Holiday Recovery, Scooter Trauma, Earring Unsuccess and Back to the Creative Stuff. . .

Well, I'm back from holiday. It turns out that at was as hot back home as it was where we went. Who'd a thunk. . .

But it did have the Med, lovely food, motor boats to hire and suchlike distractions. It was mostly relaxing. . .

Although we did just manage to avoid wiping ourselves out on a hired scooter. Scooters just don't handle like motor bikes! Horrible things. I didn't feel fully in control of it, the weight was all wrong, so we turned it in half a day early before something nasty happened. I did manage to drive slowly and sedately into a thorn bush, while negotiating a sharp turn on bumpy track, which was less than fun but not injurious. . . So no more scooters for me, ever.

Loggos harbour, from the track up to the deserted windmill, Paxos

The funny thing about holidays is that it takes a day or three to recover from them, which seems to negate the point of them in the first place ;-) It didn't help that the  journey home took all day, including a 5 hour coach ride that stopped every bleedin' where between Heathrow and Norwich, and didn't have wi fi, so I missed the World Cup Final. . . Anyway, enough moaning. Well done France, and Croatia, I might add. And England, for a work in progress, we did OK.

I managed to get back into the workshop for a reasonable length of time, once the recovery from the holiday was complete, and continued my experimentation with bits of wire and neglected beads. Some of which were very successful, and others which were frankly, a bit mad. It was good to relax into an extended bit of creative activity again.

Demented pendant

I got round to listing some stuff on LBA Galleria Elementals at long last, and sold most of them, so that kept me in a good mood. 

Oh yeah, I was forgetting, I tried some earrings on LBA Designers Galleria, but got no takers, some nice comments but nobody flashing the cash. Interesting. I feel that earrings are perhaps a longer term  sell than components. Maybe my Etsy shop is the place for them rather than short sharp exposure on FB. Dunno. Maybe they weren't what people actually wanted or they would rather buy the beads and make the earrings themselves. I might try a different group to see if that makes a difference. It's all a learning curve, and none the worse for that.

simple unsold, but not unloved spike earrings

Still no rain here. The lawn is brown and the pond is as low as we've seen it. Still, it does mean I don't have to cut the grass. Oh well, it will rain eventually and no doubt we will moan about that too ;-)

I'll share my most recent makes next time, so until then, have a good one.

Jon x

some textured spikes, just to keep my hand in. .

Progress, Resistance, Chicken Troubles and Back to Some Kind of Normal

Well, the Open Studios thing has finally come to an end. On balance I don't really think it was worth the work and expense.It was nice to have people (not many though) come and see our work and make approving noises. And it was nice that I sold a few pieces. I suppose we have put ourselves on the map somewhat but the whole thing did take up too much of my time and head space really. . .

On the poly clay spike front, I have been trying them out as earrings with integral ear wires. Getting a  shape that I like and that I feel goes with the general design has been tricky.

Not something I've done before and as a non pierced eared male I have limited experience of the practical issues involved. I posted on FB for advice and received some useful feedback.

I adapted the ear wires as a consequence. And I also ordered some niobium for alternative ear wires as copper turns some people's earlobes green. It looks pretty much like oxidised copper, I have tried hammering it gently and found that it distresses nicely (in my view anyway). Not too much or the grey of the metal shows through the coating a bit too much. So it's all good.

The other area of progress has been the rustic, industrial, gothic, ancient modern/whatever pieces I have been making lately, using grungy wire mesh and/or recycled poly clay beads/upcycled electronic components. I was having the same issues/doubts over suitable ear wires for them as with the spikes, except for the choice of metal. I use titanium as it is hypo allergenic and a suitable grey colour. So far I have been concentrating on the wire + poly clay ones without added electronic bits, but I am getting my head round those too. I do seem to have been leaning towards black and white beads too, but there are colour ones in the offing too;-)

In both cases I have gone for a relatively standard ear wire shape, (much as I want to be original and oh so different. .) often with some sort of detail on the shank, such as a bead or a bit of wire wrap, as that seems to balance out the piece. I guess ear wires have evolved that way for a reason. I am still taking inspiration from the work of others so I imagine my designs will develop. We'll see.

