Electronic Possibilities, An Embarrassment of Wire, Daft Ducks and Actual, Bona Fide, non pretend Spring!

Cool components. . .

Well, it's been a while. . . Life has got in the way somewhat over the last week or two. My father in law passed away and we had to go up to Yorkshire for the funeral and to sort things out.

Anyway, putting emotional stuff etc aside, part of that process was sorting through stuff in the house to see what should be salvaged and what should be left to the house clearance people. He was a model train enthusiast and was an electronics engineer in his working days so there was a lot of related bits and pieces to deal with as well as the usual furniture, pots and pans and books.

The long and the short of it is that I have rescued loads of electronic components that look like they are dying to be up cycled as jewellery components. Little tubes with coloured stripes etc. I have no idea, and no interest in what the stripes signify, I know it's code for wattage/amperage/whateverage but I just like the way they look. I look forward to finding out how they might inspire future work.

Continuing on from the 'free wire' mentioned in my previous post, there were about twenty or so 100 metre reels of coated copper wire in the attic. Just the right size, once the coating is cut off, for making loops and bails. I rescued 4 reels, so now I have 400 metres of wire to play with! That should last a week or two ;-) It might even inspire me to actually spark up the butane torch I got a year and a half ago and learn a bit of basic soldering etc. . . .

Other news, as if you really want to know ;-) I am signed up, with my wife, (excellent watercolour artist and tutor) to Norfolk Open Studios, which happens in May. I shall be exhibiting my ceramic tile stuff and some prints of my digital abstract stuff as well as some bits of jewellery. This requires me to actually make some jewellery, which is not something I have done for a while. But it is something I increasingly feel I need to explore, to find my 'voice' in a jewellery context, so a deadline might be the kick up the rear I need to get stuck in to it. I don't think bead buyers would necessarily be amongst open studio visitors so I need a way of showing what I do that non beady people might respond to more readily.

Actual Spring sunshine, photographic evidence thereof. .

Spring is actually not only here, but showing physical signs of being here rather than being a sort of winter with added daffodils. I actually ate breakfast, sitting in the sun in the garden today. Wonderful!

Vast tracts of grass, cut with the small mower as the sit-on can't deal with long grass.

And it was actually dry enough to cut the grass! We've had more than two days without rain! Unbelievable! I can actually plant some things in the veg garden. . .

Because we haven't been using the garden door, due to the weather, a duck has decided that the flowerbed just next to the path, just outside the door would be a good place to make a nest. . . sigh.

Ill advised duck on ill sited nest

Oh well, it will have to put up with us walking past from time to time, I'm not going to make silly allowances for a not altogether well thought through duck's nest. So far she seems ok with the arrangement. Not sure what will happen if ducklings result, we have three cats. . . Last year the ducklings lasted about four days (!) and we didn't have cats then, just barn owls, tawny owls, kestrels, sparrow hawks and possibly foxes. Doesn't bear thinking about.

Texture beads - sold

Now we are back from Yorkshire and almost recovered from all the hectic doing, I have had some time in the workshop to make some things. Easing myself back into it all.

I made some spikes and some textured beads and plan on making a lot more stuff.

If I am going to make necklaces etc for the upcoming open studios, I will need plenty of beads. . . So I have ordered some large blocks of Cernit. I am rolling my sleeves up in readiness and doing gentle warming up exercises. . .

No doubt you will hear all about it in due course. . . ;-)

Jon x

Mid Century Primitive spikes, the only ones pictured here that didn't sell. Well I like 'em.

The Curious Case of The Blue Soup - A Spike Spike - and the imminent rise of Mid Century Primitive. . .

Well, starting in a backwards direction, just to be awkward, with the Mid Century Primitive, the above pic should show you what I'm on about. . .

The primitive bit is easy to get your head round, pretty self explanatory, but the Mid Century might be a bit less so. Someone mentioned it in a comment on FB and it resonated. I think there is something about the shape and colours that is resonant of fifties and sixties interior design. Your mileage may vary.

Dunno. A bit of a tenuous correlation maybe, but it's a fun invented category to explore the inherent contradictions, or indeed the inherent similarities to be found within it. ;-) 

More about this further down the blog post.

