Feeling Blue

This piece was a custom order. It has a base of robin's egg blue with chocolate brown detail. Impressed with butterflies to symbolize strength and beauty in the face of adversity, also symbols for all four seasons are hidden in the front veneer. The back is chocolate brown with gold leaf, rolled to make an aged, crackled effect. 

Pictures were taken in bright light when the piece was freshly varnished, so it will dry slightly darker. 

Bracelet Work

I've got two more bracelet veneers to show today. The first is a mokume-gane that refuses to have a backing put on it. I'm hoping the third time is the charm so I don't have to banish it to the back of a drawer.

The second is the front piece to a custom order I'm working on, made to compliment an outfit.

This piece has a backing on it, I just haven't taken pictures yet. A couple more little touches of spot sanding and some varnish and it will be complete. 

Nevermore

The bracelet is finally finished. It's polymer clay over an aluminum armature. Each feather was cut and detailed by hand over a period of three days. Silver leaf details on inside lining. Sanded and varnished.

It's a picture of a raven with a wizard's hat (I don't know why it's wearing a hat) with the words to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" around the bird. Super excited about this one :)

Cuff Cuff

Some more cuffs.

As always, you can click the pictures to enlarge them and see details.

I have another one in progress that I'm super excited about. It's got really intricate edging that has taken two days all ready though, so it may be a while longer. Also, I'm working on a Cellini spiral bead project now, so I have to choose between the two every time I sit down.

Thanks for stopping by.

Prototype

So I've been playing with some ideas I got for cuff bracelets. I've decided that I'll be making slight modifications to the inside lining in the future but I like the potential.

Please pardon the crappy phone pictures and the stray cat hair :) This one was claimed on facebook shortly after I posted it and I've all ready got orders for future work, so it seems I've found something good that I can call my own :)

There are two more waiting on my desk - one to be varnished and one that still needs the inside lining and sanding and varnishing. 

So that's what I've got. Thanks for stopping by :)

Flood Waters

Most of my regular readers know I'm located in the northern reaches of Colorado, so I'm sure some have been waiting for an update. We are fine, but we've been surrounded by deep flood waters on all sides for many days now. We live on the side of a hill, so the water has gone around us and downwards without much problem. Our yard squishes when we walk on it, but that's fairly normal here after any substantial rain. Coal Creek is less than a half a mile from our house and had some pretty intense flooding. It used to be ten feet down in a ravine, where as now it's ground level and above and has gone from ten feet wide to fifty feet wide. Last I saw, whole sides of the bank walls had been sheared off and were gone, but that was a few days ago and I've not really left the house since aside from walking the dogs around the block.

So in other news, I put in an admissions application to art school last week. I always said I was going to get an art degree, but never did it. Really, if I'd gone to college right out of high school I would have either failed out or dropped out and that would have been a waste of time and money. Now that I've got some time and motivation, I'm ready to follow that dream. I'll be focusing on a Fine Art degree with a focus on sculpture. I like to think it will help with all the neat prosthetic makeup I want to learn, and designing and crafting pieces for Comic Con and all the other stuff I like to make with my hands.

We started potty training Youngest Daughter a little over a week ago. As of right now, she's weirded out by urinating without a diaper on that she jumps up and runs away from her potty before she's done. So the potty is sitting in the foyer of our house on tile floor for easy clean up. Her awareness has really come along, so hopefully getting her to realize when she needs to go and being okay with going in a toilet and not her diaper will fall into place pretty soon. 

I haven't been doing much glass lately. I have about ten beads sitting in water waiting to be cleaned but I've ignored them for more than a week. I have been doing a fair amount of experimenting with new polymer clay designs, things for Comic Con and things for my regular Etsy sales. 

Speaking of polymer clay, I was looking at polymer clay cuff bracelets online yesterday to see what's popular and what's been done too much and what hasn't been done. Gathering ideas, so to speak. I've noticed that a LOT of polymer clay cuff bracelets are only decorated on the outside and I've come to wonder... Why? The inside is highly visible in a cuff bracelet, particularly if someone asks to look at it up close. Also, the inside is a whole separate potential canvas- even if it's just a plain accent color to set off the outside design. When attaching clay to metal, you must first coat the metal with glue so the clay will adhere - leaving the back unfinished greatly increases the chance that something could get between the clay and the cuff and it could crack or break, or the whole outside may come off. Then all the time and energy spent designing it would be wasted. I plan to use other people's design neglect to my benefit. 

Here's the inside of a pendant I made the other day. I took it out and discarded it because it was only an experiment and I scratched it while I was messing with it, but it's got good design potential for lots of uses and I plan to expand upon it. Please pardon the blurry picture, I took it one-handed with my phone.

So yeah. All is well here, all things considered. Been busy, but will hopefully have more time for creation and updates in the near future. Thanks for stopping by!