Incidentally, the first pic in this post is of an experiment using earring posts instead of wires, looks promising too. Stay tuned. . . ;-)

I am going to try selling the integral ear wire spikes and the industrial/ancient earrings but am hitting quite a bit of internal resistance. Not sure why. I don't think it's fear that nobody will buy them, as I am ok with that. Maybe it's a feeling that I am making myself vulnerable by exposing my work to more knowledgable and potentially critical view ;-) But that is all about me rather than about real life. Maybe it's the step I am taking further down the road towards making jewellery rather than supplies that is intimidating me. And the fact that I will want to charge a decent amount for the grungy wire stuff as it is original and takes a fair bit of time to make.

Of course the other issue is that I am quite fond of them. I like referring to what I have made before when wrestling with something new.
When things sell, they are out of your life. Some things I have made and listed sold so quick I feel I hardly knew them ;-)
I shall try a FB group or two with them sometime soon though, internal resistance or no.

The smaller of our two chickens got broody again, so I shut her out of the chicken coop to attempt to dissuade her from sitting in there 24/7 getting progressively less healthy. Unfortunately, I forgot to open it up again before I went to bed. This has happened before with no ill effects but this time, come the morning there were no chickens and a small pile of discarded feathers in a corner of the orchard. Fox I reckon. Well, couldn't be anything else really. So I feel guilty ;-(
But life goes on. I will get couple of new chickens once we come back from holiday in July, and take better care of them I hope.
Oh well, onwards and upwards ;-)
Jon x

Rural Bliss, Good and Bad Consequences of Sparkling Wine and Inspired Upcycling

This is a day or two late. Drat. I have been trying to post every ten days but this time it’s slipped a bit. Not that I’m going to beat myself up about it you understand. . . ;-)

Well, late or not, this post finds me at 8 a.m. sitting here in the garden, in the sun, in my dressing gown (an impressive garment, hand made long ago out of blue and gold damask pattern furnishing fabric from John Lewis fabric dept, with a silk lining, but that’s another story. . .)

As I was saying, here I am, in the garden, in my dressing gown, enjoying the sun, nursing an unexpectedly mild hangover and appreciating the gentle sounds of nature coming at me from all directions. Moorhens chinking at each other on the pond, robins singing from the bushes, a woodpecker calling as it flies over, a couple of swallows chattering, fat wood pigeons cooing throatily in their rather comical, self-important sounding way, all mixed in with the sound of chickens from the farm down the road and Sheila bringing her two horses up to our paddock for the grazing. (I know, we have a paddock fer god’s sake, but not being horsey people we let our neighbour use it). It’s all rather lovely, apart from the hangover, but that is fading. A cup of tea and a bowl of porridge with brown sugar helped. Bacon later to complete the cure!

A path down to Arncliffe in Littondale. An example of The North not being grim. . .

We’ve been away for a few days doing the duty trip to see my wife’s dad up north, which for various reasons which I won’t go into, is a bit depressing. We managed to stay somewhere nice in the north yorks dales which helped to sugar the pill somewhat. Very scenic and all that. So that’s why I’m running a bit late.

The river Skirfare

And why there’s not much to report on the polymer clay stuff. But before we left, I had been playing some more with earring ideas.

You are no doubt familiar with those metal, twisted wire things that keep corks in place on sparkling wine bottles. Of course you are. Well, we are anyway. I have been saving them up for a while with a view to maybe making something out of them, or re-using the wire etc. But nothing had inspired me to actually take the creative leap, and use them, until the other day, when I found a rusted and flattened one in the gravel on the drive. (I’m afraid to say I pounce on bits of rusty wire these days, and store them away for future possibilities too.) This aforementioned rusted wire artefact sparked an idea. 

The other pair I made

I cut out two of the twisted ‘struts’, each of which had a convenient loop like feature at each end, and, after brushing any loose bits off and applying a bit of Ren wax to seal them, used them as part of a pair of earrings, attaching them between oxidized copper ear wires and two of the grungy, textured polymer clay charms I had been making. I think they work pretty well. So now I just have to take my collection of sparkling wine wires, throw them into a puddle and run them over several times before leaving them for a month to achieve a suitable patina. . . ;-)

Here are some more grungy, textured poly clay charm thingies I mentioned just now.

