Friday, May 20, 2011

A rabbit, a squirrel and a bird, oh my!






You may have noticed a trend in my posts. I absolutely love making gifts for people. Personalizing jewellery for my near and dears gives me that warm fuzzy feeling. It truly is better to give than receive. I love when my mind whirs into action thinking about a person and what they love in life and making something that reflects their personality and will hopefully bring a little joy into their life.

When I thought of this idea for a friend I went into idea overdrive and wanted to tack on as many components and do-dads as possible. How could one not love a piece that can be displayed, has interchangeable components and of course is all made by hand (a crazy person, that's who).

So, ladies and gents gaze upon this here object with envy because it is a one-of-a-kind creation for one special person!

I fabricated the pendant from copper that I then used different coloured flocking to jazz it up. I actually constructed it so that you can insert different background pictures into the square frame. I carved each of the animals from wax and then casted them using Ancient Bronze casting grain. A grain that I have recently acquired and absolutely love. The animals, base, and pendant each have Rare Earth Magnets to hold them into place when being worn or on display.

I simply painted the based and glued on some string and yarn - I finally found a use for my rainbow yarn that I love so much but never use.

Then I got stumped as to what kind and what length of a chain the piece needed, so after Gillian received it she added some of her heart chain, and BAM! it's that much more awesome.

A very Happy Birthday to Gillian!

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Enamel 101




I have been out of commission for much too long, contemplating about what I would like to blog about as opposed to actually just getting down to it. The idea about doing a weekly or monthly feature on artists that inspire me has been rolling around in my mind. I would like to give it a scheduled update promise, but I will just put it on the things to do list for this blog. Especially since I have been slacking off on uploading photos of work. I have been taking photos, it's just the uploading part that I lag behind on.

Alright! enough boring you, let us get to some pictures. Lately because of a severe lack of motivation for my usual work I have been dabbling with enameling. After doing a colour test of all the colours in the studio i fiddled around with some stenciling and some cloisonne. Note to self: when doing cloisonne, fill and do one colour at a time - I think I lucked out with this first firing in the kiln, although the foot needs another layer of colour. The back of each piece was enameled with counter-enamel - an amalgamation of all the scrap enamel mixed together. Pretty fun stuff to do, I would like to try my hand at some enamel paintings, and some wirework pieces eventually.