful creative artwork and displays of my fellow artists. Most shows have such positive energy! It has nothing to do with the show itself... which is the Amana's Art Festival in Middle Amana Park, 10-5pm. It has to do with the weather. This weekend it's going to be hot hot hot and humid humid humid... and windy. I have asthma, and I and humidity do not mix well. (well OK, I know living in Iowa is asking for it.. but I love Iowa!) And if it's windy, then we have to close up the booth to keep jewelry from flying around. You cannot believe how aerodynamic jewelry displays can be!

You might notice that this show isn't on my website... well if you recall my computer died in June, and I got a new one, which I love! While I was able to retrieve most items and transfer them to my new one, my website wasn't one of them. The pictures and the words all transferred to my new harddrive-- but it's all garbled up. I need to recreate it , and I've not had the time to do it, so no updates since early June. It's on my to do list for this Sunday. Keeping my fingers crossed here, I hate working on stuff like this, it's even behind dishes and I hate washing dishes! It especially rankles because I don't know why the settings got scrambled, I hate having to spend time fixing something that shouldn't be broken. I would much rather be creating stuff in the studio or bonding with the kid or something.

It's actually one of my major pet peeves in life.. my time being wasted on "stupid" unnecessary things. For example, there is a mistake on a bill.. you have to take your valuable time to call in customer support, wait on the phone, then argue with someone to get it fixed... all that time is just unnecessary, and you never get it back.

This is in contrast to "putter" time. Putter time is when you’re not really being productive, but you are recharging yourself. Everyone needs down time to be mentally healthy. I go up to the studio sometimes without really getting much done, except putter time. I swear after a day of putter, I have the best sketch book days.. Where every 5 minutes I’m writing ideas or sketching. I think that's my real problem right now, I've been so busy with work and with the business and family and everything; I really need a putter day.

Earrings.................... And things I am thankful for .

The last several posts have been pendants, pendants, pendants... so here are earrings, earrings, earrings. The kewl thing is all of these earrings have sold, I've just been behind posting pictures.

I especially liked the red swirl ones. I used 20GA sterling on them, and Czech glass lentil drops. Seriously playing with wire is just the best thing!

Today, 15 years ago, my husband and I got married. I guess there is something better than playing with wire!

Then there is my wonderful almost 13 year old daughter.

Ok, playing with wire is the 3rd best thing in my life!

Art shows and new friends.....

Last weekend my art shows started back up after a 3 week break. On Sat (7/18/09) Jerry and I set up at the Art Store in West Des Moines. I had no real expectations, as I didn't want to be disappointed and since the show is mostly free, all I am out is alittle time if it doesn't go well. The main goal we had was to promote home jewelry shows, sell enough to cover costs just enjoy the day.
Sales wise, I was very happy! I actually made some! We handed out jewelry show brochures to anyone we could. The weather was cool, and not too windy, and traffic was low, which means I actually got to make jewelry on site. This is going to sound strange, but from a "boredom" prospective, I either want a really busy show, or a really slow show. The in between type shows drive me crazy.. where there is just enough traffic I have to pay lots of attention, but I'm not doing well so I go crazy. At least if the show is super slow, I can sit and make jewelry or read or something. You know, I probably shouldn't admit the above... heheheh. After all I am a cat, cat's don't do bored well.

But we made crazy profit in one area: we made new friends! My next door art neighbor was
Angela Meijer and her friend Carla Myers, selling wonderful colorful paintings. you can see her booth on her blog: http://angelameijer.blogspot.com/2009/07/artstore-des-moines_22.html#links All the pictures in the blog today are courtesy of Carla.. who went nuts with the camera. thanks for the pictures Carla! Angela's paintings are very kewl, very colorful and like any great art, invites the viewer to invest themselves in the meaning of the painting. We had great fun looking at her paintings and seeing things in them that she hadn't realized where in there. It's like pulling pictures out of clouds...

Anyway, it turned a potentially OK day into a great day, and I hope to see them at future art shows!

One of my failures........

I don't admit failure often, but I'm yelling "Uncle!" on this one.

I started this back in October. the large circle pendant is a vintage pin that was missing one of the rhinestones and the pin back was broken.. I got it cheap at a flea market a few years ago, in a baggie of broken bits I've used in other projects over the year. I wanted to make something big... I was thinking maybe regency period ( think Pride & Prejudice) evening necklace... large, multi-stranded drapy pearl necklace with a large medallion and crystal drop.. dripping in pearls and crystals. I wanted something that screamed other than my time period... I ran across this pin again, and realized it would be prefect as my center piece! So I gathered my materials and went to work on the drop. Right away I ran into problems.. getting the drop to drape correctly.. I gave up ( for that week) and it went into my traveling pile of projects..