The spike in spike sales may be an oh-so-witty pun but it is also a real life event. I had another good selling session on FB the other day. (Update - and again last night!) My spikes seem to hit the spot with quite a few people.
Hooray for quite a few people, is what I say. Though a spike does imply a sharp up followed by a sharp down, so maybe it's not such a feel good analogy. . .
Anyway, the beads below all sold, amongst others. Long may it continue ;-)

I'll get to the blue soup in my own good time thank you. The subject of Mid Century Primitive is more pressing a matter. Imho of course.

It's a mixture of artily crude and deliberately and sophisticatedly unsophisticated workmanship and simple, sculptural shapes (whatever that means, as any shape could be 'sculptural' really. . . but I think you know what I mean) reminiscent of shapes popular in the fifties and sixties, especially amongst ceramic artists. Who were no doubt influenced by such artists as Brancusi, Arp, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth etc. Well, that's my take on it.

Maybe because like such artists the shapes are defined by the process as much as by an imposed conscious decision. .  Discuss. . .

I'm not saying my work lives up that ideal, but it's what I am aiming for, without getting too precious about it all. It's fun to make this stuff.

Oh yeah, the ones below sold too ;-)

Blue what? . . Oh yeah, soup.

Well. . . It's all about red cabbage. I cooked a roast chicken with all sorts of veg in the pan below it, including red cabbage. The process turned the cabbage and consequently all the veg dark blackish blue. . . ooer. . .

When I made soup from the chicken carcass and bits (as I always do) I included the left over veg. I whizzed it up in the blender and got blue black, slightly frothy, due to the blending process, soup! Yay! My wife was appalled as it didn't look even vaguely appetising ;-) I ate it however.

It tasted great with a bit of yoghurt thrown in. Hah! Mid Century Primitive Soup. . .

Till next time,
Jon x

How many of What? Crackly Stuff, No Room in the Inn. . and New Year Good Intentions

First off, may I wish a very happy new year to all my readers, present or past. thank you for your support. It is nice to think that I am not just talking to myself.  ;-) 

I'll try to make the read worth the wear on your link clicking finger. Failing that, I will at least try to make the the pics worth looking at. . .

simple crackled barrel beads

So, to business. . . 

As you may have realised from the title and any pics that may have passed in front of your eyeballs so far, I have been playing around with crackly stuff again. It's nice to come back to a technique after a month or two of not using it. I find the time gap has somehow consolidated a few things in my mind, and I am more sure of what I can achieve with it. 

I am really liking how it can be combined with my turned technique to make ancient looking beads which could be made of anything from ceramic to bone to horn etc.

Semi trans cernit tube beads with crackle and alcohol inks

Talking of making beads, the other thing that has been exercising me somewhat, is the issue of how many of what to make. 

I guess it all depends on the use the beads get put to eventually. I used to imagine my creations being used in necklaces and the like, so I made sets of six or eight. The number was pretty arbitrary but seemed to be ok with buyers. 

After a while I realised that they were using them mainly as earring components, which I obviously didn't have a problem with, but I did think that maybe making pairs would be more convenient for earring makers, so I started making pairs of beads. 

So, sixes or pairs? 

Crackled round semi trans beads

I hope you had a good Christmas or other festivity you may indulge in.

Mine was by and large good. We had an interesting moment when we turned up (after a four hour drive) at our pre booked hotel in a small Yorkshire town only to find that it was dark and uninhabited. It had gone out of business a couple of weeks before. The booking firm sent us an email just after we left on the 23rd but we weren't online after that so it didn't get to us in time.
Luckily the phone number had been rerouted to a pub just up the road, who were very nice and helpful and got us booked in to another local hotel. Phew.
Could have done without that to be honest ;-)

green patchy crackle beads

The new year gig I mentioned in a previous post went very well. Just me on bass and my mate Rich on guitar and vocals banging out old faves. The pub was packed and we all had a great time. Yay! And we got paid! (getting paid to play is a novelty, believe me)

grey round, turned technique semi trans crackle beads

I haven't made any new year resolutions as they never quite work, and make you feel bad when you don't keep to them. I have set some intentions however, but not with negative associations attached.

