Project #3 and lots of other stuff....

Project # 3 "bead shelf necklace" - really didn't appeal to me - but I went ahead and made it anyway. I used the torch a lot on this one. A BIGGER torch that gets really hot. It helped a lot to make the copper turn red red. Yay! I was getting way frustrated with trying to melt balls on the ends of the copper. It just wouldn't work with the little hand torch I was using - the wire would break first or just turn black and brittle. But the big torch does it quick! I used many techniques making this necklace. Pounding, texturing, drilling holes, punching holes, balling the ends of copper, and wrapping metal beads.

...and this is a fused fine silver jump ring! MY FIRST ONE! I have a great book called "Silver Wire Fusing" by Liz Jones . This is the first project from this book that I have tried. EASY PEASY! I just made a fine silver ring by wrapping the silver around a dowel and cutting it I had to make sure the edges were flush. Then I heated the whole ring in a circular motion for just a moment and touched the blue tip of the torch flame to the cut edges of the ring and waited for the cut edges to get really shiny (liquefy!). I quickly lifted the heat away and then plunged the ring into water. Fine silver doesn't tarnish when heated and doesn't need any flux.

I also made another project towards the end of the book - I have no idea what project number it is - but I liked it. It's called the "wire hands bracelet" only I didn't make a bracelet. You had to make 16 hands to make a bracelet. Forget it. I was lucky I made 3. How did Mary Hettmansperger ever make 16! These hands are tedious and time consuming....and I am so anal mine had to be as precise as I could make them.... So, after the first one that turned out way lame, I made 2 more, sort of my own version. I made them into earrings. I haven't taken the pics yet for this one. ...Manana....

Oh...here's the final version of the "guardian angel" painting.


Let's see - what else? I got my jewelers saw to work! I couldn't get it to hold the blades for the life of me! So I took the set screws out and - lo and behold - all of the broken blade tips were still inside...what a maroon! So I used it to cut some shapes out of copper, and I'm sawing away....really killing my wrists trying to hold the copper in place and level.....and then it dawns on me - duh! - CLAMP the copper down. I don't need to try and hold it with my hands and saw at the same time. Sometimes taking a class first is probably a good idea........

"ART IN A CARTON"

Look at all the fun stuff my friend Renata sent me ! Renata and I are part of "Art in a Carton" She sent me an adorable mini clay pot, too, but I didn't get a pic of that. Renata made the wonderful quiltie in the picture, and personalized it, just for me!
THANK YOU, RENATA!


This is a necklace I finished.

Eh. I am not thrilled...I will probably tear this apart and start over.

RIDING THE RUCKUS

Lance bought a new motor scooter - an '09 Honda Ruckus. He's put all kinds of new fancy cool extras on it and insisted I learn to ride. I ride a bike all the time - but I am afraid of driving any motorized vehicle I am unfamiliar with. Heck - i didn't even drive a car until i was 25! But I'm working really hard on using new tools that I am afraid of. So, I am practicing a little every day. It's really easy to drive, but it takes continuous concentration - at least it feels that way to me...lots more than just a car. Fortunately it is not heavy like a regular motorcycle is. Chalupa, our dog, likes to run with me when I'm on the scooter - so it is an easy way to exercise her! Here are some pics of me riding....

project #2

This is Project # 2 - Folded earrings. My favorite part of these earrings, which is hard to see in the photos, is the patina. This is totally just a HEAT patina. I wanted the copper to be deep red, and I'd read that if you heat the copper until glowing and then plunge it into ice water, it will turn red. I did this, but first it just turned black. So I torched it again, and this time I left the blue ice pack in the water, too be sure it was icy. The copper turned deep red with some black. I liked it! But then I wrapped the earrings in copper wire and added the copper hanging strips, and I did not like the look of the shiny new copper, so I heated the whole thing again and plunged them into water. It did not turn red - just sort of sooty gray black. I scrubbed this with lava liquid soap and a wire brush - and this is the result I got...very bronzy with a deep satin gloss.

This and that......

I was blog hopping and stopped to take a look at the wonderful things on Deryn Mentock's blog. Deryn has been making all of the projects in Mary Hettmansperger's book " Wrap, Stitch, Fold and Rivet" and has issued a challenge to complete the projects along with her. My copper necklace I posted last week has beads on it that I made using some of Mary's techniques. Anyway, I decided to actually try the projects as they were written (OK, as best as I could interpret them...I just had to make them MY way). So here is project #1 - The Spinner necklace. ...and yes, i got carried away and added a few more embellishments than were called for. I did all the techniques she said to try except using a sharpened screwdriver to cut the metal. ...Alas, I couldn't find one to sharpen amidst my mess.

