Sticking my Neck Out. . .

The more observant amongst you may have noticed that I haven't listed a new necklace in my shop for quite a few months. Why could this be? you ask yourselves. I will tell you. Despite having sold a few necklaces over the past year or two, I have never felt entirely at ease with the process of making them. The nagging feeling that I don't quite know what I am doing is hard to shake off. Possibly because it is an accurate assessment ;-) But that said, I pick things up pretty quick. . . I shouldn't be so hard on myself. It's all down to what 'works' and what doesn't really.
And anyway, I have been madly making beads and so haven't had the time or inclination to diversify much. Excuses excuses. .

Over time, quite a few pending necklace related projects have been abandoned and left hanging on the hooks on my studio wall. Oh all right, on the pirated bits of a wooden plate rack wedged between two water pipes that serves the same purpose. Whatever, it does the job.

The other day I had an urge to actually do something with these neglected projects, and, armed with a bit more knowledge, gleaned over several months of Pinterest and FB exposure to other artists' work, a bit more confidence, and a steely glint in my eye, I got stuck in.

The results are below. I'm trying to keep the rustic/tribal/boho/whatever vibe that my beads have and translate that attitude into more complex pieces. For better or for worse ;-)

Close ups and other details are in the listings for each necklace in my Etsy shop, each pic has a link in the caption.
(Thanks to 'Ethel' the polystyrene dressmaker's dummy I found in the 'salvaged things for sale' bit of my local dump for £2, I can not only test my work all through the design process, but also photograph my necklaces to show how long they are and how they hang. Yay, for Ethel!)

I'd love to know what you think of them, and if you have any guidance/criticisms for me.
thanks,
Jon x

1 - This one has been around in this form for ages. I just wasn't sure about it. It has 15 miscellaneous grungy image transfer tube beads, various rustic spacers and some printed, bigger spacer beads.

2 - This one has four early image transfer tube beads, featuring my signature digital tile patterns, paired with three translucent and red clay mix round beads I made a while ago too. Plus some of my simple white round polymer clay beads.

3 - This one has some black and white, textured spike beads garnered from a previous project, with some rustic black and white drum beads made using the same technique. All my own design textures.

4 - A simple, 'primitive' necklace made using a large semi translucent cane covered bead, made when I was playing around with caning etc, quite a while ago, with two semi translucent round beads, some more rustic spacers and some shop bought small, simple spacers.

5 - I got all designy with this one. A textured ring bead and two stick beds on a copper loop.

6 - This pendant one has six, triangular cross section, textured stick beads on a copper bar.

7 - This was fun. A simple formula - one interesting but different bead, spaced using two simple wood spacers, and so on. Random, unusual, funky and cool.

8 - Well, this one was a repurposing/upcycling project involving stuff from the hardware store mainly. Washers, cotter pins and some plastic tubing. With two small polymer clay tube beads of mine. Fun.

'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

Start as you mean to go on. . . Ho yes! - featuring My First Tutorial

Well It's 2017. Let's hope it's not as turbulent as 2016 was. For me I mean, though I hope the World calms down a bit too. Lots of disruption and not altogether welcome change went on in all sorts of places in the last twelve months, causing anxiety, bewilderment and high emotion. . . Interesting times, as they say.

For us, the turbulence was caused by a stressful, but ultimately rewarding house move, as regular readers of this sporadic blog would have gathered. We've no intention of going through that palaver again so we've agreed that the only way we are leaving this place is in a box. Not the same one of course, two boxes would be required, but you get me drift.

Our house from across the fields - back view. Originally the front view apparently, circa 1780. . .

Anyway, I've been mentioning in passing how, at some unspecified point in the future I would probably be trying to make a tutorial to do with image transfer and it's use in my bead making, well, guess what? Listening to my inner Yoda ("Do or not do, there is no try") I went ahead and made one.

The pics link to it, and so does this TUTORIAL text link.

These are the beads in question

It was an interesting project, breaking down a process into a logical and repeatable sequence, then documenting that sequence, step by step, clearly enough for a clayer of any ability to follow and end up with a pleasing result. Having carefully followed that procedure, I hope I succeeded in that aim.

