AND THE WINNER IS........

My Giveaway Winner is....
Artsy Fran!   Congratulations to Fran, and thank you everyone who participated!
I notified Fran earlier in the week...I had hoped to post a pic of the finished charm....I'll try and do it tomorrow...work is intensive - i start filming on Tuesday....So far, knock on wood, Florida is a blast and the people I am working with are terrific!

GIVEAWAY...International Charm Day!

Below are some charms I am finishing up for "Charms for Charity" an annual charity fundraisers from Metal Clay Group.  They are all made of bronze clay,but not quite finished.  The "red cast" you see on the metal is the reflection of my red tee shirt!


















Today is International Charm Day, and to celebrate, I will be giving away one of my new hand sculpted bronze skeleton bird charms.  it is a bronze bird with a skull head and skeleton hand wings and tail,perched on a white pearl nested in a skeleton hand.  Typical my style of charm..... I will post a picture later in the day, Here's a very bad pic,but it will give you an idea......both charms below are unfinished, of course.  i will post finished pics as soon as my tools arrive from Kauai and I can finish them!   The giveaway will be this Sunday, May 2nd at 6pm EST (I'm in Florida!)  All you have to do is leave a comment between now and then!  Be sure to visit the other bloggers who are also celebrating this charming holiday and check out their giveaways, too!
http://www.internationalcharmday.blogspot.com/

FACEBOOK AND YOUR PRIVACY - IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!

Facebook is changing and expanding the ways they share your information - and if you don't change your settings and opt out - you run the risk of all of your information AND your friends information, responses, etc being public.  They are tracking everything you do and selling it to thousands of companies.  This is an article from the New York Times.  If you click on the link to the actual article you can read even more warnings at the bottom of the page.  Here's the complete link.   In light of what happened to me, being hacked, you NEED to opt out of this!  Remember- the hacker used my facebook info to personalize their money plea letters to my friends list.....
April 23, 2010, 3:12 PM
How to Opt-Out of Facebook’s Instant Personalization

By RIVA RICHMOND

This week, Facebook’s introduced the “open graph,” a giant expansion of the “social graph” concept on which Facebook is built. The word “open” alone should be a tip-off that there are significant new privacy issues to weigh.

In the open graph, Facebook sees us as connected not just to other people – our friends — on Facebook, but to myriad things all over the Web. These things could be favorite bands, news outlets or restaurants. It’s a potentially powerful idea – Facebook wants to uncover all these interests and predilections and let us share them with our friends, whether we’re at Facebook or somewhere else, in ways that could deepen personal connections and help us discover cool and interesting information.

But there’s a price paid in privacy. Facebook deems these “connections” to interests and businesses and content to be public information — along with your name, profile picture, gender and friend list. And it intends to make them very public through new “social plugins” and “instant personalization”.

If you like the idea of broadcasting which articles and bands and restaurants you like, you’re in luck. But if you’d rather keep your personal preferences private, beware. The instructions on how to reverse it are below, after the jump.

Soon, Facebook users will be invited to declare “connections” while on other Web sites by using several new Facebook buttons and features, all identified by the Facebook icon, including opportunities to write comments about content on these sites. (Site developers will add them using Facebook’s new social plug-ins.)

If you click a Like button or make a comment, know that you’re authorizing Facebook to publish it on your Facebook profile and in your friends’ news feeds. Also, when Facebook friends of yours visit the same site, they may be informed about what content you recommended or added there, and you will see their activity, too. Facebook says it will not share any of your data with these sites.

If you don’t want your activity to be published publicly, don’t use these Facebook features.

Facebook also wants to expand your “personal and social experience” on the Web by marrying your life on Facebook with your existence on partner Web sites — for now, limited to Windows Docs, Pandora and Yelp, but expect that list to grow. It will let these sites use your public Facebook information — again, your name, profile picture, gender, and “connections” — so they can, say, tip you off to bands and watering holes that your friends recommend.

There has been some controversy about instant personalization, because Facebook has automatically opted in its 400 million plus users. TechCrunchreports some Google employees are so disturbed that they are unplugging from Facebook altogether by deactivating their accounts.

Facebook has been walking users through the new arrangement and related settings, including presenting them with an opportunity to opt out. You can also reach the settings and opt-out via the Applications and Web sites page. Click “Edit Setting” beside Instant Personalization and uncheck the box on the next page beside “Allow select partners to instantly personalize their features with my public information when I first arrive on their websites.” You can also opt out by clicking “No Thanks” in a blue Facebook bar that will appear at the top of each partner site the first time you visit.