The white things on the top are two spine bones from a boa constrictor. They were pretty pointed and sharp, so I filed them round. I got the bones when I was at Venice Beach shopping along the boardwalk with Joanne....I have a thing for bones.....

Over on Kelly Snellings Blog, Kelly has been doing self portraits. She challenged others to try and do one too. So I tried to paint myself from memory. Kelly's paintings are very 3 dimensional - mine, unfortunately turned out very....flat. My DH said it didn't look at all like me, that my face was much rounder, so this is a revised "round faced" version. I think it looks a little itty bit like me, but the face shape isn't right, or the mouth...or the eyes. But the HAIRCOLOR - well that's pretty accurate. On the weekend before my last day of work in Los Angeles, I got my hair recolored so it would look good when I came home. I asked for BRIGHTER red highlights. The hair dresser mixed together what he said was "mahogany"...but it came out MAGENTA. All I could say to him was "But it looks pink!".... I went to work the next day, quite embarrassed, but tried to pull it off as if I liked it. I got comments like " wow - you went punk!" I am getting it recolored normal - no weave and back to my original dark hair - this week.

And lastly, I have been working on a Halloween painting. Well, sort of. It's supposed to be a No-Nonsense Kick-butt Guardian Angel. Here are the various stages. it's not done yet....

The Background

The Angel


The painting toned down, with parts masked off so I can redo the background......
I think it is turning out rather ghoulish.....

Outside my Comfort Zone....

Today I tried a new tool. I wanted to cut some copper and had never tried a jewelers saw before. First I put a blade in - it was really a pain. The blade was so fine and so thin I had to put on my magnifier headband. I finally got it on and I sawed a bit -it cut pretty easy! - but the copper I was cutting was too big for the saw and there was not enough room to cut it all the way around. Then I looked in a book I had, and saw I had the blade in backwards....I was trying to cut INSIDE between the saw and it's handle.....so I tried to reverse it. No matter what i did, I could not get the blade back in. Then i snapped the blade in two...so I tried a new blade....then I gave up. My DH wanted to know why I didn't just use my micromark electric mini scroll saw. Now this is a tool I have had for about 4 years....but have never used...because, well...it scares me....ALL power tools SCARE me.....
It was sitting on one of my workbenches, all set up, with a blade in it and everything........
So I glued a paper design onto a sheet of 25 gauge copper and I turned it on -
and I did it!

This is the saw.

This is the paper design glued onto the copper.

...and this is my cut design! Not exactly, perfect - but it was my first cut.... Cool, huh?
Tomorrow I'm going to switch to a fine blade and see if i can be more precise. Eventually I want to try acid etching a design onto it.
Remember the copper beads I was hammering/forming/ making last week?


Well I put them together into a necklace.


It also has 3mm copper round beads, forged copper washers, and handmade copper jump rings, copper spacers and copper clasp.

Then I tumbled and work hardened the whole thing in my lortone tumbler.

Evolution of nonsense paintings.....

OK I forced myself to revisit Jesse's painting techniques. For some reason I have been fighting what i learned. I am so structured with my art...it is very hard for me to just let it go....let it evolve into whatever it wants to be..........These are my attempts......

The background...

Making designs from the shapes I see in the background....
Then, in between, but no picture, I tried to paint "The Woman Who Laughed At The Snakes In The Tree".....but alas - she looked like a cat with long hair! ..... and I couldn't draw her a decent body... I wanted something flowy and angel or maybe even ghost-like....

Turning it into a lion with spiders body. This idea didn't last long....

So I made her into a balloon, and I added another snake.

...more painting....

...and there you have it "The Balloon Who Loved the Tree and Laughed at the Snakes"....Done!

The above blurry image is the only photo of what this canvas started as.
It was tissue paper on canvas painted to look like flames. Then I drew images onto the canvas suggested by the colors and the shapes. I wish i had taken a picture then, but it was so gawd awful ugly I just kept the pregnant lady and gessoed over the rest. it was a mess!...and because I used black prismacolor, (instead of the special pencil that was recommended - typical me) the paint would not cover the lines i had drawn. Finally I varnished over the whole painting and gessoed over this...... at last I got the old ugly design lines to disappear.
This is what remained.

I didn't like the pregnant lady's stance, so I changed it. But she didn't look right pregnant, so i changed that too. I painted in a colorful background and then decided to put a dark glaze on it so that all of the texture could show through. The result was really blaH bleh!,,, so I ripped off a ton of the crummy texture and then gessoed over that, and left this:

But I still didn't like the leg positions or the background, so i tried again.....

Then I came up with the concept of adding the earth.

...then I added the stars and more background.

This is the finished painting ....at least for now!
"The Girl Who Leapt From The Earth and Found Her Star"