Wire Artisans' Guild Live on Blockhead Radio 2/21

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Come hear us on Saturday...listen to the show, or even pop in and chat with us in the chat room!

Labyrinth Ring done, Stardust in the wings

I think I had mentioned before that I had finished a great ring. I finally got it listed on Etsy (you can see the listing by clicking here).

For those of you who don't list things for sale online, it's really quite a process, especially for those of us with slower computers/internet connections. Even if you don't have the "slow" problem, you still have to describe what you're selling. That's actually the hardest part for me. Giving a description of a piece of art when you should be able to SEE it perfectly without my typing anything. Sigh. I'm just not a writer/poet.

I'm starting to feel like I really need to find someone to do my marketing for me. The more time I spend listing things on Etsy and Artfire (well, I've only listed on thing there so far, lol), and trying to sell my stuff at art/craft/misc shows, the less time I have to actually make jewelry. I wonder where I would find someone to do that type of stuff for me...I wonder if I could find someone to work on a percentage of the sales?

Oh, one of the things I've been thinking about lately is the actual artwork that goes along with some of my jewelry. For a little while now, I've been sketching out more elaborate designs in a sketchbook with pencil. I then firm it up in ink, and sometimes add color with watercolors. I'm wondering if I should offer these drawings for sale with the piece of jewelry, or even seperate from it. Does anyone else do this? I'll have to start asking the other jewelry artists that I know.

Some of you who know my in person may know, but the rest of you probably don't, that I got some beautiful henna work done in December at an art show I went to, by a wonderful lady named Wendy, from Rovinghorse Henna. (You can see a picture of my henna here) Anyway, here is a picture of the design that I got. In looking at her Flickr photostream yesterday, I came across a website called The Henna Page. There is a woman there that is doing a survey, and if you complete most of her survey, are over 18, and live in the USA, she will send you a henna kit. Click here for more info on this great deal.

Working on Stardust...

The Wire Artisan's Guild is opening their Etsy shop, and the theme is Stardust. I've got a design drawn out, and have just been working on tweaking that and getting the gems together for a couple of days...now I just have to actually get to the wire-working, lol. Some of the people in my guild have already got theirs done, and their stuff is stunning, as usual. A lot of people are using the movie Stardust for inspiration. I didn't personally like the movie that well, so I'm not doing that, lol.

Last Friday was the Newberg First Friday Art and Wine Walk, and I was a featured artist at Honest Chocolates. We were blessed to have a wonderful acapella choral group there, singing wonderfully romantic music. I can't remember the name of their group, but when I get it I will definitely post it on here. They're doing Singing Valentine's, which is awesome. I got some really good feedback on my jewelry while there, passed out a lot of cards, and sold a couple of things.

The REALLY surprising thing about last weekend is this: Thursday my husband had a poker tournament at a local bar, and wanted me to go with him. I told him I would, but that I would need to take my jewelry and tag it because I had the Newberg show the next day, and not everything was tagged. Being a Thursday, there was plenty of room for me to spread out the jewelry and get busy. I sold a TON of jewelry at the bar, lol. Amazing. I'm going to make it a point to go hang out at the bar with my jewelry more often...it is a different clientele than I usually deal with, but they seemed to love my jewelry, and were very happy to pay for it.

Oh, one of the recent pieces that I have finished may be interesting to some of you. It's a stainless steel cuff, decorated with a recycled broken guitar string. You can see it on Flickr here, with a mini-tutorial on making yarn-like twisted wire. :-)

On the personal front, my mom is in the hospital. She appears to have pneumonia, and while there it was also discovered that she has emphysema. I sure hope she quits smoking, now, though I don't have high hopes of that.

A long absence...

I've been absent from my blog for a long time. I have some excuses, which I will go into, but I do understand that there's really NO excuse, lol. So, my feeble excuse is that I no longer have high speed internet. I have an air card from my cell company, which they CLAIMED was high speed, but their idea of high speed and mine are obviously greatly different. Consequently, loading pictures onto the internet takes FOREVER. I feel like a very large part of blogging is the pictures, so therefore just decided to stop blogging until I got faster internet. I've now come to the conclusion that it just won't happen for a long long long time, so I'm just going to grin and bear it, and just add pictures when I can, from someone Else's computer that DOES have high speed internet.

While I was gone I made a lot of jewelry. I'm still as obsessed with jewelry as I ever was. Maybe more so. I tend to create original jewelry in spurts. In between bouts of creativity, I just make basic chains and earrings and etc, but I'm always making something.

I've not been doing very well in keeping up with the theme challenges of the Wire Artisan's Guild, even though they dropped the challenges to monthly instead of weekly. I just got too busy with the Holidays. I have started back in, though...the last few challenges have been VERY inspiring.