I hope to get back into the studio/workshop in the next few days and get stuck into some more creative stuff.

Cheerio until next time,
Jon x

First Year 'Houseversary', Timely Perseids, Lack of Jam and More Uncertainty about Earrings

Our house from the end of the garden. The paint job we did made a disproportionate amount of difference. 

It's our 'Houseversary'! We've been here exactly 12 months! We absolutely love it here. We couldn't be happier ;-) All the stress and anxiety of the move has turned out to be totally worth it. . . 

We wouldn't do it again, mind, no matter how worth it it might ultimately turn out to be, but that's academic, as I can't see a reason why we would ever want to move again. Like I said before, we both feel that the only way we would leave this place is in a box. . .

view across the pond to the conservatory

What made the moving in day even more memorable than it might ordinarily have been was that it coincided with the peak of the Perseids meteor shower.

That night we dragged our exhausted selves and our cane sofa onto the lawn and sprawled on that, sipping prosecco and watching sporadic shooting stars whizz across a clear starry sky. . . This year we did the same again, only it was a bit colder and less clear, and we had no prosecco. . . but we had just got back from the pub and as luck would have it we timed it just right. There was just enough clear sky to see the show. Until we started to get cold and went to bed. ;-)

I hope you got to see it too.

The 'lack of jam' thing refers, jokingly, (ha ha hee hee etc) not to a shortage of preserved fruit condiment, which would be a serious matter, but to the monthly jam night at a pub in the next village (an event which also had no connection to preserved fruit condiment). I hadn't been before so I was feeling a bit nervous about the whole thing as I lugged my bass guitar down there, but, due to it being the time of year when many people are away on their holidays, there was a distinct lack of musicians. 'Dearth' would be a better word ;-) We found only the organiser and his wife there. Undeterred, we had a drink and a good chat with them and will come back next month when folks will be back from vacations etc, we hope. They were both artists too and were very nice people, so that was a good connection made.

Anyway, or 'Any road up' as my wife says when in Yorkshire mode, this is turning into a bit of a diary so, without further ado I will get onto the earring stuff. . .

'Biscuit' charms, polymer clay image transfer with wooden backs, with copper jump rings and oxidised copper ear wires

As a non earring wearing male, I do feel as though any foray I make into earring construction involves a lot of guesswork and certain amount of copying what others do in order to get things 'right' (whatever that is). This makes me a bit nervous about it all. I've posted about this earring insecurity before, which didn't seem to move me forward even though I got many supportive comments. Hopefully I have worked through the anxiety and now can just make the blooming things, leaving the question of whether anyone except me likes them up to fate/life and not worry about it.

rough polymer clay beads on flattened copper wire with copper ear wires

I have realised that ear wires can be any shape I like, as long as they fulfil their purpose and look good at the same time.

Round image trans beads on oxidised copper ear wires

I think that certain amount of eccentricity can be a good thing too. Probably. Well, me being me it's going to have to be. ;-)

distressed wooden beads on up cycled nails with steel wire wrap and titanium ear wires

Upcycling is fine too. And using non standard materials. Well, I think it's fine and I am working by my rules. . .

Textured polymer clay charms with textured beads on oxidised copper wire.

And, it's ok to make more conventional looking earrings as long as everything works well together and there is enough quirkiness in the choice of beads. . . For me, 'conventional' counts as a radical departure from the norm, being one of those annoying people who just has to be 'different' for all sorts of unexamined reasons. . . :-)

I'm still enjoying making earring charms/beads too. Trying different types of image and treatments.

DIY permitting I'll continue my earring exploration and see where it gets me. I mean, if others don't find my beads useful I can always use them myself ;-)

And to finish, a garden update. Not that you wanted one, but you're getting it anyway. . .

Pears!

We will be inundated with various kinds of fruit soon. The pear tree is looking promising, but the pears won't be ripe for a while. The gooseberries and blackcurrants have just finished, but we do have ripe victoria plums, early apples, mulberries and the last of the redcurrents. Damsons, greengages, medlars, quince, and the other apples to follow. Lots of apples. . . I've never lived anywhere with so much fruit involved ;-)

I tried to make cider last year but it was a disaster, I will get more serious about it this year.

