focus of life–week 14–Up close!

Sally Russick of the studio sublime gave us the prompt this week to explore a macro shot.  Specifically “glimps a world that you may never have noticed until you observed it magnified!” I bought a dSLR at the start of the year and still I have not fully explored and taken the training wheels off  ie, taken it off the auto settings.  I hope to start experimenting with that before we hit the half way point.  This was taken with the auto macro setting.



I decided to share this one with you since I love how the noon sun (which I was just about to filter through some vellum) is strong enough to shine through the layers of translucent polymer and actually show a shadow from the bits of copper leaf.  Coooool!

These beads may or may not end up in some of my bead soup pieces.  The reveal, originally scheduled for tomorrow was postponed until next weekend.  More than fine by me since I’m so not done.  Nope the fine details of my partner Cindy Ritchie's gorgeous lampwork has my brain off and running in so many directions.  At this point I have one piece complete (using none of the required elements), one in the basically done stage, three in the partially constructed/mostly conceived stage, and three more in the “this could work” stage.  With more time I figured what a great excuse to go all out and really play.

I had so much fun last week hearing everyone’s stories about rings, hidden and returning, and so on in the comments, thank you for sharing ladies!

As always I look forward to seeing all the up close and well, likely personal, photos at the link up on Sally’s post

Bead soup arrived!

Not mine that is, not yet, and holiday Monday will mean Tuesday at the earliest.  However, it’s always a bit of a sigh of relief when you know a package has reached an eager recipient safe and sound.  Now I get to share with you the soup I sent to Cindy without all the stirring.



It took me some time to decide where to start.  For me the starting is always the hardest part.  Blank canvas type of issues – if you can use any and every colour which one do you start with?  Let me tell you for this soup it was my daughter handing me a fistful of crayons: “hereya go mama”.  She didn’t even look up from her own drawing.  You see I just tape down a bit sheet (from one of those rolls meant for an easel) on the table and the crayons are just always spread across it.  I took the five crayons in my hand and thought, huh, not a bad palette you’ve got here.  I lined them up on the paper and took a mental note of the names.  Later, once she was out of sight, I ripped off the top portion of the page.



So the Crayola crap shoot offered up : Scarlet, Timber wolf, Salmon, Tumbleweed and Mahogany at the top of the picture above.  You can see the mess of colour the next handful brought to the left.  Anyways, looking at the grey and brown together I was reminded of some very fun chrysanthemum stone that I had tucked away.  Once I had those stones in my hands I headed towards the worktable.  I started mixing a cool grey and didn’t even get the whole way there before I decided I liked the striations coming about and that I should really make some more rocks to go with my rocks!  Witness the two rivals above, with the chrysanthemum stone in front and the simple in design, but nicely made sterling clasp.

I should have caught a better picture of the edges on these, rather than have then smooth like pebbles I went for a facetted flint like edge.  Below you can see a third rival focal made it into the mix.  each of these is reversible.  I created a small handheld stamp with that bursting pattern, a spin off of the chrysanthemum stone. 



Here’s the picture with the chrysanthemum stone that actually has the scarlet right there in the stone (the one at about 9 o’clock), across the bottom is a fire agate.  I find both these stones are pretty but I think I’ve never designed with them myself since their shapes make me go hmmm.  I hope I haven’t been too tricky here.



So these were the principle ingredients and them it was off to the pantry and worktable to round out the perfect bead soup.  Let me tell you how much fun it is to stand in front of my dear cabinet picking out beads… bead soupers, kindly do not pelt me with beads over my extra special twenty drawer (no it’s no where near full) printer’s chase.



Here is the final round up that went out to Cindy to pick and choose and hopefully enjoy working with. The back dish is just as I showed above, but with a couple polymer beads I found going through my drawers.  Moving clockwise we have two shell rings (a bit of a darker grey), strawberry fresh water pearls, dyed jade rondelles, padparadascha swarovski crystal, and some puffed polymer beads.  Then down in front are a variety of roundabout polymer beads.  Some of them started out with a lot more of the pink but the ink in those totally faded in the oven, most curious.  Then a little of horn rings to be the “tumbleweed” and the variety of ebony wood beads were as close as I came to the Mahogany.  There you have it!

Bead soup is coming!

Time to start getting excited about the Bead Soup Blog Party!  The time has come for 500 or so participants, matched up by the incomparable Lori Anderson, to swap their soups.  This is the seventh edition, my second, and I was very eager to get my soup going and shipped.  It’s a good thing there is a deadline, since last night I was frustrated with one part that wasn’t coming together as planned and I almost started over from scratch.  Then I decided I was being a bit of a drama queen, since clearly my partner was not going to be able to guess what I had originally envisioned.

So here is what I’ve been stirring up.  Actually this manipulation looks backwards to me, now that I’m punning.  I’m right-handed and I stir things clockwise (opposite of what this looks like), I wonder if that’s a universal type thing? [I have googled – “About 150,000 results (0.23 seconds)” apparently I’m not the only one who wonders these things…]



Ok back to Bead Soup!  My partner is Cindy Ritchie whose etsy shop is full of beautiful handcrafted lampwork beads and jewelry.  Just look at this row of pretty blue birdies who greet you at the virtual shop doors.  Hello, tweet, tweet!



So much character in these birds I knew I was in for a treat.  The more I looked, the more excited I got.  Birds of all sorts including penguins and owls; pigs, cats, and more.  Her jewelry is ever so wearable and each piece has these sweet touches, just full of charm, and at totally reasonable prices.  But most of all, you know if you forced me to pick a favourite – just look at these foxes! Couldn’t you just squeeze them?

Buy them right here.  

 

Just like that watched pot, I will be stalking my mailbox for soup arrival.  It’s Cindy’s first BSBP and I can’t wait for her to get her package too.  It’s wrapped in brown paper (not tied with string) but does include a few of my favourite things.  There will be much more to share before our reveal date, the second reveal, April 6th.  Looking forward to sharing this experience with Cindy and you all.

Focusing on life–week 4–create art!

I thought I had this one in the bag right off the bat.  When Sally Russick’s prompt arrived last Saturday I had to smile at the picture she used since it was so close, in theme, to ones I had been taking just hours before.  What serendipidy!  Immediately I had a plan.  You see the prompt was to go and create some art – any art.   That morning I had tried to capture some pictures of Averleigh painting, which is a new medium for her.  I like this one where she is swapping the brush from her left to right hand.  I don’t think she has decided yet (see paint on both sides) but there seems to be a left preference.


I thought, great  I’ll grab the white crayon that I usually hide since it “doesn’t work” and frustrates the hell out of her.  I’ll show her how you can use it as a resist.  I tried the next three days running to sit with her and paint and she was not interested in sharing her space with me in this way.  No way, no how.



I can respect that.  I let the artist have her space.  So far every painting has started in the same shade of blue, girl after my own heart she is.  I could have created my own watercolour but I didn’t want to use her paints without her as surely she would know.

Thankfully, mid week I was inspired to try some polymer headpin making again.  Not what I had in mind to share for this project today, but I did get in the groove and move to making these not-sure-what-to-call-them-yet beads.  Do you feel that shift creating?  That switch in the tracks, moving from left-brained planning to just right-brained making, do you know the one I mean?  I can’t always feel it switch over but sometimes I’ll look up and realize I’m far from where I began and I’m not sure quite how I got there.  [side effect – I never write down a colour recipe or steps of a made-up technique]



Join me in heading over to Sally’s blog to see the art that everyone has been creating.