Intentional Stones

An Original

Part of my current design policy, perhaps the part that drags me down sometimes, is the concept of originality. I don't want to put anything out there as "my work" that contains the designs of another.

But c'mon here! This is jewelry and a chain is a chain! Clasps? Only so many ideas work and are readily customizable. Patrons of wearable art do NOT want their necklace to fall off. Lapidary work? Yes, someday I very much want to go there. But for now metal is a life consuming art.

There are a few pieces of progress in my thinking. One is to consider all of these things as textures an colors in my palate. Another is to realize that some things are just too time consuming to be worth it. Finally, I'm exploring some new materials, like braiding embroidery floss to make kumihimo necklaces for pendants and possibly some map or book materials to accent earrings.

Still i don't want to just take pieces i've bought and put them together. A piece feels less special when I haven't hand created everything.

I worry about all these things all the time, sometimes to the detriment of my studio time. Then I face a show with just enough art pieces to accent the table and a bunch of very very simple pieces that I don't necessarily love. It's not a good feeling.

As I become more accomplished, I can hand make more. And I've found a few techniques that I can do while we home school to make accents for simpler pieces that give them a unique touch. Hopefully my efforts are improving all of my art at the same time as eliminating my worry that not everything I make is unique or special enough.

How do you feel about handmade?
-Simbelmynë

New Sketching Habit

Free from expectation-that's what the morning pages have always been about.  Work for long enough to scrub my brain of the bits of dreams or old feelings or doubts. 

In days past, I've tried to do the Morning Pages suggested by Julia Cameron, but writing is not really doing it for me.  Recently, though, I've busted out a little sketchbook and I'm slowly filling it up with doodles.  Some have even lead to very interesting jewelry ideas.  Those I've transferred to my "main" sketchbook.  One with graph lines to easily gauge size and metal needs.  It's pretty cool. 

Homeschooling is gradually feeling like it's under control.  I can work during school hours on little brainless things-like weaving that's repetitive and calming, or sketching that's easy to put down and take back up again.  Especially if it's these little morning pages type sketches.  Who cares if you start a new idea and lose an old one if you're not sweating the finished product? 

I'm on to something here.  Even if I'm not in midst of a formal course like the Artist's Way.  It's helping me to live more visually.  When did I ever learn these habits of pushing the visual away?  It's so natural to me.  Some of my earliest memories are of shape and form and exploring them. 

Now that school's done I can get back to the bench.  Filling my table for the Chili Event won't happen without lots of work!

-Simbelmynë

Color

It occurs to me that my biggest block as an artist is color.

I love color more than anything else.  I have stones in every color, and a craft room full of markers, pencils, pastels, stickers, paper, yarn, ribbon,......

But in my jewelry, I tend toward monochromatic or color choices dictated by inclusions in the stones.  These make pleasing pieces, but I feel like there's so much more out there!

Someone asked me recently why I prefer natural stones, as opposed to dyed or man made ones.  We were talking about pearls in particular, at that moment.  Something Mina uses far more than I do. 

My response was not as well thought out as I'd have liked.  So I'm thinking about it here. 

I actually prefer the undyed stones in particular for several reasons.  I use gemstones in the first place because of my continual amazement at the colors that occur in nature.  In rocks.  Not ephemeral little things that need to attract attention.  Just minerals that don't care about the passage of time, survival or procreation.  And nature provides.  Sure, not as directly as a swarovski crystal (sometimes), but with a complexity and depth no manmade substance can truly capture. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm fascinated with the flowers and bugs and birds and animals as well.  But they're likely to be the subjects of my art, not the medium.  Creating the ephemeral in the permanant is probably the strongest draw to me as an idea.  And doing it with the palate provided by the earth?  Perfect!

So, it's time for me to start working on color.  Marriage of metals, set stones, beaded componants...

Mina's been playing a lot more, especially with what she calls her "kitchen sink" pieces, with subtle color and patterning.  So I'll have to bug her, too.

I'll be back on this topic a lot, I think. 

-Simbelmynë

Here's a collection of things I found on Artfire while I was daydreaming about color:

 

Color Theory

Curated By: Intentional_S...

ArtFire.com

Craft Supplies

Artist's weekend

My family will be out of town having the time of their lives.