On the veg front, the asparagus finished a while ago and so did the artichokes, though we hardly ate any of them. Right now we have potatoes, courgettes, tomatoes and beans all demanding to be dug up/picked/cut including some very red potatoes. I'm pleased with those as I actually grew them myself rather than inherited the previous owner's plantings.

Very red potatoes. They cook quickly and tend to fall apart, but taste really nice. I must try cooking them more slowly and carefully. I'm too used to supermarket spuds. . .

On the DIY front, for those interested, a minority group for sure, the fake panelling is nearly done. The colour is a darker, greyer turquoise-lish colour than in the pic but I had to use flash which bleached it out somewhat.
Next we finish the painting, get some pictures up and construct or buy a radiator cover of some kind. And we lose the green carpet of course! Yech. . .

My round stones collection and bust of Beethoven are in place already. .

So, onwards and upwards as they say. 

Even though Etsy is, perplexingly, still not what it was and my new shop and site is not visited as much as I had hoped, I will plough on. . . I need to research ways of amassing more 'traffic', but it's still early days and these things take time.

Jon x

'Proper' Earrings and Repurposing Cobwebbed Gift Boxes

Dangle type earrings, see below for explanations etc.

There were some small bits of image transferred polymer clay left over from my Image Transfer Tube bead TUTORIAL. I don't like these things going to waste, so when I realised that they were just big enough for my 8mm square cutter, I cut some squares out of them. So, now what? What do I do with these little squares? . .

Well, I had seen small stud earrings on various people's sites and in their shops and often thought I should have a go at making some. Well, this was my opportunity. See below. I think they turned out OK. I was worried that they might be a bit too thick, but the consensus amongst good people I consulted was that they were fine. So I listed them in my ETSY SHOP.

Stud earrings made with leftovers from my image transfer bead tutorial

I admit that I felt a twinge of guilt about charging even half decent money for such teeny tiny things, but I've been around long enough to know that it's just 'artist's insecurity', (an old and familiar enemy) rearing its pathetic head, so I tried to ignore it and hope it would take the hint and return it's head to its previous, un-reared position and not bother me again. I mean, they're not that blooming expensive.

As you can see from the top pic in this post, I also made some dangle type earrings out of the same leftovers. I'm trying out different options you see.

Over the past several months I have been keeping half an eye on how other makers I admire go about configuring earrings. Not that I haven't made and sold quite a few sets of my own in the past couple of years, you understand, but I'm all too aware that they have tended to be the obvious, 'dangle one of my beads from an ear wire' style things. Which, though the results can look good, is not exactly stretching me as an artist or teaching me anything. I need to be more adventurous.

My standard style earrings

Though I am very concerned with being 'original' - almost pathologically so ;-) Just now I feel the need to follow in other's footsteps for a bit, at least until I feel confident enough to branch out on my own.
Ok, that doesn't sound much like 'being adventurous', but it gets me out of my comfort zone, and anyway, you have to walk before you can run, innit?

I have noticed and noted the tendency in most makers to have a bead of some sort between the ear wire and the main charm/drop, (observant eh? sharp as tack, me. .) so using bits I had lying around, I knocked up the earrings below, and the ones in the top pic as mentioned before. . I even did that twisty wire loop at each side of the bead thing. . . Not all that exciting, but they do look, to my unpracticed eye, quite 'wearable'. Or maybe just a bit 'like what other people do' and more like 'proper jewellery' ;-) whatever that means. I dunno.

'Proper' earrings ;-)

Although, to be fair to myself I have tried to break out of my 'single bead on an ear wire' habits recently, (see below). If you remember, I did blog about these old nails and spare beads earrings I made before Christmas, but that was me following a whim rather than trying to work things out.

Check the background - maybe f4 makes a bit too narrow a DOF though

On a different note, I hope you dig the background props in these pics. It's a wood and wire box that I have had knocking around for years. I think it had some kind 'gift' in it, like a bottle of liqueur or some such originally, but anyway, I found that its just the thing to display earrings on when I want to photograph them. I stuck a pattern print I had recently made for a completely different purpose, and which happened to be on my desk, in the back of the box, set the camera to f4, to put the background out of focus and took some pics. I think it looks good. Apart from the cobwebs that is. I'll attend to them later.
A new look for 2017 eh?