The most recent one was "Affair of the Hearts". I was lucky enough to go to my local bead store (Jack of All Beads on 3rd Street in McMinnville, OR) and find some lovely Valentine themed lampwork beads made by a local artist, Cincy Campbell. Haha, I say lucky, but the bead store actually calls me now, whenever Cindy brings more stuff in...in this case, I feel like a junkie, and they're definitely my dealer, lol. So, inspired by the heart them from WAG, and the beautiful hearts by Cindy, I've so far created two winged heart necklaces: A Clockwork Heart and Don't Fly Away with my Heart (I'll post a link to the etsy listing when I get to a better computer to list it). I'm really happy with both of those pieces, and I have at least one more original piece planned, as well as another version of A Clockwork Heart, using a different bead.

For the WAG store re-opening, the theme is "Stardust", which I've also found particularly inspiring. I've got a necklace drawn out, and I can't wait to get started on it, but I need to finish these heart themed pieces, first, since Valentine's Day is right around the corner.

To that end, I will be at Honest Chocolates this coming Friday (2/6/09) from 5-8pm for Newberg's First Friday Art and Wine Walk. I am one of the featured artists, along with my sister, Jessica (Alternative Rose) and a wood artist that I haven't met, yet. Dana (my boss) will be there with wine tasting chocolates to sample, and her husband, Byron (of Seven of Hearts Wine) will be there pouring his awesome wine to taste. Make sure to stop in and see me if you're in the area...I will have a great selection of jewelry!

I'll follow with a post later with links to recent pieces I've completed. If you don't want to wait, just go look at my Flickr Photostream, or my Etsy Shop.

Summer's almost here!

Today was SO hot! About 85 degrees here. It made me realize that we're gonna be miserable when it gets really hot, lol. The new house that we moved into is actually quite old. Part of it was built around the early 1900s, and the rest probably in the 30s or 40s. Most of the windows, consequently, are basically just there so that it's not pitch black inside of the house. They weren't made to open. We have the huge windows that don't open. That means, no air conditioner. We DO have three doors in our house, so I'm trying to figure out some way to have the doors open without our animals getting out. Unfortunately, one of our chihuahua/mix dogs is a freakin' stunt dog, and can almost jump over me. Admittedly, I'm not very tall, but 5'2" is still pretty high for a 12" tall dog to jump, lol. So, with Terra the trick dog living here, we can't just use basic baby gates to keep her in, because she just jumps over the darn things. I'm hoping that the oak grove right next to our house will get leafy pretty soon and shade the house more so that it's cooler. I'm crossing my fingers for that!



So, today I created a ton of handmade business cards and jewelry tags to use when I go to The Gathering next weekend. Then I took a couple of pictures, organized a little, and then worked on a necklace that I've had planned for a little while. My friend, Alyssa, is a glass bead artist, and I have one of her gorgeous vessels to work around. It's nowhere near done, but this is what I got accomplished today

...basically, I did a lot of twisting wire to make the chain with, then pounding to strengthen said chain. Hopefully I'll get it done maybe tomorrow.

Circles and Squares 5/5/08

This bracelet was very fun, and included TONS of sterling silver wire...almost 300 inches of it! It highlights a beautiful lampwork bead. The etsy listing can be seen at http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=11523763

Celtic Chic 5/5/08

I realized today that there are only 18 days left until The Gathering! Wow, gotta start getting mine and the husband's garb ready! Also, gotta finish a BUNCH of jewelry that I have planned! I've got some great pirate-y lampwork beads that I have plans for! So, I've been pretty busy lately. I've listed two pieces in my etsy shop since I last posted. The first one was for the Celtic Chic theme. The second one was for the Circles and Squares theme. I guess I will post twice, so that I can include a picture of each. First, the Celtic Chic piece. This is a pair of Celtic not-quite-a-knot earrings with amethyst dangles. Gorgeous! Update: These earrings have SOLD!!!

Au Naturale 4/15/08

I finished another piece of jewelry today. My entry for the Etsy Wire Artisan's Guild Street Team special challenge: Earth Day-Au Naturale. Wow. It's so frickin' awesome! I started out knowing that I wanted to create something "beachy", using some of the shells and rocks and fossils that I have picked up through the years on the Oregon Coast. I didn't know exactly how I was going to use these items. And I sure didn't know how the heck they were going to attach to whatever piece of jewelry I ended up making. I thought maybe a charm bracelet? But I really wanted to use one of the nice snail fossils that I had, and I thought they would be too big to dangle from a bracelet, or earrings. So, I was basically boxing myself into another necklace/pendant. Last night, I went to bed with the snail fossil, wire, and pliers, to play with it for a while before falling asleep. I often find that this is my most creative time, but I'm usually too tired to have it be of any use for anything but dreaming, lol. I ended up securely spiralling some silver wire around the snail fossil, forming a pendant. I put it away and went to bed to sleep on it. While I slept, I dreamt of a necklace formed of spirals of silver wire that formed waves, and hanging from the waves were charms of the sea. It was the perfect beach necklace! Of course, when I woke up, I remembered that I had dreamed of making the perfect beach necklace, known exactly how to do it, but couldn't REMEMBER lol. So, I spent about an hour trying out different spirals until I found one that looked JUST right. Everything went fairly fast from there. The necklace is formed of sterling wave-ish spirals. Heavy duty sterling chain attaches to that, and fastens with a heavy duty artisan clasp. Dangling from the waves are: two wire wrapped orange agates, and two wire wrapped green pieces of sea glass. The center focal piece is the fossilized snail, of which the fossil is also mainly comprised of agate (VERY cool!), and dangling from the top of the snail is a teeny tiny perfectly round agate, encased in a silver cage. All of these items are exactly as I found them at the beach, minus the sand, lol. They haven't been tumbled or polished or anything fancy like that. I trusted the sea's perfectionist nature to get it right, without my intervention. This necklace makes me think of something that a mermaid princess would wear to entice sailors, just in case her own charms weren't enough. ;-) What do you all think? This piece is listed for sale, not in my own etsy store, but in my guild's special store, which is opening with a bang on Earth Day, therefore the Earth Day theme. You can see this piece listed on April 22 at www. WireArtisansGuild.etsy.com OK, I'm exhausted, I'm off to bed!