And I'm staying home to have a party! (yes, I do feel like a teenager whose parents have left town for the weekend)

It's an artist's retreat at Simbelmynë's house!  I'll hit Costco and fill the house with food. I'm used to all sorts of eaters-picky eaters, carnivores, vegetarians, vegans, food sensitivities, OmNomNomNivores... Also I have hot and cold running WiFi, which is, of course, optional.  And, never fear, coffee.

Everything's ship shape with lots of room for big projects.  I'm not far from Construction Junction, really you could get pretty crazy. I'm planning to set aside areas for specific things, and we can adjust as people arrive with their projects and goals for the weekend.  I have lots of places to sleep, if you're from out of town or just don't want to leave.

The jewelry studio will be in full swing.  I have almost every type of equipment anybody could need-from torches to finishing equipment. I have tables and corners and quiet areas for writing, being quiet, meditating.  A park next door for walks and listening to the world around us.  A full crafting room with all sorts of supplies, if you forget anything.  I even have a macro photography studio, if you want to get some small photos.

We can swap, dump, laugh, play, work, meditate, trade secrets, teach, learn, whatever we want to do.

If you RSVP I can make sure I have what you need.  Or just show up, the more the merrier!

Stay all weekend or come and go as you please. 

Official Start is 7pm Friday, March 18 and end at 7pm Sunday March 20.

-Simbelmynë

(412)608-8986

235 Oakview Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15218

(Please ignore the photo it's from the highway, for some reason)

We're the last house on the left.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Fell into my hands this week.  Silly me clicking extra stuff as I holiday shop. 

I wanted it as part of a current commission.  But leafing through, I'm realizing that enamel may need to be part of my quest towards becoming a metal smith. I'll be doing only a very simple application for that.  Just a color inlaid into a ring.  I will wait until my instructor, who specializes in enamels, gets around to it in class to try anything fancy.

Cloissoné, Plique á jour, Painting and overlay, incorporating metal foil.... There are worlds out there that I'd love to visit.  Will I stay long?  Who knows. The stunning is unlimited.

Is there any point where I'll say I know everything I can do with metal? 

-Simbelmynë

 

Behind on the Runway

Clearly I would have been out weeks ago. (If I were the brave kind of person who'd try out for a reality show)

We've been watching, thinking and sketching.  At the party store (episode 3 season 8) I would be going the direction the winner went.  Paper!  Though I'd be into the confetti too:

Making beads isn't something I've tried, but I'm an old hand with paper and adhesives.  Laminating layers of color together would make a fun bead.  Including confettin in the mix would give it the necessary bling factor. 

Or I could use confetti as beads to sparkle things up.  Our party store also had statuary and trinket gifts.  Lots of fun just taken apart to be focal elements.

Episode 4's hats struck a real cord with me.  I started making jewelry because of masks, and maskmaking and haberdashery are close cousins.  There are so many fabulous hats to look at on the web.  I found a stunning flock of butterflies -shall we pretend this hat is my choice?  

I would look to the flowers.  Milkweed.  Dangling earrings or a necklace with a cluster of blossoms.

The last episode we worked on is the Team Challenge, Episode 5.  A major exercize in collaboration.  Each team was instructed to create a line of 6 looks that go together.   It turned out that the teams had different levels of success, in fact one team was really successful and the other almost completely failed.  The difference came from respect.  One team, the underdogs, was able to respect one another and keep lines of communication open, while the other, the team with 4 challenge winners, could not manage even a little bit of respect and tried to pin all of their failures on one team member.  It was sad.

Mina and I are very much thinking about collaboration lately.  Mina gave me this sketch:

An idea she had, inspired by the lovely mother of pearl art nouveau necklace. It seems quite doable.  We discussed shapes and available stones and means of attaching this focal piece to a necklace with chain and beads.  I only hope I can do justice to her design and that my knowledge of construction can make her vision possible.  One thing that helps me be confident in our success is Mina and I respect one another's talants and we can communicate very well about design and changes. 

-Simbelmynë

Networking thoughts

I've said before that I'd love to be more active with the guilds on Artfire.com and yet, I feel like not much comes of it.  We're all struggling to make enough noise in the online world that somebody will notice our shops.  Standing together seems to be the best way.  But we're taxed enough getting our own shops going, hours blogging seems like it's not going to do much.  