Note that even if you opt out, your friends can still share public Facebook information about you to personalize their experiences on these sites unless you block each of their applications manually. To do that, visit the “Applications Settings – Authorized” page and scroll down to the “External Websites” section, click “Profile” for each application and then the “Block Application” link on the top left of the profile page.

This is also a good time to double check your application privacy settings and make sure they reflect the information you’re comfortable letting your friends share about you. Check or uncheck the boxes based on your preferences and save your changes.

http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/how-to-opt-out-of-facebooks-instant-personalization/?src=busln

YOU ARE WORTH THE TIME...

this is wonderful!  I got it from my friend Lorri who got it from her friend Sharla.

THANK YOU

I just wanted to thank all of my friends and family who put up with the pitiful letter everyone was sent when my facebook and email accounts were hacked.  I appreciate and am very grateful for your concern and caring!
I still don't have access to facebook yet  (tomorrow I hope), but i do have my email accounts back.
How did this happen?  perhaps i clicked on an infected website or maybe it was the unknown person i emailed to ask if I knew them on facebook before I accepted them as a friend?  Who knows.
I did delete all of my contacts in my address lists - so i will have to go searching for your addresses or else look them up in a book i keep.  A bit of an inconvenience, but far better than the embarrassment and hassle of being hacked and phished!   Had I answered my sons phone call at 3:30 am (my time) i could have gone online and frozen the accounts before so much damage was done - I won't do that again!  the hacker started their conversations and requests on facebook.....my son got his on his phone......
Be sure sure sure SURE! that you have entered tough SECURITY QUESTIONS for all of your accounts so that no one can change your passwords or info unless they can answer the security questions first.  I learned the hard way.
THANK YOU, AGAIN    -   YOU'RE THE VERY BEST!

lucky week!

First, Today my son SKYLAR graduated from the New York Academy of Dramatic Art.
WAY TO GO SKY!
We are very very proud of him.   Sky spent 5 years in the US Marines and then returned from Iraq to pursue his true passion - acting.   He landed several speaking roles in TV and feature films in L.A., and then he ventured to New York to fine hone his craft.

He's a really incredible and unique singer, too.
Congratulations Sky - Now GO OUT AND BREAK A LEG, son.
He's such a cutie.
on another note......
I love contests..before the internet  "contesting" was my hobby...I even subscribed to a "contest" bulletin and i sent in zillions of sweepstakes entries a month......and i won lots of prizes too!   from childrens toys, a years supply of pepsi, clothes, an electric knife - even cash!
sooooo.  i love to enter internet contests and giveaways......i don't usually win, but when i do- i tend to do it in multiples!
this week I won:

This was from Crafters Cafe.  This is a book i really wanted...so I am stoked!
Then,  the beadcoop.com sent me this notice:

This Months Winners connie CatCOgle Ellie yep- i won $10 worth of their fabulous bead PATTERNS.  I chose patterns from Silverhill Designs.

I chose a pattern called "Heart of Fire" Earrings, "Queen of the Nile" Necklace, and "Peacocks Pride" amulet bag.
...and then today, this!

Studio Saturday with Jangles

Welcome to Studio Saturday! Each week one of our contributors gives you a sneak peek into their studio, creative process or inspirations. We ask a related question of our readers and hope you'll leave comments! As an incentive we offer a free prize each week to bribe you to use that keyboard. The following week we choose a random winner.
Last weeks winner is Connie. Congratulations you've won one of Lynn's pewter medallion medal charms .

Woohoo! I won a pewter medallion charm made by Lynn, from last weeks Studio Saturday Blog, where a new artists presents their studio and the new art they are working on.  Lynn has two etsy shops with great pewter, copper and resin art.

Studio Saturday is a part of Artbead Scene blog, and this blog hosts several contests...Jennifer at Jangles also has her own giveaway every friday.

I think I should go out and buy some lottery tickets... what a week!

Steampunk Card - "Spiderpunk"

Red Dog Scott is hostessing a steampunk card swap.  This is the card i made...its elements are cut outs, real hardware (and my bronze eye!) and tons of digital.

I call the card "spiderpunk"

Red Dog is hosting an "Alice in Wonderland" skinny book swap now, something I'd love to participate in - but with starting a new job I don't think I'll be able to...but her swaps are always MARVELOUS!

I also found a tiny brass fork while i was cleaning my shop tables (don't ask - unbelievable crapalanche) so I pounded it on a ring form and added some crystals to a tine.

