Channeling Bob Ross

Has anyone else in the Jersey area noticed the outrageous cloud formations of late? I cannot remember ever seeing these kinds of sky displays in our tiny state. They remind me of pictures you see of big sky country, or Arizona, not our little corner of the world. It is a combination of threatening grey thunder heads, and brilliantly outlined poufy white, and scuttling wispy translucence. Happy little clouds and enormous grumpy clouds, we have them all. I feel compelled to photograph them, but only succeed in flattening them, removing all the dynamic drama of them. (I searched YouTube for quite a while, looking for a clip with Bob Ross discussing his Happy Little Clouds, and could only really find him making a friend tree for a lonely tree, cuz we all need a friend. Amen Bob).

On a less patient with the note, what is with this parking job?

This exemplifies the driving “idiosyncrasies” of other motorists that I have been witnessing lately. For the past week, people have been incapable of staying in their own lane, or of deciding which lane they want to be in (there is a difference, just think about it for a moment. There, see, you got it!). People on the road: I just want to get back and forth from work safely. I do not speed, I use my turn signals and I want courtesy from you whackadoodles out there sharing the road with me. We can all be happy little clouds out there, sharing our happy little sky, just please look around you!

That is the end of my rant- I think this weather is finally getting to me!

Oh, by the way- two new styles of necklaces up at Jeanne-Maries- take a peek!

Technorati Tags: Bob Ross,clouds,bad driving

Traversing the bridge

I recently had the pleasure of spending a little quality one-on-one time with my 13 month old nephew, Hudson.  It was a lovely Saturday morning, and while his mama got her hair did, we hung out in Raritan.  I was a little nervous about entertaining a toddler by myself, they are very tough audiences, but then I decided to check out the Nevius Street Bridge.

It is an old span bridge that was recently converted into a pedestrian bridge.  It was safe, and clean, and provided just the right amount of interest and structure to keep him occupied.  He rode to the far side in his stroller, then used the railings to crab-walk his way back down.  He had a running commentary the whole way, sticking his arm through the struts and occasionally letting out his trademark “oooooooh!”

 

The video ends abruptly, as we happened upon the only spider web on that entire bridge.  I bailed, and grabbed him.  I hate spider webs.  Ever try to walk on the pedestrian walkways on the Clinton Bridge?  The spiders are as big as your thumb, and they leer at you like some kind of Stephen King character in one of his novels, not pretty.  Anyway, try to not listen to my screechy witch voice, and pay attention to the cute baby, ‘kay?

The rest of the day was spent doing other fun things.  We went to a park in Somerville, and took pictures of the peonies…

 

Then we froze our butts off at the pool, and he went home before any crankiness could set in (talking about my crankiness, Hudson is a model citizen).  A lovely day.

the evolution of a thing

 

Memorial weekend was a wonderful time for me to work on some ideas for necklaces that have been banging around in my brain for quite some time.  I enjoy seeing and hearing other peoples processes, so I though I’d share how this all went down, since I can show you how the design evolved.

First of all, I sketch very little.  My rendering skills are terrible, and I only use drawings to capture VERY rough ideas, so that they don’t escape me completely.  Many people detail their designs fully on paper before they move to materials.  As my skill sets become more complex, I will be forced to improve on this.  For now though, I am happy to dive right in and try to figure out how to realize my ideas as I go along.

I became obsessed with vintage Lucite flowers very early on in my travels.  I found my first few in a lovely shop in San Diego (once I remember the name, I will share).  I then found several sellers on eBay that could supply me with these little lovelies.  I started out making sterling silver, wire wrapped pendants using them.  More recently, I’ve been working in copper, and wanted to incorporate the flowers into those designs.

I wanted to do something with a very organic feel, and this is what I came up with.

Utilizing copper tubing, ball chain and wire, the first couple were nice, but I felt they were stuffy, and over-composed

The 18 gauge wire was rather stiff, and I was wrapping it so tightly around the tubing that I was making it difficult for myself to attach the flower and other decorative elements.  I was also experimenting with how to deal with the chain.

In this version, I dropped the first link or so into holes drilled at either end and then hammered the tubing to distort the holes slightly, using tension to hold the chain in place.