Anyway, that's enough blather for one evening. See you next time.

Jon x

Upcycling and Going with Instinct etc

I haven't has much beading time this last week or two. DIY stuff for the house has temporarily taken over. But if I hadn't been doing house related stuff I wouldn't have pulled some old, patinated and bent nails out of an old victorian bed frame that we got at a local auction, and which I was trying to construct, (without any instructions. . . It all made sense in the end, and hasn't collapsed yet so I think I got it right. IKEA it ain't).

Anyway, said old bent nails struck a bit of a chord with me. I just liked the way they looked so I kept them aside. You get an instinct for stuff you might be able to use. Not a strong instinct, but if you are aware enough, it kind of nudges you from time to time.

I was duly nudged, so next time I was in my workshop I tried threading some left over, or mis-sized beads that I had on my desk amongst the detritus and creative debris, onto the nails. They looked quite nice, so I decided to try to make something with them.

I flattened and widened the top of each nail and then wire wrapped it with a fair few turns of anodised copper wire leading up to a loop at the top, which I flattened a little bit too.
They looked good, so I decided that they would look even better as earring charms or drops or whatever you call them.

I cut a small bit of thick copper wire, flattened each end with my jewellery hammer and drilled a hole in the widest end. I had to use my power drill, which was a bit cumbersome for fine work, but my dremel thing wouldn't have had the required oomph to do the job.
The hole was conveniently the right size for the large copper jump rings I had lurking in my findings box, so I threaded one through the hole. Oh yeah, after I had wire wrapped the other end of the thick copper wire that is. Then I threaded the nail charms onto it, grabbed a couple of ear wires and had a look at what I had got.

I liked them, but was advised by a few knowledgable people to oxidise the copper ring and wire to match the nails and their wire, so I dug out some Liver Of Sulphur that I had bought a year ago and never used.
It worked very quickly and didn't half smell eggy, as it would of course. I brushed a small amount of Renaissance Wax onto the newly oxidised bits as that is supposed to stop it rubbing off I believe. The result is in the top pic in this post.

I like it when I can just follow a seemingly obscure train of creative thought to some kind of conclusion. Following my fascination you could call it. . .
Jon x

Multi listings and all that

I keep thinking about writing a post, and then putting it off until I have something I think is 'worth writing about'. . .
Yeah, well dream on ;-) The usual drivel will have to do, it's been long enough since my last post.

I have been busy though. I've taken the concept of the Psuedoshard a step further, making thin image trans drop charm sort of things with the usual distressed image transfer stuff on the front. I used some of my black and white images on some of them, which worked quite nicely I thought. I always think they look African for some reason. To do with my mental image of what African looks like of course, and perhaps not all that close to what something African actually looks like, but there is such a thing as a national characteristic that comes through in work from a particular place. It's a vague concept, and involves that other vague concept, 'feel' as well as direct visual clues, but I maintain it does exist.
In my head anyway.

I have been trying out a time and effort saving concept too. I have made some multiple listings. The trouble with listing four (say) different examples of the same sort of thing, (Four sets of image trans earring charms for instance) is that each ideally requires 5 separate photos. General shot, close up, the back, one for scale and one wild card. . . Each shot has to be resized and tweaked in Photoshop before being saved in a different folder. Then a listing has to be written out, tags sorted out etc etc. Sometimes for a potential $5 sale. Not ideal. There has to be an easier way. . . So I have tried photographing and listing multiples when the items are variations on a theme. The buyer tells me which ones they want and I adapt the photo accordingly and relist. Early days but it's working OK I think. I will have left over items which I can then list on their own, but that is less trouble than making loads of small listings. . .
Of course I could stop making small beads, but that would be a shame.

I have made some more organic form spike things too. They are fun to make and the last lot sold very quickly. We shall have to see how these do.

Other than that I made some big hollow beads by pre-baking two halves and sticking them together.

And some bi-colour bicone beads, which I quite like. haven't listed them yet, but will do so over the next week.

I think I need to make some more eccentric style stuff, maybe some large focals or something, as I have been in component making mode for a while and need a change, just for a while.
Still enjoying the process, so all good there.
Jon x
https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JBDRusticOrganic