Gratefulness

Time for the monthly blog carnival!
This month's theme is Gratefulness, for me, filtered through the lens of creativity and handwork.

I am forever grateful to my children.  They teach me soooo much.  Right now, my son mostly teaches me how to play video games and keeps my mind moving.  My daughter, as she always has, continues to give me art lessons.  She draws constantly, to express the stories that seem to constantly move through her mind.  This time I picked up one of her sketches and decided to interpret it in metal

The original sketch was approximately 9 x 7 inches, marker and pencil, using paper ripped out of a crayola sketchbook.  She was doing a lot of house sketches that day. I chose this one, because it seemed to lend itself most easily to the techniques that I use in my metalwork.

Here  it was in progress

And here is the finished pin, in sterling silver and 18k gold!

The finished pin measures about 1-3/4 x 1-1/4  inches.  I used simple techniques, surface chasing, sawing, hammer texture, and fabrication.  Of course I am keeping this one for myself.

You know, the simplicity of a child's expression is something that we never get back as adults.  I am so grateful for the opportunity to revisit that simplicity, that immediate expression, through my child's eyes.

Please visit other members of the blog carnival, to find out what they are thankful for in their creative lives, at the start of this holiday season.

www.LoraHartJewels.blogspot.com

www.CreativeTextureTools.com/news

www.fleseri.com/blog

www.angelacrispin.canalblog.com/

www.gentrydesignco.typepad/jewelrydesignchronicals/

www.chris-parry.blogspot.com

www.lorrene-davis-designs.blogspot.com

www.tonyadavidson.com/

More Leaf Jewelry

I think I am stocked up now with plenty of ginkgo leaf pendants, both shiny silver and antiqued silver.

Here are the latest three.
Click on the photos for full details.

 

and some sweet little copper maple leaf earrings, from the leaves that I recently demonstrated for a group of students.

Pink!

Months ago, maybe last spring, I talked about my 2008 Christmas tree vision- a pink Christmas tree covered in handcrafted ornaments.

Well....I got the tree!

I would not normally put up a Christmas tree until Thanksgiving, but you know how it is with new things.  The UPS driver left the box on our doorstep.  I just had to open it and set it up.

We'll start adding the handmade ornaments this weekend and see how many more we need.

Silver Tendrils

This is the time of year that I notice the wild grapevines around our property, and of course the bittersweet vines. When the leaves have all fallen off the trees, I can look closely at all the dried up curly tendrils that secure the vines to their hosts. I'm always surprised at how squiggly and busy the little vine scenes look. I imagine them much more graceful, until the leaves fall, and I can actually see them.

1. wild grapevine tendrils, 2. wild grapevine tendrils, 3. Bittersweet tendrils, 4. wild grapevine tendrils, 5. wild grapevine tendrils, 6. Bittersweet Tendrils Created with fd's Flickr Toys. Click on the titles to see the photos in a larger size on flickr.

Inspired by those vines, I made these necklaces for my kids. The top two shots are of my daughter's necklace and the lower two of my son's necklace.

These other silver tendrils are available in my online shop. Click on each photo to go to the detail page.

Studio Peek

I've committed myself to redoing the studio, slowly but surely, 12 square feet at a time.  I started by converting the grinding bench to a soldering area.  This involved moving around lots of tools and lots of dirt, ick.

Don't worry, I still have a grinding area.
Next, I need to get pegboard to hang many of my hammers and handtools.
Really I want a dust collector, but that will wait a big longer.  It's a major investment and will require a lot of research and quite a few more sales.

Totally unrelated, but I thought I'd show you the big mesh strainer I found at Walmart, that I can use to clean and sort through my tumbler media.  It's about 14 inches long.

I love the large size of it, combined with a small enough mesh to handle the stainless steel shot.  The handles extend to fit over the edges of a standard size kitchen sink.  Of course our shop sink is more of a laundry sink size- oh well.  It also has little feet on the bottom, so it can sit right inside the sink.

Now, what's in progress on my workbench?

I've got some designs laid out to start chasing.  The sunflower design is for a bronze cuff bracelet, a special request.  The hive/house on the right is one of my daughter's drawings, shrunk down to jewelry size. 

I'm interpreting it as a flat chasing.  Here it is in progress.

It's turning out to be much more challenging than I anticipated, both technically and creatively, a different style than what I would usually work with.  I may be doing this two or three times till I get it right.  I will keep you posted on this one. 

Leaves of Gold

Remember that I mentioned making leaf jewelry in 18k gold?  Well they are done, photographed and listed.  They turned out just gorgeous.

I love the rich yellow of 18kt gold and it works well for hammered pieces.  It's malleable enough to move, but hard enough to hold up to normal daily wear.

I don't usually work in such a small scale, but I'm just loving the rich and delicate look.  These petite little pendants range from 1.5 to 3 cm long and hang from 18 inch 18k gold curb chains.  One pendant is currently listed without a chain, to show the price difference.  Click on each picture for a directly link to the listing, with measurements and more pictures or go directly to my section of 18k yellow gold jewelry in my online shop.