I always have a pile of traveling projects. I like to have projects already to go, in case I get invited to bead somewhere else, like a bead pot luck at one of the local shops, or over to a friend's house... all I have to do is grab my tools and a couple of projects and go! I sometimes hit my pile when I've hit a temporary block... or feel like beading at work ( on breaks /lunch of course!) instead of reading or something. Several of the projects are seed bead in nature as they travel well. I have a few repair jobs in there; and occasionally something like this pearl project, where I had a road block, so I'll kit it up and work on it later. Sometimes I just need time to think about it in my unconscious and I solve my problem! No such luck with this one....

Anyway, I pick it up again in Feb, and another rhinestone had fallen out of the pin. I found this one and I glued it back in, and work alittle on it. Same story a few months later... some more glue and I'm back in business. I also ran into problems on how to attach 3 to 6 strands of pearls to the pin that looked good... so I would put it away again.

I dug it out last week to work on again.. and this time I really wanted to get it finished. Once again, another rhinestone had fallen out, but this time I couldn't find it. I couldn't find a close enough match to the pin in my stash of rhinestones. So I'm stuck now. I cannot sell something missing a rhinestone! Also at this point I've re glued half of the darn things... so I'm afraid if I sell it another will fall out on my customer... not good. And I never did quite figure out how to get the strands draped evenly in the back... so lots of problems on this one.

Most importantly, I no longer have any desire to make this huge, drapy regency period thingie, though that might be a side effect to the problems I've had with this piece. sign.

I recently bought some resin to play with, typing this makes me wonder what the pin would look like if I glazed the whole damn thing so nothing else can fall out ( assuming I can find a match to the missing rhinestone) if it would look ok... hmmmmmm..... maybe it's time to dig through the rhinestone stash again, maybe I missed something........

copper and sterling .. together again!

Though in my mind they are rarely apart! Here is a recent copper/sterling bracelet I made with matching earrings. I think I need to use a thicker gauge of copper next time, I used 20 so it would fit into the holes of the beads... I like it but it's more delicate than I would wish. Like how the earrings turned out though! what do you think??

More Pendants........

A few more pendants to show.... the lime is Mother Of Pearl, the other 2 are agates.

Black and White Challenge for June

Just going through my pictures and realized I'd not shared my Bead Society's challenge for June... This year my local society ( check out http://iowabeadsociety.blogspot.com/ if you are in the Des Moines Area) is featuring a color or color combination each month. For June it was Black and white. I made this bracelet with vintage glass, fresh water pearls, sterling silver ( I made the headpins in fact) and crystals.

July's colors are Red, White and Blue. I'm having a hard time getting excited about that, as the 4th is already past.......

More Pendants.......

I like making pendants, and since they are selling very well this season, I've been making them like crazy!! All three of these use agates... but all are different. I really like the 3rd one, it's Mexican lace, and it's shaped like Africa, so that's what I named it. I don't always name my pieces, but some of them just call out for a name. What would you name the other two? send me your suggestions!

All three are wrapped in sterling silver wire.

Anne's Dad is a talented guy!

My good friend Anne Clodi's dad Bill started cutting stones just a few years ago... He was in town a couple of months ago and came to the bead meeting with examples of his work. He's getting pretty darn good! Anyway, below is 3 different pendants I made using stones he cut... which I was going to show Anne but they sold before I saw her to show her.... sooooo.... here they are Anne! I promise next time I'll make sure you see them in person before I actually sell them ok? Thanks Bill!

what I did today...........

Today I've been very productive if I say so myself. I am working on several pendants and 1 bracelet... when you metalsmith, the soldering is often the easiest and quickest part of it. I spent several hours today just prepping the projects. You have to plan out your piece, cut or punch out the pieces, file and sand it, and clean it (dirty metal doesn't solder very well). You have to put flux on it ( that helps keep the metal from scorching.. and leaving streaky brown spots called fire scale) You you carefully put little tiny pieces of solder where you want them, and light the torch.. if you have done everything else correctly, the soldering is less than a minute. Stupid me, I should of thought to take pictures all along the various stages, but I did take one of the items in the pickle pot... I've got 8-9 projects in pickle right now......

This is one of my little trays with a project in it.. it shows my rough sketch of what I'm doing. the open circle is of copper, the triangle is brass, and the little bits of decoration are sterling.. in fact you can see the top bits in the tray... If you are soldering more than 1 or 2 items together, it pays in the long run to break up the soldering tasks. That way you can control were you want the solder to flow better.. This first past is just the circle and triangle, you can see it the pickle jar toward the bottom right corner, on top of a couple of other items.

this is a picture of my wonderful bench as I set it up for soldering. The aqua colored thingie is my pickle jar. Most people heat their pickle, I don't, because the odor bothers me. It works faster heated, but I've found it works just as good to leave it in longer as heated, and no fumes. Since I rarely get more than an hour or 2 straight in the studio, I just leave it in the pickle overnight, and do the next stages another day.