My buddy Joanne (go check out her FAB buttons and gorgeous beaded necklace!) hosted a Recipe Swap for members of the Altered Art Diva Group.  She took all of our recipes and sent them back beautifully esconced in a three ring binder that she made dividers for and decorated.  We each had to make arty copies of  a recipe on the front, and a story about it on the back.

I had a bunch of Mexican recipes of my moms that I wanted to use, but it was too expensive to print out so many color copies, so I squished them onto one sheet, on both sides.  Feel free to copy and print the recipes for yourself, if you'd like!

So now I am all caught up on all my commitments and I can concentrate on cleaning up the shop and adding new shelving that I am desperate for. Then I need to tidy up the house and get some major gardening done before I leave for Florida.  I am hoping to have enough time to finish some bronze and copper clay projects before I go.  I have been working on making several avante garde rosaries and I can take the projects with me and finish them when I am away, but all the kiln work needs to be done before i go.

When the Muse Malfunctions, et al.

I thought this was a good time to photo demonstrate another project gone awry. I have a different project that is due ahead of this one (.. so sorry Joanne...it just doesn't want to get done.  tomorrow, i promise) and have been working on them simultaneously, but what has happened here is typical of the creative process I go thru.  sometimes.  The bird banners i recently completed went pretty easy.  My initial idea was too complicated, so i quickly came up with a less engineered solution and they were completed quickly.  This particular project just kept fighting me and did not want to get focused.

OK.  here it is. I am participating in an Alice in Wonderland Swap.  Fun, right? I purchased a vintage postage stamp and thought it would be cool to mount on something with resin.  real simple.   but the stamp was too big for scrabble tiles, and with the picture reduced -  the detail was all lost.  So I had some little wood squares and thought i would cut them down a tad and paint them.  yeah right.  But first i had to rework the image...take out all the extra background detail and lighten the cat and outline his mouth, and put a lot of white in it so it didn't blend into a big black blob.

I had to make 26 of these babies.  the wood tiles did not exactly cut easily....and then they had to be sanded and the corners rounded...and then painted....let alone images on both sides and resin.  Nope.  after sanding one i decided to go to plan two.

Plan two:  i have all these cute copper frames.  I will cut the image into an oval, patina the copper, then add the image and resin.  How easy is that?  Then I just drill a hole and add a jump ring...hey, maybe i'll even put some "alice" words on the back!

so i put green and blue patina solution on them frame....but it turns out the frames AREN'T copper - only copper plated....and they immediately rust.  i quickly neutralize the frames in baking soda and decide to use them rusty...a grunge look.  Then i have to cut out 26 ovals, because i don't have a punch the correct size....which is really hard to do accurately so they fit well and do not look sloppy.  I do this.  Then I seal both sides of the paper with PYMII.  I glue the pics into the frames.  I mix up the resin and pour it.  I come back to look at them the next day.

oh my!  the paper has absorbed the resin and darkened and the image is hard to see...i should have used mod podge!....and on top of that, the frame is continuing to rust and corrode and is flaking apart.  MUCHO UGLY!

These pics look much better than the real charms do.  They would not hold a varnish on the frames...they promptly went into the trash after leaving rust crumb residue all over my work table.
As luck would have it, we had to be in town this day, so I went to the hardware/hobby store to look for some ideas and came home with some sparkly red fimo clay.

Plan #3.  I decided to make polymer clay black and red twisted frames....after trying a mold that was impossible to pop out level....

I guess i wasn't in a clay mood, cuz these all turned out looking like kindergarten rejects.

Plan #4.   At last I make some solid frames with a tiny heart  that are acceptable and uniform.  I aged the frames with a bit of black acylic paint.  The original image in blue and yellow looked awful against the red clay.  So I made the image just black and red.....and i put a second image on the back.  

I attached the images with poly glaze...which I discovered does not self level....so although it is glossy, it is not as even as i would have liked....and the poly glaze cannot be left on its own, it then has to be sealed!  (and don't dare rebake it - it bubbles and gets sticky.  trust me, i KNOW.)
Here they are drying.  (DRYING...it's me who's DYING...i'm sick  bored tired of this project)
It took a long time to dry....then i had to coat them with Future to seal the glaze so it won't cloud up later...what a pain......and they have a very fakey shine....  I should have just used resin.  sigh.

the back

the front

I was going to put black micro beads along the edges - but enough is enough.

I did make a little red die charm to go with them, and a card to mount them on.