If not, it's all Ginger Davis Allman's fault! ;-)
Just joking. . . Obviously. . .

I approached Ginger for an opinion of my first draft, and she was very helpful, pointing out things that might confuse US readers, calling me out on bits that weren't as clear as they might be and helping with copyright stuff and disclaimers etc. All vital and extremely useful stuff, so many thanks Ginger!

I chose a simple technique for making tube and round image transfer beads in my usual rustic style, including some tips on successfully navigating the time honoured 'water and rubbing' image transfer process and avoiding the dreaded 'stickiness' problem which can occur.

the dreaded stickiness. . .

It's up in my Etsy shop should you feel the irresistible urge to buy it.

It feels good to have started 2017 with something new, for me at any rate. Something to coax me out of my comfort zone.

Well, start as you mean to go on. . . I hereby give notice that I fully intend to keep upping my game in various ways in the the weeks and months to come, and to thoroughly enjoy the process. Yay!

Here they are again

Until next time,
Happy New Year!

Jon x

ps - And I still haven't told you about the jackdaw in the other chimney. . . Ah well, next time.

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

Through and Through - Rough Image Transfer Adventures

I've been working out various things this past week or so. Refining how to make 'through drilled' or at least, 'through holed' flat tile beads without them having to be unattractively thick. I have got it pretty much sorted.
I bake a thin image trans tile, then press another unbaked blank onto the underneath with a bead pin or similar in between the two layers to provide the stringing hole (once removed, which I do before baking, though afterwards would probably be OK too). The unbaked blank has to be less than the thickness of the bead pin or similar for obvious reasons. The bead is then baked again. This process avoids having to drill a hole through a solid flat bead, which would be a very delicate operation unless the bead was quite thick, which, as I mentioned before would be undesirable.
Not an exact science and not the neatest result in the world, but if I felt it was important enough I could neaten them up more than I choose to. The look suits the general vibe my work has. Kind of artily and enthusiastically rough round the edges, "Rustic". Though that word seems to be less important as a tag according to my etsy stats. . . "tribal" and "boho" get more hits. .
I made smaller versions with the smallest cutter in my set, and made them double sided. It was OK to make them a bit thicker, I thought, as they look quite nice a bit chunky. . .

The image trans technique involves using clear liquid poly clay and a heat gun, and is best done outside or in a well ventilated space. Kato polymer clay, which happens to be the trans liquid I have, has a particular smell that I don't get on with, especially when it burns. . . (oops. .) I'm not going to go into details about the technique as you can probably work out what I did. I like the effect, though I shall take a break from my experimenting with images and do something else for a while as I don't want to risk getting too obsessed and repeating myself.

The images themselves are my own digital creations, this time less geometric repeat pattern orientated and more random organic in nature. 

They still have this old/new conflict going on, which is fun I think. Ancient looking things with non ancient images on them.

I need to leave image trans for a bit and get back to texture based work I think, but finding new approaches and ideas. That will need some thinking about, and some playing with. 

I might list a few more things in my shop and then leave it for a week or so and see what I want to do next. 

I'll keep you posted,

Jon x

Well I had a go at some pendants. . .

I took some bits and pieces from my 'pending' beads, the ones that are hanging around waiting to be photographed and listed, and a couple from existing listings, which I shall take down if and when, and tried a few relatively spontaneous ideas for pendants. Using my animal zoo stamp tile type things I mentioned in my previous post. I quite like them, and might be moved to try them out in my shop very soon. I need to play with the zoo stamps some more, definitely, however I keep getting distracted ;-)

I made some quite cool heavily textured spikes, that look fun. . .

and I shall continue to mess around with stuff. I have more ideas than time, which is the right way around I think.

cheers,

Jon x

Do you like scr - scr - scratching?

