I've Been Featured!

I'm the featured artist today at Notes from the Handmade Highway! Check out my interview where I bare my soul and share the secrets of my success. I mean my secret success. The secrets of my secret success. It's so secret even I don't know about it.

Notes from the Handmade Highway is a blog developed by Lori (sorry Lori--I don't know your last name!) of Risky Beads, devoted to showcasing various handmade artisans around the globe, and providing a venue for buyers, artisans and fans of handmade to find each other. The blog includes a directory of artisans, with special notes about who does wholesale, who does custom, who wants to do giveaways, etc. Lori regularly posts interviews of new artisans so the Highway's followers can get to know them. Today was my turn! Thanks Lori! (I'm a big fan of Risky Beads--LOVE the Three Bean Salad Bracelet. I was doing the groupie thing today getting all happy when I got a convo from RISKY BEADS!!!) Check it out and hitch a ride!

I just love the spotlight.

Call Me Crazy

Crazy Horse Stone with annealed steel and garnets. Made 'em myself. CLICK HERE for more info or to purchase.

You're Going to Laugh, Lorelei

OK, Lorelei asked me how I set up my light box. Normally I prefer to use daylight, but there isn't any anymore where I live. Not until May. Just kidding. I'm just never home during daylight hours, and even then, the weather is often so dreary it's too dark indoors to take pictures, and the light is a bad color outside. And it's cold. So here is what I do.

The base of my light box is a translucent storage tub from WalMart. A big one. I cut a hole in the bottom for my camera lens, and flip it upside down over my jewelry display. (This is for straight down pictures, like the one in my last post.



Then I drape it with thin white towels, like flour sack towels. I got four of them at the Dollar Store. For a dollar.



Then I position my full-spectrum daylight bulbs (60 watts) wherever--lately I kind of like the light coming from the side, but you can do it any way you want. Just experiment. I've tried all kinds of bulbs, and the "full spectrum" ones seem to have the best color--i.e., they don't distort the color of the item/background as bad as other bulbs. Usually. Sometimes it changes depending on the angle of the bulbs. Go figure. Physics I guess. I seem to get the least color distortion when I use them on the sides.



For angled pictures, I put the tub on its side and position my item as pictured. Of course you need a tripod of some sort for these pictures.



I'm kind of liking the side-lit pictures. I've been laying the lamps on the floor actually. Kind of turns out all mysterious and dreamy.



This one was side-lit and I like the results:



So there you have it. Including the lamps, you should be able to do this for under $35. You probably already have lamps you can use. You could probably forgo the towels if you have a more opaque tub. I've heard some people use styrofoam coolers but I've never tried that. I've used the tub without towels but the light is a bit harsh and the seams in the tub tend to cast funny light patterns on stuff.

Something Fishy

This bonefish pendant is one of the many nifty pewter pendants I got from Happy Mango Beads. Been wanting to use it for a long time, but I was just waiting for the right beads. I was thinking maybe kyanite, but then I saw these petal-shaped Czech pressed glass in a pond-like green and they immediately made me think of fish fins. Found I had some rounds in the same color/finish, and then stumbled across some roundels as well. Realized I had matching freshwater button pearls, and voila! The first bonefish ever found in a pond. The kyanite would have been more ocean-like and appropriate probably, but I was just so taken with these mysterious beads. They make me think of deep, hidden woodland ponds and Ophelia and the Lady of the Lake and moss and wood sprites. I love how this photo turned out--looks like an oil painting to me. Not sure how that happened. I didn't do anything special with it. Slate, plastic tub draped with flour sack towels, and full spectrum light bulbs.

For more information or to purchase, CLICK HERE.

OK, I Changed My Mind

I DO like making earrings now. I felt all productive and junk this weekend--look, SEVEN things I made! In one weekend! Seven...tiny little things. And it wasn't quite the struggle as it usually is to get them to be the same length. Not sure why that is.

