Finding My Voice... The Photography Project

The homework in this week's Finding Your Voice Workshop (by Sylvie Lansdowne, on Facebook), was to go out and discover new photos...ones that might be potential beads.

I took over 40 photographs in just an hour in the creek and came home with tons of potential lampwork bead ideas. I also played around with the settings on my camera, taking photos in black and white, vivid color, cyan and sepia tones. The things you can learn from looking at the same old thing in a limited color palette is amazing.

In the end, this sepia toned photo really captured my imagination. I thought it would be fun to play around with the limited palette in my favorite earth tones.



The bead is not an actual interpretation...more like it was inspired by the photo. I really like this monochromatic palette and hope to play with it more.




This bead will be for sale on Holly's Folly in a few more days.

It's Happened....

The spammers have found me. I could understand it on my Creekhiker blog - I talk of politics and have an opinion on everything over there from movies to cake. But here...this was supposed to be for the tiny little bead community. So I didn't require comment approval.

But after an older post was hit last night, that's it, I'm done! From now on, all comments will be approved until Blogger figures out that blog authors really need a Delete comment* button.

For the record, I don't care if someone disagrees with me. However, you will not use my blog to spew filth, bigotry or to advertise something that I'm not paid for. So there... I do apologize to the few of you that do make comments for the inconvenience.

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*The best way to delete an unwanted comment on blogger??? Go into the Edit post section, hit the EDIT button by the name of the old post, select the html tab, copy contents and make note of the original publication date and time by hitting the arrow next to POST OPTIONS.

Hit the CREATE link. Select the HTML tab, paste your contents.

Hit arrow next to POST OPTIONS and type in your old publication time and date. Hit SAVE NOW.

If you had comments you wanted to save... this is a little trickier. They won't appear as comments any more but they can be posted as part of the blog. Below my content, I type COMMENTS:

Working under the COMPOSE link, I make this bold and Larger.

I open a new tab and go the spammed post comment section. I copy the "good" comments and simply paste them back into the post, omitting the spammer's post.

Don't forget to tag your post. Save as a draft - this allows you to tell the good post from the bad one. Get back to the EDIT posts section. Find the bad post. It will have the same title but one will say DRAFT and one should have comments beside it. DELETE the one with comments.

Go back into the draft and publish. Voila... your original post is back, good comments mostly intact and bad comment gone forever!

In case you are wondering which post got spammed or what the final re-do looks like: Go here.

Finding My Voice - The Memory Bead

So this week's homework assignment in Sylvie Landsdowne's Finding Your Voice workshop is to make a memory bead. We are only supposed to attempt this bead once but I felt so much pressure, I broke the rules and made four. I think my workshop members will forgive me when they find out why...

Two thoughts came to mind when I learned of the assignment. I've always wanted to make / own a bead made with the cremains of my beloved rottweiler, Maggie May. And I suddenly recalled a trip to Williamsburg, VA as a child where I purchased a worry stone. I loved having that thing in my pocket so much, I darn near rubbed a hole in it in less than a week!

I've always been a child who loved to collect rocks, acorns, cool sticks, etc. on my hikes. I guess I love having a bit of nature in my pocket. So I had a "shape" direction to go in.

And as for Maggie May - Maggie had been in Rottie Rescue for over a year when I got her. I actually had passed her over for another dog. When that girl died very suddenly and strangely, I ended up with Maggie. It took me months to commit to Maggie - I was still missing the first one. But in very short order, I realized Maggie was committed to me.



One winter night, I had been arranging some furniture in an office / laundry room adjacent to my bedroom. I finished and turned in. Some hours later, I slowly became aware of Maggie jumping on and off my bed - something she never did. I kept drifting back into a heavy sleep and then Mags would be tugging at my covers, then jumping on the bed.

Normally, if she needed to go out, she would go over the the blinds at the laundry room door and gently touch them. I'm a light sleeper so that would be enough to wake me and I would let her out. But on this night, she was sweeping those blinds like they were a cello. I was aware but I couldn't move.

Finally, Maggie tugged on my arm and I awoke as I was falling out of bed. Thinking she was ill, I ran to the door to open it, realizing on the way that I was overcome with nausea. As I raced inside to the bathroom, I smelled the gas! My house was full of it.