Gothic Bride 4/14/08

I took Friday off of work, since it was the hubby's birthday. We had a good time, most of the night. We went out to dinner at Orchard's Bistro, which as STUPENDOUS food. If you are ever in McMinnville, looking for good food, that's the place to go. They share space with Honest Chocolates (my day job), so stop and get chocolates while you're there, you won't regret it, lol. Today, Jason had to be to work at 7pm, and before he went, we took the kids to DQ. Unfortunately, the one near us RAN OUT OF ICE CREAM. How does an ice cream place run out of ice cream? I don't know, either, lol. I did make a little headway on the Earth Day theme challene the wire artisan's guild is doing...the actual title of the theme is "au naturelle" or something like that. I'm making a fossilized seashell the focal point of my piece. Got that done, don't know where to go from there, lol. Oh, I finished the Gothic Bride theme piece last night, got it listed today. I LOVELOVELOVE it. I hope it sells soon, or I may have to keep it for myself, and where the hell would I wear something that nice? I just stay home with kids, lol. Anyway, a description. It's a 4 in 1 pendant set. There is a Celtic Cross focal pendant, highly oxidized, and decorated with many, many teeny tiny garnets. The cross comes with a beautiful necklace with a pendant holder (also highly oxidized) which can be worn on it's own, and a black, hand dyed silk ribbon, which can also be worn on it's own. It's very versatile, and very pretty, and really epitomizes the theme "gothic bride", I think. My pictures totally don't do this piece the justice that it deserves. As I mentioned, it is listed for sale, and you can see more pictures at http://www.followtheredbrickrd.etsy.com/.

So, I've been so busy making jewelry lately. I've been fascinated with the wire wrapping, and have been listing lots of stuff on my etsy shop. I joined an etsy guild...the Wire Artisan's Guild. I feel so honored to be included amongst that group of amazingly talented women, and I've learned so much from them. We've been doing weekly theme challenges, and they have really pushed me to my limits. I hope that I can continue to keep up with it. Let's see. The first item I created was for the "spring" theme, and I made an elegant little pair of leaf earrings, with genuine peridot beads. The next theme that I participated in was "nocturnal". I made a beautiful bat necklace. It is truly stunning, and I can't believe that I made it. All of the beads in it are genuine gemstones...there's carnelian, amethyst, mother-of-pearl, onyx, labradorite, quartz crystal, and garnet. I think that's all, lol. The last thing I did was for the "whirligig" theme. That was hard. I tried several designs, nothing seemed to work, so I fell back on the tried and true triskele, and they (earrings) turned out AWESOME. They're highlighted with genuine carnelian gemstone beads. Right now I'm working on a piece for the "gothic bride" theme. That's a secret, but I'll post a picture when I'm done. I'm including a picture of my bat pendant, so y'all can see what I'm talking about. It's shown being modelled by my daughter, who is only 11...I love her, but I think it would look a lot better on a pair of breasts, lol. I'll have to see about getting a more endowed model! If you want to see more of my jewelry, feel free to go browse my etsy shop, the web address is listed above.

Transferring some old posts...

I posted a couple of blogs on tribe.net, all pertaining to my jewelry. So, I think that I will just transfer them to here. Hopefully that isn't a faux pas or anything. I'm new to the whole blogging thing, so I'm sure to do lots of stuff wrong! Yay!

Another jewelry blog...

So, I decided to jump on the bandwagon and create a jewelry blog, highlighting the jewelry that I make. Right now I'm making wire wrapped jewelry. Mainly out of sterling silver, but sometimes also out of copper. I generally only use gemstone or other natural beads. Recently, I've discovered a love for artisan made lampwork beads, so don't be surprised to see a lot of my jewelry made with it!

Etsy is my friend. I heart Etsy! Currently, with the exception of some local craft shows, Etsy is the only place that I sell my jewelry. You can find my stuff at www.followtheredbrickrd.etsy.com. Come heart me today!

I am open to trading. If you are an artisan, and you would like some of my jewelry, please, email me and let me know what you have. I love trading!