Crayon painting

So, back here I talked about a few projects that I wanted to try. My friend Allie and I got together and tried the crayon art project over the past weekend. Here's how it went:

First, we peeled the paper off some Crayolas. Soak them in hot water to make the paper fall right off!

A little neurotic, color arranging activity followed. Maybe not necessary, but made me happy.

Allie picked her colors, used a hot glue gun to stick them in place, and turned on the hair dryer.

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It doesn't take long before the color rivers start to flow!

We discovered later that doing this project with just a little bit of cover for the carpet - yeah, not a great idea.

And here's the final product, ready to hang on the wall. 

Here's the color palate I decided to go with. I also broke my crayons in half - I thought I would try to melt the crayons away completely. I didn't want the crayons showing at the end.

And here's what I got. I decided it should hang vertically, even though  I didn't have that in mind when I started.  Heck, this didn't turn out at all how I thought it would, but I think I like it. I think I'm going even going to try another one. This is kinda fun! 

Wimping out in the big city

I was in Chicago yesterday for a workshop. It was windy, chilly, and rained on me just a couple of times. I was walking to lunch with a few other workshoppers and enjoying people-watching along the way. People watching is one of my favorite things to do, so big city streets are like candy to me!  I saw all kinds of fashion that I don't get to see everyday - the 3 piece suit, skinny pants and sneakers, 5 inch stilettos with leggings, mini-skirts that made me blush, briefcases, and slicked back Wall Street hair.

I wanted to snap a few pics of some of the styles that were typical of the big city. Here you go:

{shot a little high on this one}

{crossing a bridge and turned to the side a bit}

{people walking quite far away from me}

{quickly dropping phone down to my side}

So what I learned today...

I can't be cool. At all.

I think people know exactly what I'm up to.

I'm scared to piss off a stranger.

A Steep Learning Curve

When it comes to taking photos of jewelry, it's always been a bit of a struggle for me. I would easily say that photography has never even been a hobby of mine, so I have had a long road! A while back, I found a great sale on a "photo shop in a box". It came with this white pop up box, two lights, and a tripod.

{Yes, that's a rock in my photo box!}

I have gone back and forth on using it. When I first started my Etsy shop, I wanted a natural feel to my pictures. Since it was summer, I shot all of my pictures outside, in my backyard. It wasn't until after I had everything done that I realized that "natural light" isn't the same thing as "direct sunlight"... Tough lesson learned. So with an Etsy shop full of overexposed photos with gargantuan, black shadows, I pulled out the pop-up box again.

The two little lights were never quite enough for good light. But, I've discovered that if I put the pop-up near windows, and used the lights, it was pretty good.

So knowing that the weather changing means no more outdoor pictures, I wanted to find a way to make my indoor shots feel as natural as possible. I had heard from some of the other jewelry makers in the Etsy forums that they use flooring tiles as backgrounds. What a great idea! There are so many great stone tiles with beautiful texture and color. So, I went to Lowe's and picked out two tiles - one with creams and tans, and the other with a more rusty orange color.

So I brought the new tiles home, only to find that they are {somewhat} larger than my pop-up box.

So I had to start thinking. My husband offered to cut the tiles in half, but I didn't really want to go down that road. It's not always easy to get a necklace photographed without a bunch of crap showing in the background! So, I knew the tiles would stay as is.

I decided instead to find another way to diffuse light, without the pop-up. I decided to make white tissue paper my ally. So I cut a couple of squares of it.

And I taped them over the lights, like this.

I do have to be careful with them, because the lights get {really} hot. If I work for too long, I can start to smell the scent of burning paper. But, it seems to diffuse the light pretty well. And if I set each light up, with one on each side, it cuts down on the shadows.

So, I brought in a few stones from around the pond in our backyard, where I took my pictures in the summer. I add in some props here and there, and I can take my pictures indoors.

