Asymmetry Blog Hop LMAJ

Today, and throughout this week, is the bi-monthly blog hop for Love my Art Jewelry.

I have only had time to make one new thing, but I have a couple other fairly recent designs that I can share as well.

For me, most pieces I make are asymmetrical.  I like the drama it creates in a piece.  I like that slight chaos it implies, and then, it balances out in some sort of way anyhow.

It's a challenge, its fun, and it allow me to use a greater variety of beads in one piece then if I matched them up.  I don't know about you, but to me, having more beads is a good thing !!

I can't be sure, but this may have been how I got started pushing the asymmetrical designs.  I am known to often lay out twice the amount of beads then I can fit in a piece.  Yet every time I hope I can somehow fit them in.  In order to use the variety I had hoped to use in a piece, and keep it on the shorter side, I had to make some asymmetrical designs.  Now, like I said, I can't be sure, but I think that played a part in it.  

So here are my pieces.

This first one is a longer piece, which is typically harder for me. 

 This one features my scrimshaw beadm ammonite, bronze pieces, a marsha neal studio drop at the bottom and a Suburban Girl studio donut

 Rustic Pink focal and rusty stone bead by me, donut by marsha neal studio

This is my newest one- made with some new beads I had made for another project (that didn't fit into it....lol)

I hope you like them.  I know, I won't be going back to symmetrical anytime soon ;)

Please go on over to LMAJ and see what others have made as well!

http://www.lovemyartjewelry.blogspot.com/2014/03/love-my-art-jewelry-asymmetry-bootcamp.html

  

Some Exciting New Adventures

Well, some pretty exciting "firsts" are happening this year. 

First I found out a while back that one of my jewelry pieces was picked to be in the gallery section of this book.

http://www.kalmbachstore.com/67040.html

I just got my copy today.  I sent in picture of 4 different sea glass designs, this is the one they featured in the gallery section.

I also have the privilege of gracing the cover of Bead Design Studio this month.  They do a beautiful job on the magazine with top notch photography.  It is beautiful, and I am honored.
(it is actually my second cover, but the first one I had all to myself)

http://beaddesignstudiomag.com/issues/current.shtml

I wasn't sure when the magazine was coming out, but I got my necklace back early (and its one of my favorites)...I happend to be wearing it as my son and I ran to the store for rolls, and guess what was on the self? I was pretty unhappy to be caught off guard (bad hair day) but had to get the picture since I was actually wearing the necklace!

Finally- I am going to be teaching a class at Bead Fest Philly this year.  

In my class you will learn to make organic polymer focals and beads, learn to paint them with a faux ceramic / aged crackle effect, and then make this finished piece using the beads you made and materials supplied.

You can sign up online here https://www.eiseverywhere.com/ehome/79000.  Just look for the Painted Polymer Fossil Talisman class.  It will be a fun time, and a good chance to learn some new techniques with your fellow artisans.

So that is everything.  I am still catching up from the Bead Show, and post show sale.  Though I hope to be blogging more regularly now.

Also, remember to check out Love my Art Jewelry.  We have a great Boot Camp going on about Asymmetry in your work....tips, encouragement and inspiration!  If I am not blogging here, then I am usually blogging over there!  

Now bring on Spring, and everything will be wonderful !

Wire Work Out Blog Hop

Today is the blog hop over at Love my Art Jewelry.  I set out to make a piece entirely of wire, but the gemstone lover in me just did not allow it.  I did however, use a lot of wire, and the focal portion is wire work.

 

I had wanted to do a tutorial on it, but, um, not way.  It was kinda hard to explain and somewhere around getting the second piece wired together I thought "forget about it".  Sorry.

 

I will say this, I mostly used wire wrapped loops to connect pieces, along with simply wrapping smaller gauge wire tightly around larger wire to connect them. 

 

I had some free form fun making the dangles too, and that is about that (with out all the details).

 

 

I can't wait to see what everyone else did. 

 

www.lovemyartjewelry.blogspot.com

 



Boot Camp- Textured Metal Blog Hop

(if you are still hopping with the Bead Soup blog hop, click here or just scroll down one post)

 

It is time for our second Art Jewelry Boot Camp Blog Hop.  This time around we talked about texturing metal- whether in sheet or wire form.  We talked about what you can use as far as tools and materials to texture.  This boot camp was specific to hand texturing- no etching or rolling mills allowed! 

 

I decided to use the piece I made using letter stamps on wire, in my finished piece.  I find that I have too many started items lying around that never make their way into finished jewlery. 

 

Here was the piece I made for Love my Art Jewelry.

So I made a couple of matching spirals, cut some jump rings, made a textured clasp to match and put together this piece.  I just LOVE all the texture in it.

 



 

The ceramic beads are by Marsha Neal Studio, the stones that dangle in the front are fossil stones.

 

 

Texturing wire was really fun, and I wouldn't have really tried it if it weren't for Boot Camp.

 

If you want to hop along and see what everyone else made, check out Love my Art Jewelry.

 



Balled Head Pins Boot Camp

Over at Love my Art Jewelry we started a new challenge, no more Strut your Stuff, we are going hardcore with Boot Camp!  You can read all about it here.  Basically, we wanna teach you some new fundamental techniques, and then let you try it out and run with it, and then, have a blog hop at the end of it all.  This month we spent a lot of time working out the bugs, but its blog hop time.

 

You can read about Boot Camp here.

 

You can see my tutorial for balled head pins here.

 

You can enter your creation for the challenge and future challenges in flickr, here.

 

If you want to hop along you can enter by adding your blog by inlinkz here.  Remember to link your blog to ours (LMAJ) so your friends can hop along too!

 

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Here is what I made with the balled headpins technique.

 

I have used LONG balled head pins balled on both sides to create dangles, such as in my jellyfish earrings.

 

 

I have used them to create texture on pieces too.

 

 

 But for this challenge I wanted to do something new, so thought about using them as a connection.  Balling a headpin, dropping it through and balling the other side to connect two things together. 

 

I also happend to be making bronze clay beads, and I often like to layer them with sheet metal.  So here is what I came up with.  It is a trilobite fossil in bronze, with balled head pins to connect it to a nickle silver backing.

 

 

The bail on this piece is also a head pin, balled on one side, fed through a hole and balled again. 

 

So I hope you had fun with boot camp, and learned to make some headpins and found some new ways to use them in your jewelry making.

 

Remember to go to to Love my Art Jewlery to hop along and see what everyone did!