Artfire has introduced Collections, and I think this is a great tool, similar to showcases on Etsy.com.  I need to read up more on the rules and etiquette of these delightful opportunities to highlight our favorite items and sellers.   

I played with it and made a Fall Collection of a few of my favorite things.  I hope it does a bit to help out my fellow sellers. 

-Simbelmynë

Art Nouveau Too

(Photo of the famous staircase by Victor Horta in Brussels)

But they got to me very early in the form of illustrations-

Arthur Rackham

Aubrey Beardsley

Kay Neilsen

The forms of nature in curve and geometry used to accentuate the beauty of the human form.  The amazing motion and color they used.  The richness of their images.  I love it all.

In these past quiet couple of weeks, I've even been playing with these lines in my own design

I love that I'm reaching the point in learning technique that I can begin to explore the themes of Art Nouveau in my jewelry. I can't wait to make more!

-Simbelmynë

Project Runway 2010, Simbelmyne's first look

The poor souls on Project Runway got a challenge right off the plane-Choose something from your luggage, this will be the foundation of your look.  But wait!  Hand it to the person next to you.

The look of terror on their faces melted my heart.  And maybe it made me laugh.  Nothing's safe on a reality show!

Mina rummaged through her available stuff and pulled out this one:

I'm learning Chasing and Eastern Repoussé this week, naturally the choice of the "Coins and Dangles" necklace was perfect for me!  This piece has always reminded me of belly dancing, with it's coin shaped accent beads, multiple tiers and moving pendant.

I would start with an idea like this one:

The other constraint on the contestants this week was time.  Only 5 hours to create a complete look!  Since I'd want to do some metal work, I wouldn't do a lot of restringing.  Simple jumprings would bring the strands together into more of a collar and the chain would serve to hang the coins.

Coins gives me a chance to try some branding! So on to designing three coins for our belly dancer's piece.  (I'm jealous of Project Runway's tablet PC's.)  I began sketching up a name-themed pendant a while back, tho it didn't go anywhere beyond preliminary design.  But, in my mind, Simbelmynë is very floral.  I like initials in a maker's mark, to identify the artist more clearly. 

Well, something like this. (As you've probably noticed, computers and drawing are not my thing, that might be the class I take in the spring.) 

Mina's design would be more Victorian, perhaps an illuminated "M" with a rose, of course.

Intentional Stones has a script already, fortunately.  So our "IS" would be pretty easy. 

I need to keep it simple, since I don't have a die cutter, but 24 gauge silver  or even thinner and my shears could cut the finished coins out pretty easily. The letters stamped and chased in. 

Lots and lots of the coins.  Maybe even some bells, if Mood would provide!

-Simbelmynë

Project Runway for jewelry?

PROJECT RUNWAY IS BACK!!!

Yeah, yeah, I’m sure no one else is as psyched as Simbelmyne  and I  are.  Or are you?   Here’s hoping you are, because Simbelmyne came up with this great idea to attempt the challenges right along with the contestants.    They’ll need some adapting, of course, and sometimes it will only be the design we show you and not a completed piece.  (This week, for instance, we  aren’t going to be disassembling anything!)

This week’s challenge was to pick an item of personal clothing, pass it to the guy next to you , and design something from it.  (Poor Casanova and his pants!)  So each of us has picked  one piece we designed and handed it over to the other.  Now we have to design something new i with that as our inspiration.  Simbelmyne picked this:

The Eudialyte cabochon is a complex matrix of pomegranate colored crystal with black.  On the braided wire crossing the cab are three faceted beads:  ruby, emerald and blue labradorite.    My first thought when I saw the piece was to make a bracelet.  (My second was a diadem, but I got over that.)  The size of the cab and the depth of color in the stone makes me think it would be well suited to a cuff style, something like this:

On the sides of the cab, wired into the braids, should be clusters of the faceted stones, like little bundles on a lattice.  The still rough and natural looking beads compliment the  cab so well., here should be more of them if the piece is bigger.

So, tell me, what does this piece inspire YOU to make?  And keep an eye out for Simbelmyne’s reworking of this piece of mine.




PS:  Looking for an example to use here, since I can’t sketch to save my soul, I found the jasper bracelet by Linda C.  Not only is that stunning, you should see the rest of her work on her Flicker.  STUNNING!!