Still hooked on the color thing. I think because it's so dreary here right now. We lost our fall color to a flash freeze--went from green to an ugly paper-bag-brown crispy overnight. Got robbed. And it's socked in, so I've had about enough of bronze, gunmetal, silver and the like. Picked up some scrumptious howlite recently--one strand of dime-sized coins in a vibrant goldenrod-butterscotch kind of melange with nifty veining, and a strand of Granny Smith-apple-green howlite roundels. There was another strand of some kind of pumpkin orange stuff (forgot what it was), had to drag myself away. Probably have to go back and get it. And then I sort of accidentally made these wrapped eye pins. I was going to use them in a necklace, but then I thought they might add some interest to earrings. So I did it to death this weekend. Probably use them in a bunch of necklaces and bracelets too, in different metals. They are a bit labor intensive, but I think they look cool. Sort of adds a little different texture. Going to mess around with it some more.

So here is my treasure trove from the weekend:

Yellow howlite with iolite and sterling silver

Brecciated jasper flowers and turquoise seed beads with sterling silver

Apple green howlite and serpentine with sterling silver

Pink jasper with sterling silver

Blue coral, apple green howlite and wood with sterling silver

Copper, blue peacock pearl and kyanite

I feel like I'm cheating. It's so much easier to do stuff with bright colors!

I'm sort of frustrated by the selection of bead caps out there though. I'm kind of tired of the fancy variety, and just want some plain, round caps--all the bead caps I have are all a bit MUCH. (Anybody know a source?) Best poke around some more on Etsy. I am actually contemplating buying a couple metal punches (one for making big circles, one for making tiny) and a dapping set so I can make my own simple bead caps. Got the tools all bookmarked--itching to click "BUY NOW"!!! I could buy raw brass and copper sheet and oxidize it myself. Got my source already for that too. Maybe get a couple metal stamps. Oh man. That would rock, but the seemingly unending OUTGOING stream of money is making me a tad uncomfortable. (Although these tools are not expensive). Even if it is, sort of, being used to purchase things that supposedly, theoretically could make more money. One day. To some extent. A limited extent.

At least I'm not spending all my money on Beanie Babies or shoes.

Getting All Happy With Color

Taupe is too hard to photograph enticingly so I am turning to color instead. More eye-catching on the Etsy new listings page. I've been drawn lately to vivid colors (maybe it's the shorter days here in the north and knowing that gray will be settling in soon for the next several months). I eked these out this weekend (I am apparently doomed to be a low-volume producer--I could never do this for a living unless I got FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS for each piece.) I make about the same hourly wage doing this as a small child in Cambodia.

This bracelet was inspired by a bracelet Lorelei Eurto did some time ago in pinks and oranges, and missile pops.

I did this one just to do something in copper, and I love that rhyolite.

I did this one to indulge my new color thing. Kind of looks like someone raided a raven's hoard and made a bracelet out of it (this is a good thing--human/avian art collaboration). I call it "Carny Girl."

More bracelets to come (my shop is pendant-heavy right now), and then hopefully earrings.

I Guess More People Should Tell Me What To Do

Gosh, I wish I had thought up this design all by myself. I'm really pleased with it. I didn't think up the palette, the customer did, but I DID suggest the donut, and I did figure out myself how to stick it all together. Although I admit the customer sent me a photo of something she liked for inspiration and I sort of riffed off it a little--with the double strand and adding smaller beads in between the larger beads to give it an airier feel. But other than that it was all me. She sent me some gorgeous onyx beads to use, and the little white howlite beads, and a strand of charmingly rustic silver heishi made in India. I hunter-gathered the rest.



Might have to get another donut like that and do it again! Loving snowflake jasper too. I tried it on to make sure the two strands were the right length and I wanted to keep it. I guess that's a good sign. I have developed a fondness for round beads, used to hate em. I was into squares for a while, now not so much. I bought some triangles, hoping to learn to love them (got suckered by the colors), but what to do with triangles...I hate mixing pointy geometric shapes with non-pointy geometric shapes. Squares and circles--aiyeeeeeee! can't do it!!! I could maybe do triangles and squares, since a triangle is just half a square. Triangles and circles are too much like Jack in the Box. Bad memories.

Well, now I'm exhausted from giving birth to this necklace. Maybe I'll go to the gym.