I am going to list more stuff on my Etsy shop and share on FB and Instagram etc. Thus keeping my profile reasonably high. But only if it feels good to do it. I'm trying to avoid the concept of 'should' where feasible and not harmful, as it usually turns out to be a confused version of somebody else's 'should' and not something drawn from my own experience. Which doesn't tend to turn out well imho.

Spikes!

I made some more cool spikes. These are fun to make and I will keep on making them and variations of same. . .

MDF backed poly clay 'biscuit' beads

I also found some smaller 'biscuits' (for use with a 'biscuit jointer') in a diy store (in the reduced price box.  .) They are MDF unlike the larger ones I had used previously which were plywood. This makes them a bit less forgiving to work with, and produced nasty dust when sanded, but nevertheless I made some MDF biscuit backed poly clay textured drops in a faux bone style. .

Well, that will do for now. Have a good 2018 'going forward' as they say, I intend to have a good one too, though going sideways is probably more my style ;-)

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

Image Transfer - Just when you think you know what's what. . .

I have been transferring images onto Polymer Clay for a couple of years now, so you would have thought that I would have it all sorted and under my belt and fully figured out etc etc. But I am still plagued by inconsistencies.
The issue is stickiness.
Once an image has been transferred, and all the paper has been rubbed off using the time honoured 'water and index finger' method, the image on the clay becomes sticky and is likely to smudge and transfer itself onto your fingers, however careful you are.
It's fine if you are making flat objects, like my tile beads, you just have to know when to stop rubbing the last tiny bits of paper off, knowledge that comes with experience, but if you are hoping to wrap the piece of clay with the image on round something, you are in trouble. Obviously, you can't wrap something round something else without touching the surface, however briefly, and when you do that, smudges and suchlike happen. And, as I like to wrap my images round things, this affects me.
My style has evolved to take account of that. In fact I have managed to make it work as a kind of faux ageing process, along with other tricks and processes. So it has become part of what I do and a step in the evolution of my style. However, I would like to find a way of stopping it happening for the times when I am not after that effect.

And. . . I thought I had. I have tried gently heating the image transferred clay to help the image to 'dry'. it doesn't. I have tried leaving it for a day or two. Nope, still sticky. I tried freezing it. Nope. I tried a thin layer of that floor polish stuff I can't remember the name of, and I thought that had worked, because it seemed to have done, but there was another issue I hadn't thought much about that has rendered all my experimenting kind of redundant. . .
Basically, I think a lot depends on the kind and brand of paper and ink involved. It has to be a photocopy/laser print, which I get from my local copy shop. I get things printed on an irregular basis, so if they change the brand of paper or toner, I wouldn't know. Sometimes I use the photocopier at the local library, which would use their particular paper and toner brand.
I have come to this conclusion because I can't explain the inconstancies I get any other way.
I have been messing around with some printed images from different times and places, and mostly they come out sticky. But some are fine. I hadn't noticed because I assumed that the Klear (I think that's what it's called now I remember) floor polish coating was the reason for this. But I don't think it was. . . Sigh. . .
I need to do some experimenting. It may be that coating the image a thin layer of something does actually help a bit in some cases. It may be that if I coat the image immediately it is possible it might stop the stickiness from happening. I haven't tried prolonged soaking to get the paper off, but I can't see why that would be any better.
Meanwhile, I have been following my fascination with distressed surfaces by not fiddling around trying to get a clean result, but going with the smudging and smearing and making some very organic, rustic, ancient looking beads. Everything leads to something else you may not have considered. . . That's my excuse anyway.
Jon x

Saved from the To-the-Charity-Shop box. For far better things. . . .

      This is a Portmerion jug that my mum had, and which has been lurking in various cupboards and on seldom visited shelves for years. I have often made a mental note, when it so happened that it came into my field of vision, that the raised design on it might have textural possibilities.
So when it turned up in the this-is-going-to-the-charity-shop, should-I-stay-or-should-I-go, pending box I thought I had better rescue it and actually try out said textural possibilities.
      I think the design is based on some older Staffordshire pottery, Wedgwood or some such, and before that Ancient Greek. I could research this but can't be bothered so if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. . .
So anyway, I rolled it on a spare bit of polymer clay and quite liked how it came out.
Another thing I have had lurking for quite some time is a remnant square inch of Amazing Mold Maker. You know, that poly clay type stuff that stays flexible when baked and is used for taking texture impressions and making moulds. So brushing the dust off that I made a texture sheet/mould of the jug pattern.

