Colors of Fall

Check out Pantone's Fashion color report for Fall 2010! It's a beautiful combination of colors. I'm always drawn to the purple colors, this time was no exception. "Purple Orchid" and "Chocolate Truffle" are both striking colors, as well as "Woodbine" which is a lovely rich green along with "Endive" which I interpret as a pale jade green. These colors were inspiration for new jewelry! Grape colors if you ask me!

When Artbeads.com contacted me again about making something for their Fall Design Partner's Gallery, I came upon this beautiful maple leaf and these beautiful silver lined round twist beads which I thought would be perfect for a grape cluster design. Grape leaves and maple leaves aren't the same, but close enough.

So I started with a sketch. This is a bit unusual for me, but I had some time to think about this idea until the beads came. 

I also made some polymer clay beads, they are the swirly round ones that are a combination of the "Woodbine" "Purple Orchid" and "Endive" color scheme along with some copper.

I added in some copper wire to the design.

Then I worked late into the night in Studio Nine.  And by morning I had this:

I wanted to try to show the back part also, because I like the copper chain, the different textures and the copper wire twisted into a clasp.
$295 email me at CarmenRose at comcast dot net.

A detail of those glass beads from Artbeads.com plus Amethyst, Jade, Faceted light Amethyst Crystals, Vintage Jade beads, Swarovski Pearls and other great beads from my stash.  I really think the "grape" leaf is the star of the show in this piece. 

It's structured on chain so it has lots of wonderful movement.  These are my colors.  I'm going to enjoy wearing this one! 

It's been years since I've done much by way of jewelry design even though I worked in this media professionally for quite a few years.  And much of this year I was emotionally unable to get in the studio and do the work that is closest to my heart.  I've moved my studios recently and it took considerable time to begin to set up another studio in my new home.  I finally have a jewelry design area.  More than that, I have once again felt the stirring of inspiration and I can't tell you how good that feels.  It's been a long dark season but this is a very good sign.  The creative juices are moving once more and I am grateful.

And that night after I created this piece, I just couldn't stop making jewelry.  It feels so good to be back in the flow again.  And I think I'll enter this piece in the Artbeads.com Inspiration Competition when I get a chance!

May your creative juices surprise you with a blessing this week!

-Carmen Rose

FTC disclaimer: I received some of the products shown in this blog from Artbeads.com free of charge, I have not been paid for my endorsement of these products and I am reviewing the products honestly.

I Saw Silver!

My final projects from the two days with Sarah Lock are all about the jeweler’s saw and a bunch of tiny little blades. I glued together two sheets of sterling silver and added my drawing to the top. I drilled holes in the design using a dremel tool that had been set up like a mini drill press (gotta get me one of those base thingi’s for my dremel!) Then carefully threading the saw’s blade through the hole and tightening it up, I commenced sawing. And sawing… and sawing... and sawing… Punctuated only by breaking saw blades. Take out the broken blade, figure out which direction and which side up the new blade goes, thread it through the work and tighten it in the saw frame, add some bee’s wax and then get back to work(and repeat!) There is a real learning curve to this process and by the end I was getting much more distance out of each blade.

It is still something that takes forever and my cuts are nothing compared to Sarah’s!! So when I was finally done sawing, I had two positive fleur de lis shapes and two negative shapes. So first of all I soldered a copper back to one and formed a large square pendant. Polishing it took forever and I noticed in the photo that when I wiped it on my shirt to remove the big fingerprint right before I snapped the photo… I scratched it up pretty good. Oh well, life does that to ya. Oh, and I added that teensy tiny little fleur to it but I might change that out and put a crystal briolette there instead. I think that might look better.

I made the two positive shapes into big dangly earrings, they are light weight so it works. I really enjoyed wailing away on these things with the whammer and look forward to more of that. It feels destructive but it’s actually quite constructive in this situation. Then I went off to spend some quality time with the polishing wheels. I added ear wires and a coin pearl to each one. The conventional wisdom of the class was that they would make better pendants because they are so big and I might go there eventually, but for right now I LURVE them as earrings!

I have another one of the negative shapes to do something with. In the process of polishing it on the wheel those points kept catching on the wheel and it would go flying out of my hand. Now that made me jumpy! I finally learned (mostly) how to do it but that piece is pretty delicate now after all that damage. No worries though, I have enough fleur de lis jewelry to last me a while.

I’m delighted that I was able to take Sarah’s class! I learned so much from her and it is good to be able to sink oneself into an absorbing task and learn to do something new. Sara Lock is an amazing woman, very sweet with incredible skills and a creative approach to problem solving. She was pulled in a million directions by the six of us but she handled it with patience and grace.