 "Alice in Wonderland" charms are born....  but they sure came into this world kicking and screaming.

I had a bunch of red clay left over.  Like i said before, it has these red glittery sparkles in it, which i really loved.  So i decided to make some bird beads.  Now this clay for some reason really exudes the red dye.  i had to wear gloves, it was so messy. 

Because i have not liked the artificial glazes (...duh.  see above)  for putting a shine on polymer clay, i decided to try to polish them the correct way - sanding and buffing.  First the lazy mans way.  Put the baked beads in the tumbler with tiny river rock for 8 hours.  This worked ok, but they were not shiny, really.  smooth, but not shiny.  I used my muslin buff on my dremel on them too, still a bit shiny, but not glassy glossy.

So I got out various grades of sandpaper, 400, 800, 1000, 1500 grit.....and i sanded each bead lightly thru each grade under water.   Oddly, some of the sparkles turned silver...ad the water was pink....so i guess some of the red color on the glitter was coming off   (melting off?)  ok. now for the "pièce de résistance"!

I took the beads to the ELECTRIC buffer...ya know, a cheapy $39 harbor freight grinding wheel...(i have a 3  inch $2 muslin buff pad screwed onto it.)

OH NO!  SCARY POWER TOOL!  WHAT IF I BUFF MY FINGERS OFF?

actually, as long as you tie your hair back and don't wear anything with strings to get caught in the wheel, this baby is pretty safe.  I had it on low (3000rpm's) which was still too fast for me....but that is the lowest it goes........You use only the lower one third of the wheel... this way, when your piece gets thrown across the room and ricochets off your wall it will project DOWN and not get stuck in your eye..... and yes, it will happen  (the wheel will throw it part, not the stuck in the eye part)

.....lord knows where all those flying birds and tiny eggs i lost are now! LOL. 

....BUT - if your fingers touch the buffing wheel while it's grinding - it doesn't even hurt at all!

YAHOO it's a miracle!  Sanding and then ELECTRIC GRINDER BUFFING  makes the beads glossy shiny.

really really glossy shiny......and no varathane.  or future.  or poly glaze.  or any other type of varnish.

i am very pleased.  You just have to be careful you don't press too hard and lose definition (like the birds beaks or the owls ears disappearing)

Now i want to get some finer grits so I can sand them to 12000 and get them to look like lampwork glass beads.  I read that if you mix translucent clay into your clay, you can really get that sort of look....

Now on to something else.   I purchased some bone suckers at halloween last year because i just loved the miniature arms and legs sticking out of them.  I had no idea what had become of them, but when I followed an ant trail in my shop - lo and behold - there they were.  I took them to the  sink and took off their wrappers and soaked them over night in water.

   

(yeah I know, pretty groady sink)

Voila!   Here they are.  There are only left arms and left legs.  not sure what i'll do with them, but they are cute.

Yay! it was a VERY good day!

First, I got an email that I had won the "bite me" sweepstakes.  uh,...the what?  is that porno spam?
but i opened it anyway...and sure enough I won an advance copy of Christopher Moore's newest book " Bite Me:  A Love Story" and a tee shirt.  I'd forgotten I'd entered!  Christopher Moore is pretty funny and out there......he's also my son Skylar's FAVORITE author. (so guess who's getting the book?)
...and then, I got a call from a favorite producer and ....YAHOO!
I start a job the end of April in Florida for 4 months!
I've only ever been to Key West and this is somewhere near Ft Lauderdale....I hear it's really hot there in the summer...........are there any good art classes there?

Bird Banners

I have finally completed my bird banners for a swap.   Yay! They are sort of phoenix's - all paper, with moveable wings. They are irridescent sparkley, but you can't see that in the photos.  I made 15.

I also finished a black onyx, coral and silver double strand necklace with multidangly earrings, a rose quartz calla lily necklace and earrings, and a double strand aquamarine necklace and  matching cluster earrings - the aquamarine's were just gorgeous!...but you'll have to take my word for it, cuz i was in such a hurry to get them finished on time (gifts! commissions! ) that i didn't take any pictures.  (ok, that's not exactly true - i tried, but the batteries were dead in the camera and i had to get to the post office.....)

Now I'm working on Alice in Wonderland Charms, Recipe Pages and Steampunk Deck Cards...all swaps due within the next couple of weeks.

I never learn.

Link to AMAZING Giveaway

Here's the link to a terrific huge giveaway of cool stuff!  So far there are not too many entrants...so your chances are excellent! It ends today, Sunday at 9pm CST.While you're there, check out her terrific vintage fashions!
 ...a hatbox FULL of fun surprises!