Later, as I thought about how close to death I had come and blowing up my house, I told Maggie that as long as I had so much as a shopping cart, she would always have a home. She was and is my hero. There is a good story I wrote on the Creekhiker blog as well as a bit about her ashes.

I know other beadmakers have used cremains in their beads and I've thought about having a bead made for me. But some part of me didn't want any part of Maggie going on a trip. I knew eventually, I would do it....just not this soon. This homework really made me stretch.

But I couldn't bring myself to use those ashes on something I might mess up on. So... there were four beads in this homework project.

The first, I was so worried about it breaking, I didn't melt the punty mark in well enough.

Round one: didn't melt the punty enough...flowers too light.

The second one, I tried to make a free-form loop but it shattered and I just made a feeble attempt at fixing it and threw it in the kiln. And I cried. It was a horrible torch day where nothing had worked and this just finished it! I literally considered selling my glass!

Round two - the loop broke, I panicked...

So I showed them to friends, artists of other mediums who give me invaluable insight. And then I went for a long hike and I realized aside from the size of the thumb grove, my biggest issue was the punty.

I fired up the torch again and puntied with clear and on the bottom of the piece. When I finished this one, I knew my idea would work and I was ready for Maggie's cremains to become part of the piece.

Round three, showing the thumb groove.

At first, I was so nervous as I poured a tablespoon of her ashes into one of my frit sifters over a shallow metal bowl. But in just seconds I was over it and actually stirred the ash to sift it better, carefully placing the chunkier bits back in Maggie's urn.

I melted some cranberry rod and dipped it in the cremains, heated and twisted and pulled a rather lumpy stringer.

The final piece was made with pastel rhubarb - my favorite for floral bases because it shifts color in the light. I'm a moody chicky - why shouldn't my memory stone be moody too???

I added leaf cane, then Maggie cane, then little flowers; got it all super hot to make my thumb hole, melted off the punty and tossed it in the kiln.

I had Maggie stringer left over and that was returned to her urn.

My final piece - the pink part contains Maggie's cremains.

I love this piece because the bits of cremains look like mica and sparkle in the sun. Just like my heroine did!

Finding My Voice

I've been taking a workshop on Facebook (is there anything that doesn't go on there??) on finding my voice as a beadmaker led by Sylvie Lansdowne. It's meant to encourage lampworkers to find their own path and avoid copying others.

This is week two of my class and we were to interpret a painting of Sylvie's choosing...she chose 24 for the fifteen of us to pick one. I got to pick first (thanks to my being on FB all the time!). I chose this one by Ford Smith called Serenity Rising.



And here is my interpretation (front and back):

I went for a very literal interpretation and I love the results. I went for this option because I enter a monthly contest on Art Bead Scene and this year, we are interpreting famous paintings into finished jewelry. I've longed to be able to do a literal translation in glass but the inspiration paintings there never "spoke" to me in that way. But this one did...

I was exhilarating working on this bead in the flame for over an hour, praying it didn't all turn to crap. I made a crucial mistake halfway through by putting in my treetops before finishing the water and trunks... that ruined my hope of it looking two dimensional with a flat / painted surface. But in the end, I realized that was sort of silly and I love the dimension I ended up with.

I also love how the devit on the purple makes the back look like a two dimensional version of the front.

This project was fun and eye opening for me! I hope to be able to do more of these. I also LOVE that I have a new favorite painter!

Fritty Stuff

For those of you who don't "glass," frit is ground bits of glass. It can come in powder form (Size 0) and in larger and larger gradations to about the size of an uncooked lentil.

It's also quite a business - creating frit blends (combinations of colors) - for lampworkers. Renowned lampwork artist Lori Greenberg is hosting a frit challenge.

I entered some squeezed heart beads made with my own frit blend that I call Denim:


This set and a set of matching squeezed beads are available on HollysFolly.com.

Holly's Folly Goldfish Necklace

Holly's Folly Goldfish Necklace
Originally uploaded by HollysFollyGlass

My entry for the March 09 Art Bead Scene Contest, inspired by Henri Matisse's The Goldfish Painting.

I was shocked by all the bright colors in this month's inspiration painting, but upon reflection, knew I had the perfect beads... I had already made a series of Koi fish for a customer.