      It never comes out as crisp as I would like but it serves.
      Now, what I like to do is roll bits of polymer clay between two textures, and here I had two versions of the same texture, one positive, the jug, and one negative, the mould or 'mold' if you prefer, though to anyone from the UK, that is a seaside town in North Wales. . .
So, without further ado, whatever that is, I rolled polymer clay between the two textures. Here are the results.

       Well, obviously I painted them with alcohol inks, sanded the raised bits gently and varnished them. Somehow the pattern takes on a different feel, almost as if I had used a bit of lace, as I have seen done by various artists. They are verging on the pretty. Sorry about that ;-)

     These earring drop charms were also the result of my experiments. You can see the positive and negative patterns on the purple ones quite well.

Nothing more exciting to report on the house front, the bees in the 'chimbley' are quiet, so when the weather gets a bit colder we'll get the roofer/chimney repair man in. 

Sales in my Esty shop are chugging along. It's nice to have that bit of affirmation to help the creative confidence along. It's nice to be relatively unstressed after the horrors of buying and selling and moving house etc. 

Oh yeah, and it was extra nice to be featured on Polymer Clay Daily the other week, and to get a mention in the Blue Bottle Tree blog too. ;-)

Jon x

They came, they saw, they faved, they went away again. . ;-)

Well, I had a great idea the other day. I would get all my beads I saved from deconstructed necklaces that never quite worked out, all my experimental beads that didn't quite fit with others, and some beads I like but haven't used for anything and most likely won't use for anything, photograph them and list them as a big destash (auto correct says 'deaths'.  .) sale. I could publicise it on Facebook etc etc. So I did that.
I got a nice response, so thanks for the views and faves, but it didn't turn into the stampede of bargain hunters snapping up beads right left and centre that I was hoping for ;-) Never mind. You can lead a camel to water, they say, but you can't make it put on a blonde wig and dance the Watusi. . . Wait, maybe they don't exactly say that, but you get the gist.
I'll keep the destash section going for a week more maybe, then de-activate the listings, as they are kind of filling up my front page somewhat.
I have had some sales though, just not anything in the destash sale. .

In between photographing and listing old beads I have been making some flattened profile bicones. I also have been reacquainting myself with my marbling/crackle technique and reminding myself of its little ways. The results have been good, though I say it myself. I went with more subtle colours which added to the gentle, faux ceramic, faux stone vibe that they exude. . .

The other recent departure for me in my bead making of late has been the manufacture of some simple, unadorned but still rustic beads, intended to compliment my other beads. They have gone down quite well, as they are reasonably priced and come with a discount if you buy with other beads. I think Etsy allows me to do that. Can't see why they would have a problem with it.

Bees in the chimney - I spoke to a local beekeeper on the phone. A really helpful old chap who gave me the lowdown on the issue. He had a wonderful Norfolk accent, and told me the problems trying to get rid of the bees in my 'chimbley' could bring. The upshot is that I will leave them be (bee?) and see if they survive the winter. They don't fly once it gets below 10 degrees, so we can get the roofing work done next month maybe. They have still been coming down the chimney in small numbers though. I blocked the small hole they were getting out of the wood burner through with polymer clay (of course!) and draped an old coat over the front just in case they were attracted by the light. That seems to have stopped the problem. But I'm not opening the door unless gets it gets cold. The old beekeeper said I should light a 'smookey' fire to spook them if they have tried to build anything in the actual lined part of the chimney.
Country living eh?
On another country living note, I thought we were down to just one guinea fowl as I hadn't seen the other one for a day or two. I sadly wandered the edge of the garden looking for the corpse or evidence of a fox of whatever, but found nothing. Nothing that is, until I disturbed guinea fowl two from her nest under the hedge. . . That's where she had been. Nesting, in October! Poor silly thing. Oh well, they are from the plains of Africa, so haven't got a clue about rural East Anglia and things like winter. The eggs most likely won't hatch, and if they do I give them ten minutes before they turn up their little toes and die. The last brood they had lasted about a week, and that was in the high summer.
It's a hard world.
Jon x