Here are some cut outs for future projects and scraps. I keep all my scraps... you never know when some bit or piece will come in handy, and of course you can melt it all down and get it remilled if nothing else!

Here are 3 examples of pendants.. I actually made these a couple of months ago, and they are long gone-- all got sold at a show in the recent past. See how pretty and shiny they are? Briefly, after you solder and pickle, you rinse off with baking soda and water, you clean with soap and water, you file/sand/dremel away rough spots or bad soldering, you clean it again, then you polish them, add bail if needed, and then tumble them. this is simplified. Sometimes you have to solder additional stuff on or do "remedial soldering" if something didn't get done well the first time. Always an adventure, soldering is.

this bottom one is my favorite of the 3, I almost kept it. To the lucky customer who bought it, I hope you enjoy it for years to come!

Smithing Rocks!

Wow! I'm done with 5 shows in the month of June, no wonder I feel so tired! Despite the weather Jerry and I had fun selling my jewelry to very sturdy hardy art buyers, as almost every show in June featured rain or sweat drenched t-shirt humidity! Got to love Iowa this time of the year! I now have a couple of weeks of break... So yesterday was sort of piddle around the house and try to catch up on projects like dish washing and bills... ugh! LOL

So today I'm going to do something I've missed the past 6 weeks... playing with a torch and metals!! I'm very pleased that almost all my metal smithing pieces have sold.. which is just the excuse I need to make more! here are 2 pieces shown, both copper with sterling accents. The flower pendant is copper that I rolled in the rolling mill to get that lovely pattern on, then cut out the flower shape, and then I soldered a small 6mm Lapis cab. The bail is one of my spiral wirewrapped one. I do this bail on quite a few of my pieces, so much that one of my regular customers commented ( in a nice way!! ) it's practically my trademark!


In fact, you can see the same type of bail on my 2ND pendant of today, a large tear dropped shaped copper pendant with a cut out swirl in sterling soldered on. I'm very pleased with this as soldering sterling onto copper can be challenging... it's easy to get "sloppy" with solder, and you can see it much much easier on copper... and I did a heck of a polish on this one, hard to see in the photo but it just gleams!!!!

I'll have a few more to show in the next few days, of metalwork I made before my shows... right now I'm going upstairs to work on new metalworking pendants! woooo hooo! I hope everyone has as pleasant of an afternoon!

Quickie post... and lookie! Pictures are back!!

I'm getting acquainted with my new computer ( 20 inch screen, oh I am in love with that!) and I finally got my files transferred over.. so here are a couple ! Pendants are very popular this year, I've heard a bunch of customers call them "sliders" so I'm guessing that is what the popular term is for pendants this year... Anyway, as I get used to the new computer and start uploading pictures again, I'll get some of my newer stuff up! I have Farmer's Market this weekend and then I have a break from shows for a few weeks....

New Computer arrived!

Got the computer yesterday, hopefully today or tomorrow we can get it set up and get it hooked to the Internet... can't wait! But until it's on the net and I have access to my pictures, no pictures to post...

Last weekend we had a show in Oskaloosa, IA and then another on Sunday in Mason City, IA. Both went fairly well, and Sunday's show had the best weather to date!

This weekend we have Snake Alley Art Fair in Burlington IA. I usually book the best price on hotels but Burlington Has a hotel with an attached waterpark... so I splurged and booked that instead. My daughter has been very good this year getting dragged to all these shows with us. She usually hides under a table and plays DS or reads or something... so a nice waterpark as a thank you seems very much the ticket! I've been doing shows for 6-7 years now, but in the past family have watched her or she's stayed at the occasional friend's house. This year we have lost the last of our babysitters, so now she's going to go to most of the shows whether she likes it or not. Dealing with a pre-teen can be trying, but really she's a good kid and I"m proud to have her as mine!

Speaking of the kid, a couple of shows ago we were right by a independent book store (The Book Worm in Omaha NE http://www.bookwormomaha.com/store/ ), so of course we had to check out books at it! Got a couple for me and Jer, but they had a wonderful Kids' section... We picked up the first 2 in a series by Michael Buckley called "The Sisters Grimm" . I'm almost done reading the first one.. and it's wonderful!! If you have an 8 and up ( especially a girl) definitely pick them up.. I think there are 7 books so far in the series. I predict that my daughter will love these!

As soon as I have Internet access on the new computer I'll get some new pics up!

computer bit the dust......

No pictures today, my computer is dead... I've got a new one ordered but it's probably going to be a week or more before we can get it up and running and rescue data and pictures from the old one. My show in Omaha went as well as could considering the bad weather. I have Oskaloosa Ia and MacNider ( in Mason City IA) up this weekend... if you are in either area, I hope to see you there!

Pendants.....

Just a quickie, getting ready for all of my June shows, here are 4 recent pendants! All done in sterling silver of various gauges, showing a range of styles. I've been doing silversmithing and have some metal pendants, I'll try to post them next time.

Enjoy!