So I'm making the best of it, and setting up my little photo studio a bit at a time. One thing I've never figured out is how to use the tripod. I have to get my camera into some funky angles to get most of the shots I take, so how can I make use of the tripod? If you use one, leave a comment and let me know how you do it.

I'm Just not that Crafty

So earlier this November, I had an open house. Half way through, I made more earrings but couldn't find my plastic earring cards. You can read all about that crazy day here. My husband made earring stands out of cardstock for me, and they looked beautiful. Since Boo's blog had a template for a necklace stand, too, I thought I would give them a try.

So, here's a stand that I cut out on grey cardstock from the template. I love how it looks, and I love the idea of having coordinating display stands for my future shows.

Here you can see how lovely this silver wrapped moonstone pendant necklace looks hanging from the stand. It became obvious that the stands wouldn't handle heavier necklaces. But there is another problem as well:

This is how the necklace actually hangs on the stand. It's a standard 18 inch necklace, so needless to say, this doesn't seem like it's going to work out so well. I'm going to have to keep thinking about this one. Could I make a larger stand and hope that it will be sturdy enough to hold a necklace? Or, should I try to adapt this into a bracelet stand with some modifications? I'm not sure, myself. What do you think?

Wire Wrapping for Dummies

I attended a wire wrapping class this weekend. Now, I've never actually taken a jewelry making class before. I have learned through a variety of methods over the last couple of years. Mostly through magazines, websites and a healthy dose of experimentation and trial and error. If I can't figure something out, I generally let it go and just don't do it. So, I decided to immerse myself in something that I avoid. Something that I avoid because I believe that I'm horrible at it. Wire wrapping seems intuitive, and yet it has always eluded me to an extent. I get the gist of it - swirl some metal around a stone and get a beautiful look. But for some reason, when I do it, it looks like a small child got into my supplies and went to town.

So after years of just not doing wire wrapping, I sucked it up, paid twenty bucks, and took a class. I headed off to Beads and Something More, and under the watchful eye of Mickie Holderman, I sat down to learn. We picked out a couple of stones that we wanted to work with, grabbed a roll of metal wire, and started with the basics. I began by practicing my coils. I find it very hard to make mine fall into a smooth, circular pattern.

I picked out a lovely dyed agate (the orange/black stone), and a faceted piece of candy jade (the big pink stone). I worked with copper throughout the class, cause I just love copper. I'm not even ~thinking~ about using sterling silver until I practice and work out all of the kinks with some inexpensive copper.

We started by making a bail, giving the ends a couple of twists around each other, and then bringing the ends around the stone. I left one end longer than the other coming out of the bail. Then I brought that longer end down through the drilled hole, out the bottom, and around the front of the stone. It met up and crossed with the shorter end, where I twisted them together and made a cute little swirl. Mickie taught the  class a trick, then. When you wrap a stone and find that the wire is not really tight against the stone, you can use a pair of pliers and give the wire a little turn. It ends up with a corner turn bent into it, which can look nice if you do it right. So I tried that, and discovered that I didn't know my own strength. I snapped the copper wire and it broke apart!

There was no shortage of wire, thankfully, so I grabbed another length of it and tried it again. This time it turned out much better. You can see the little tweak I gave the copper toward the bottom of the stone. So lesson learned - copper is SOFT!

I found that my skill level was a bit higher than most of the other people who signed up for the class, so I had to pace myself at times. I helped the ladies sitting on either side of me when Mickie wasn't near by. I also wrapped a beautiful imaginary stone, with quite a bit of flourish, I must say. See how lovely it turned out?

I moved on to the candy jade, and really tried some tricks this time. It looks a bit wild, but I really just wanted to experiment and practice some techniques. Heck, some may even call it artistic!

The class ended, I took my new beads with me, and was on my way. I was there for about an hour and a half when all was done. So, what I learned...

Copper wire is soft, so be gentle.

A couple of new tools may be in my future.

The biggest trick to wire wrapping is having confidence that what you make is awesome.

 Finally, I need to look for more advanced classes, cause I don't give myself enough credit!