Since making the bead is the first hurdle to overcome in the monthly contest and I had several in existence, I felt ahead of the game and decided to try something a bit more elaborate jewelry - wise. The bright colors in the painting reminded me of bead crochet right away. I had longed to play with different shapes of beads and different sizes and this seemed the perfect piece to try that on.

As my luck would have it, I finished the necklace and was building the tassel and realized those koi I had made were way to big for the necklace. Working small is not my forte on the torch but I made three more tiny koi and they were just the right size.

The necklace is made of both metallic core and matte e-beads, 6 mm Swarovski crystals, Size 8 orange beads, and Czech pressed glass floral and leaf beads. All were hand strung to satisfy my strange brain's desire for "randomness" and crocheted on heavy cotton cord. Bali bead caps and sterling toggle clasp round out the basic necklace. I should mention I crocheted this with a 3 beads per round so this is much smaller diameter piece than I've made in the past.

The tassel is made on 19 strand beading wire woven through the necklace and crimped. The three art beads were worked in randomly and all ends were crimped for finishing.

Comments:

Islandgirl said...

I have pieces of mine sitting on the kitchen counter... guess that doesn't count as an entry!

March 20, 2009 5:31 AM

Eri Attebery said...

I love the Koi fish! Beautiful work!

March 23, 2009 4:13 PM

Fire Diva's Spring Fling

My new lampwork beads group is having a Spring Fling Sale on Etsy. Many of us are offering 25% off in our shops to introduce the Fire Diva's to the world. Several members are extending their sales to 1000 Markets and Artfire.

Just search for Spring Fling on the websites mentioned above to find sale items from my wonderful team members.

My own Spring Fling 25 % off sale is HERE.

MIA

I am buried under a mountain of tax paperwork and ... life keeps getting in the way. Today's fiasco involved a pack of labs jumping up on me while hiking in the creek. I later realized that had dislodged my car keys that "had" been safety pinned to my clothes!

Then the pupster ran off and got in some choyas. Her first cactus problem since she was a puppy and came home with over 200 stickers! Today was mild - under 30. But I still had to sedate her and it was a three person job to remove them. That cost me most of the afternoon!

Anyway, there are a bunch of new beadies up on the site and I'm trying to add one or two more every day.

Here's a few more teasers:

"Sasha"

"Robin Eggs"

February Art Bead Scene - The Kiss

February's Art Bead Scene Contest was inspired by The Kiss by Gustav Klimt. I can't believe that they have picked two of my favorite paintings in two months for inspiration. I love Klimt as an artist... there are so many layers and interesting details in his work. His dots and shapes add so much texture and interest. Check out the painting on the contest site.

The Kiss was painted between 1907 - 1908 in what is known as Klimt's "Golden Phase" during which time he utilized a lot of gold leafing in his work. For me, it was the luminous golden tones that make this painting so warm and passionate.

Because of the details of this painting, there were many ways to go artistically. One of my LEST Team members, Marcy of Studio Marcy, did a literal interpretation. It was amazing.

After several false starts, trying to pick up frits and such to play off of Klimt's dots and lines in this piece, I sat at the torch very frustrated. As I sat there visualizing the painting in my head, all the gold in the painting was what kept coming to mind. And I realized the beads I was making were way too complicated...that I could simply encase some 23K gold foil with crystal. As luck would have it, a new metallic glass arrived and I couldn't resist adding some surface decoration.

I like the way the focal and simple spacers came out - although one painter friend declared them a tad too "happy" for Klimt! LOL!

With all that gold, I couldn't fall back on my silver stash for the finished jewelry piece. I priced real gold, checked the old pocket book and opted for gold plated instead!

I wire wrapped the beads with jet 2x Swarovskis and wire wrapped a few more at the back connecting that to a thinner wire with numerous 3mm jet 2x bicones, wrapped into an oval. For the clasp on the other side, I looped some 16 guage gold plated wire and hammered it for texture.

The necklace is 25 " from end to end but hangs more like a 20" due to the layout of the beads.

This piece was made exclusively for sale on GirlPowerGolf.com

Elation

I've been one ecstatic beadmaker this week!

I sold bunches of beads to students and then on Monday, sold one of my all time favorite beads - this cupcake:

And if that weren't enough, my LEST beads team has named me their featured artist. I feel truly honored!

You can read the interview here. And while you're there, check out the other fabulous lampwork artists that make up the Lest Beads team!