Apologies to A Tribe Called Quest for the title. (I think that's who it was. It was a while ago. I feel old now. Actually I felt old anyway. . . ;-)   )
In my search for the authentically rustic, if such a thing really exists, I like to go really simple. What is one of the most basic ways of getting a design onto a bead? Yup, scratching it into the surface, that's what. I have messed around previously with this process, but with limited success. I scratched a design onto a a bead that had been covered in black gilder's paste, which looked nice, white design on black, but didn't like renaissance wax being added to the mix. Gilder's paste and ren wax don't get on, the wax takes the paste off unless you apply it oh so carefully.
Actually, the ones pictured below were unwaxed. Embarrassingly, the gilder's paste on it's own was not very robust, as I found out after having sold some. (Sorry Claire, lesson learned. .) This was a good while ago I have to say.

 So I tried scratching a design onto baked white clay, and then filling the scratches in with black ink or wax or whatever. I found that scratching into white clay with my trusty craft knife blade thingy, (one of those snap off multiple times ones, you know. . .) that I found it hard to see what I had been doing, being white on white and all. Painting the bead with dilute alcohol ink first helped to show what was scratched and unscratched, so I did that. I tried a few ways of filling the scratches with black. First, oil pastel, rubbed into the scratches, then 'fixed' with a heat gun. I thought it might melt into the scratches, but it didn't do it very well. I sanded the excess off to reveal the scratches and sealed with ren wax. Ren wax hates oil pastel too so things got a bit smeary. I tried black chinagraph pencil, as I had found a box of them for £1 in a local charity shop the week before. Same result really, only ren wax really hates chinagraph pencil.
What I did was to make use of the ren wax's tendency to dissolve gilder's paste, and apply g paste fairly generously, then use ren wax to on top and rub the resulting black stuff into the scratches. Then let it dry and sand off the excess. Ren wax on top was fine if applied fairly quickly without rubbing too much.
In hindsight, the easiest way might be to use black alcohol ink and sand off the excess. Ren wax is OK with alc ink, not best friends but ok. In future I will also try black acrylic paint or acrylic ink I think. Anything black that gets into the scratches will do the job though.

You could use dark brown alc ink, as in the examples above, and then paint with a lighter colour.

I like the result, only I worry that they are on the verge of looking less like arty 'primitive' beads, than ones that have been attacked by a ham fisted eight year old with attitude. Are they too 'crude'? They could be done with more 'care' but I am not sure that is the point of them. Their crudeness and simplicity 'should' be what gives them their charm. I may be wrong though. What you guys fink?
Jon x

Oops, it's been ages. . anyway - Necklaces etc

I hadn't realised how long it was since my last installment. Oh well, keep 'em wanting more is what I say. Conveniently. . .

Anyway, I've been taking it a bit easy on the bead front this last week or two, since making loads of things to list bit by bit etc. I'll have another burst of enthusiasm next week I reckon.

But meantime, I am having a bit of a hiccup in confidence on the jewellery front. I sell a few things, mainly cufflinks and earrings, so I am OK with those, mainly, though my earrings are a bit plain compared to a lot of the wonderfully eclectic artists I admire. My hiccup is more about necklaces.

I don't really know what level of sales to expect, so may be reading too much into it, but it feels as though I need to raise my game a bit. I like the things I make, I know that they sit on the crude side of 'simple', and I realise that might not resonate with many people. Necklaces are more of a special purchase perhaps and they need to look a bit more consciously 'special'. Also, I do rather wing it with the design, following my instincts rather than considering the end user or what the 'rules' (perfectly valid rules or 'best practice') might be. I do like to go with my own flow, I think it is important, but perhaps I am putting potential buyers off by not being very aware of how necklaces are 'used' or worn. Not being female or a jewellery wearer myself and all that.

It makes my approach original but quite likely not altogether appealing. I dunno. Rightly or wrongly, it has made me stop making necklaces until I get my head round it all. Price may be an issue, but I don't think I'm too optimistic in that regard. I wouldn't want to charge less.

I research necklaces on pinterest and Etsy to see what I might need to change, and a few things are slowly sinking in. I am also coming up against another bit of resistance. I don't like tying up a load of beads into one piece when I could probably sell them separately as components.

Aye well, I'll work it out in the end. My work tends to go in cycles, so some new necklaces, or possibly pendants if they are more saleable, might appear soon - ish. Once I get over my hiccup.
Ah the insecure life of the creative soul. . . ;-)

Jon x