Freeze and Fuse Glass, Rudraksha Bead Necklace, Charm Necklace/Bracelet.....

I have been experimenting with a method of fusing glass called "freeze and fuse". You take powdered glass, put it in a mold with water, skim of the excess water, pack it, add more powder and water, pack it, etc until the mold is full.  then you put it in the freezer for about an hour, demold it, and put it in the kiln.  VOILA!  beautiful glass sculptures! ...well....not exactly.......

seems like everything new i play with i have to do it over and over until i figure it out.....  I wanted to compare the process and results to those you get with glass clay - which is basically the same thing except it is made with CMC goo (cellulose methyl something or the other, mixed with water and allowed to set up - looks sort of like jello) .  Fuse and freeze, as it turns out, is very delicate.  once demolded you have a few minutes to move it around and then, well it's sort of like making sandcastles - once dry it can fall apart really easy.  Glass clay, on the other hand dries hard and you can sand and smooth and shape it.  But I digress - back to "fuse and freeze".  For my first experiment I chose 2 latex, deep "alice in wonderland"   molds. one of humpty dumpty (or is it tweedlee dee?) and one of the white rabbit.  I filled them, packed tight, used a paper towel to siphon off the excess water, and froze them.   Here they are all filled up and just out of the freezer.

...and here they are demolded.  Turned out pretty detailed and way cool.

these are the other molds I used.  they are silicone.

going into the kiln...and then TADA!

Not too good.

I used a fusing schedule that had me ramp at 200 dph to 190 for 30 minutes then 500dph to 1100 with a hold of 30 minutes and then a ramp at 500 dph to 1320 with a hold time of 30 minutes.  Rabbit and dumpty totally had a meltdown.

as you can see it was WAY TOO HOT!   a lot of the detail in the faces was lost.So then i tried it again.  This time i would do the final fuse not quite so hot.  These are the molds I used.  I also did some cool bugs with metal thing maker molds and some flowers using polymer clay hard molds.  i did not use a mold release (baby powder?) in the hard molds because for some daft reason I thought they would just fall out like ice cubes.  but they did not.

while this batch was doing its first ramp up to 190 degrees, i recycled the wet glass powder into other flexible molds.  on the 2nd ramp up to 1100 degrees i then put these additional frozen objects into the kiln.  i mention this because i had different results with the 2 different sets of objects.

The top row shows the objects that had the 190 degree hold for 30 minutes cycle.  the purpose of this is supposed to be to dry out all the water.  You can see that they turned out "grainy" and some of the glass separated from itself before the glass melted.  The 2nd row are objects that did not have this pre cycle.  they are solid and smoother.  i also tried the rabbit again.  I recommend deep flexible molds only...

below shows a face with the extra ramp, a face without it (but using recycled glass powder-yuck!), and the original too hot fuse (not much detail but better looking)

comparison of the 2 rabbits  both bad.

All of these objects were then fired to 1275, quite a bit less than the 1320 from before.  They fused with a lot of detail - but they were not fire polished and had a rougher texture and not much shine. ...and the rabbit still slumped on himself.  So i guess i need to try it a bit hotter next time.
Actually, I don't think there will be a next time.....i don't think the results are worth it.  i'd much rather work with the glass clay where i can refine and sand and still get great detail.  I will probably find a use for the crosses and some of the faces, but i wasn't happy with how the colors turned out either.
I have also been working on some jewelry projects. Here are two....the others are gifts and I can post them at a later date......
This is the first Rudraksha bead necklace that I have finally completed.  The beads were gathered from the Hindu Sacred Purple Marble grove here on Kauai - part of the adventure my friend and fiber artist Lorri went on last December.  These are 5 segment beads, hand gathered, scrubbed, polished and drilled.  They have been strung with sterling silver bead caps and the neckchain is tiny coral seed beads.  The clasp is fine silver.

Below is a charm bracelet/necklace I have just finished.  I took various charms I had left over from MANY MANY MANY charm swaps and then added a bunch more - 44 in all.  You can see my favorite themes- eyeballs  and hands.....but there's a bit of everything here!    The charms are all on their own handmade chain and it is detachable.  It is pretty hefty - definitely not for the faint of heart or anyone too dainty...it's heavy! The bracelet is adjustable 7 to 9 inches, and as a necklace it is about 25 inches.

Here's a slide show that shows you lots of details:

Both necklaces are listed on my Etsy site.