Intentional Stones

Scapolite Gemstone, my bead hunting story

 

According to the Book of Stones, Scapolite's good for problem solving, sticking to goals and achievements. It's a white, brown or purplish gemstone that occurs in limestone and metamorphic rocks. It is an "alteration" of feldspar minerals, meaning that the mineral has changed because of exposure to water or oxygen. The resulting stone is clear and stunning. Sometimes it's got a catseye form.

This last year has been driven by my art and my business and getting home and family in a good balance. lots and lots of goals. No wonder this one jumped out at me while I was shopping last fall! At the time I wasn't prepared to work with them. I created a design for similar beads, but it wasn't quite the right thing for these beauties.

I shop a lot this way and my basement looks like a beadshop. I've created a central table where I can hang intact strands and i have enough display trays to lay out my cabochons and cut stones by variety. Displaying and sorting helps me when I am creatively blocked. Having a discrete space for each gemstone variety allows me to focus on design.

So far, for the scapolite i am thinking about puzzle pieces and labyrinths. Maybe I can do one of each. I definitely want to pair them with silver.

Hopefully, on this weekend's gem hunting expedition, I will not let the stones catch me off guard again.

Any requests?

 

-Simbelmynë

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Garnets and Circles

This is another pair in progress.  They need the tumbler to get shiny, then who knows.

I never realized how challenging this would be!  Just finding the time to design something new each day, wow!

These earrings are the result of playing with my new disk cutter, just a little one, but fun all the same.  Drops and filigreed jumprings make them sparkle. 

Tomorrow I have to hit the welding supply place for some more torch fuel.  Yesterday's earrings have had to wait. 

This is fun!

-Simbelmynë

 

 

Work in progress

Today's pair of earrings is not finished yet. These copper wires will be soldered down to silver sheet and pressed. I think I'll put a stone in the middle of the design. I looked through my stones and didn't find one yet, but there are more I haven't looked at.

Mixed metals are fun, but they take a little longer.

-Simbelmynë

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A little playing with pink

Thinking about color from last week, I was experiencing a bit of a dry patch at the bench, so I decided to jump right in. 

I had pink on my mind.  Several ideas I'd had before Mother's Day really wanted more pink beads and most of what I have is a pale peach pink.  Still it's a lovely color, so I grabbed everything I could find.  Pink's a color that can come in every darkness and hue.  Some pinks are very purple, while others are nearly orange.  Pink can be intense and pale.  They're all in the piece I completed.  

 

The donut beads contain a golden rutile and slashes of pink.  The pinks are tourmaline, which is more purple, quartz that's very pale and orangish.  I balanced the different tones with whites and greys of botswana agate and rainbow moonstone. 

Pink is a gentle color.  If you're "in the pink" you're at the height of good taste and quality.  It's a relaxing and content color.  It's also a big favorite of little girls everywhere.  (My daughter's wardrobe is at least half pink, only half because I shop for her.) 

Whenever I wear pink, which is rarely since I think it's not one of my best colors, I remember the childlish glee of a bubblegum ring. 

There are a lot of shapes in this necklace, geometric and rough.  I think my next experiment will have to do more with that aspect of the design. 

The necklace is very long-50 inches and can be worn long or looped around several times or knotted.  It has a sterling silver lobster clasp, just in case you want to wear it close to your neck. 

-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.

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

Project Runway 2010 week 2 Simbelmyne

Their challenge this week was much less crazy.

Design a look for a Marie Claire billboard on Times Square!

So a look that's "modern and fashion forward" for work and going out.  High fashion.   But also with enough color and detail that blowing it up to the size of a building will grab attention.

Kerchief style neck ornaments are very much a trend right now.  This necklace mimics the twisting, knotted, asymmetrical look of a scarf. Here are the colors.  The metal elements will be fashioned from sheet, I may add stones, but simply. 

-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!!