Down in Black and White

I'm having a bit of a black and white frenzy at the minute. I have a load of these simple, faux African style images (of my own design) lurking on my hard drive, that I figured would look really nice as beads. So I have transferred a batch of them onto some Cernit squares and have been experimenting, trying different sizes and thicknesses of beads to see what I like best,. And ultimately, I guess, what other people like best. The ones in the pic are mainly 15mm square with a couple or three 20mm ones lurking in there too. A few are hollow ones, using my go to method, Claire Maunsell's strata bead technique which she helpfully shared online  and which I jumped on as it suited my impatience and my 'rustic' leanings. . .

The rest are just two pasta-machine-thick-settings thick. All are painted black on the back and sides with black alcohol ink, treated with renaissance wax and buffed up. Oh yeah, and I made a couple of artily mismatched cufflinks too. 

I didn't age any of them up for a change, though the temptation is hard to resist. I'm going to make a bunch more and mess them around like the ones below. They just look so cool all antiqued and ancient relic-ified. . 

And they sold. . . ;-)

The other thing I did with some more of the longer rectangular beads like the ones above, was to wrap them round some tube bead cores, and see how that came out. I decided to put them all together in one necklace, and after a bit of trial and error came up with the idea below. I need to take some better pics but I liked how the silver tone spacers worked with them. What you reckon??

Some, if not all of these will be making their way onto my Etsy shop in due course, so look out for them. I'm still considering in what form to sell them, bead sets, earring sets, made up earrings. . . hmm. . But that's food for another post I think.

See ya next time, which, despite my good intentions is likely to be another ten days away, judging by my past efforts, and hey, don't be shy about commenting, no pressure though.

Jon x

100 items!

Well, I got to 100 items listed in my Etsy shop so now all I have to do is wait for the deluge of views and sales. Yeah right. Anyway, it's a landmark of sorts so I shall allow myself to feel smug about it for at least twenty three minutes. . . and counting. . .

My 100th listing. Another set of my groovily distressed cufflinks

It does leave me with a possible dilemma. I keep making things so I guess I should keep listing things, but it feels a bit like throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. A bit uninformed and random somehow. Still, if you don't list it you can't sell it, and you can't get feedback on it either, and it's nice to get likes on things. It can indicate which things are more popular and confirm your own gut feeling that something is good. (or indicate just how delusional you actually are).

I have several earring sets all ready to list. . .

I just bought some Cernit polymer clay, on recommendation, as I want to make some more buttons but don't want them snapping in half like my first attempts. That was embarrassing. So far, tests have gone well and it is very strong stuff. Even quite thin buttons are practically unbreakable. It takes texture nicely too.

Cernit buttons, about 3cm in diameter. Featuring some new textures too

I got the porcelain version without realising how see through is was, so I got some opaque to mix in with it and to use for image transfer stuff. It works really nicely. So now I am set up. . .

A couple of cernit image trans beads, only mildly distressed

Getting there slowly. .

Nothing terribly exciting to report over the last week or so, though I sold some beads which is always encouraging.

I have been making stuff however. Like these cufflinks, using small image transfer beads, greviously aged with sandpaper and inks etc. I really like how they look. I've had a good reaction from those who have seen them so, I will see how they fare on Etsy. I should probably wave them at some shop proprietor or gallery or something. I need to find the right kind of venue.

I've also been making a series of textured earrings, using some old stock of coloured polymer clay and the usual surface treatments. I'm going to try some stud/post earrings soon. I've ordered some sterling silver findings for that, as a lot of people do seem allergic to copper and nickel.

As all my disk beads had sold I figured I had better make some more, so I've been doing that too.

I am aiming to get to 100 items in my Etsy shop, but every time I get within reach, somebody buys something ;-) Listing stuff is a bit tedious if you do it according to good SEO practice, you have to find various ways of saying the same thing as Google punishes text that is too similar, apparently, and you don't show up in searches. (not sure I show up in searches anyway to be honest, but I have to keep the faith). So if I post ten similar earrings, I have to vary the wording in subtle ways, while keeping all the keyword phrases in place, and making it read as though it might just be english as we know it. . . Not much fun. I hope it's bleedin worth it, that's all I can say.