On my next version, I wasn’t happy with how I had wrapped the tubing, so I removed it.  In order to reuse the wire, I annealed it (heated it evenly to redistribute the molecules and soften the metal), and discovered two things- heating had colored the wire in an appealing way, and the wire now had some interesting kinks and twists that made it more natural looking when wrapped onto the tubing.

A mistake I made in the beginning was drilling the holes in the first three tubes right off the bat.  I quickly realized that it was totally worth it to just thread the chain through the tube- those three inches of chain were not worth effort trying to secure the chain some other way.

In the bottom example, I figured out to ball the ends of the wire, which creates a bud effect, and solves the problem of where to end the wire wrapping.  The end is now a part of the overall design.

I then decided to take apart the original orange necklace…

I am really happy with these necklaces.  The loose style is a departure for me- I am usually the meticulous wrapper, very anal- which feels very right.  I am also happy to have figured out how to use a bunch of these lovely flowers, which have languished in my bead collection for far too long.

del.icio.us Tags: jewelry,handmade,copper,lucite,flowers,wire,tubing,necklace,ball chain

Happy Day to all you Mothers!

My Mom will be in Florida this year for Mother's Day, so I thought I'd dedicate this post to her.

Knowing how you love those lilacs I cut a huge bunch of them...

I strapped them in for safety, and headed for home.

A side note here: I have allergies, and these past four weeks, they have been raging. I wake up every night at 3 am and have to use my allergy nasal spray, I take another medicine to control the rest of my symptoms and my asthma. Closing myself up in a small car with a bucketful (or actually a plastic pitcher full) of lilacs was not the brightest thing I've done this week.

I stopped the car at one point and contemplated chucking the whole mess out, but settled on snapping this pic instead. See how the flowers are stroking my shoulder in a menacing fashion? They did this the whole ride home, in addition to almost choking me with their granny-perfume.
Once they were in the house, with room for fragrance dissipation, they were quite lovely. I hope they make it to Sunday, as they opened a week and a half early this year, and are slightly past their prime.

In the end, they were worth the effort. Very much like having children, I imagine.

Happy Mother's Day, y'all!

board of health go home

I updated my FB status today, commenting on the lamentable status of my purse. I walk around with it and puffs of dust and scraps of receipts fly around me, ala Pigpen. I know that all you know that I am a person who likes to use hyperbole to get my point across, but I decided to photo-journalize the facts of this case, to prove that I am in fact NOT exaggerating.

exhibit A:

This is what it would look like if I just plopped this bad boy next to you on the bus.

let's really examine what is going on here-shall we?

exhibit B:

I dump all contents onto couch in reception area of office.

let's take a closeup or two to see the carnage in horrific detail:

exhibits C & D:

Here, you see all the fast food and gas receipts along with a months worth of deposit slips. Also shown, the earrings I am fixing for my mom, my magic wallet (exploding), and entire pack's worth of Orbit mint mojito gum wrappers, and the keyring of all my "preferred shopper" type of key tags.
Here we see not one, but two pocket packs of tissue, hand cream, car and other keys, gas-ex, one of two lens cloths, phone and blue tooth earpiece, camera case, an obituary and the directions to that person's viewing, the key to Alisa's house and a three week old shopping list- is it all becoming clear now?

Now, here is the show-stopper, and the reason I walk folded over to one side (drum roll, bitte)

I have admitted to being addicted to various lip products, and here is what happens when said addict keeps throwing those beloved little tubes into her purse without ever taking some out. My lipstick bag is very slime, designed to hold a lip liner, a lipstick, a gloss and my beloved Timewise lip primer. As evidenced in this picture, I have far exceeded these parameters.

So I sorted through all the junk, and kept the good
Here is what I normally tote around (minus my camera case, I must have put that back in before I snapped this pic), fairly useful things that get me through my day- now you can actually see some of the things that were there before, but were buried. My tweezerman emery board in a case, Tide pen, little notepad in its green paisley embossed metal case, splenda in convenient pill form, my asthma inhaler, my business card case, my awesome tampon case, and finally my truly wonderful reusable shopping bag which will be documented later. ( Tax season must really be over, look at me, even including hyper-links, woohoo, FANCY)

There we go, all purged and spring cleaned. Now if I could only dump the contents of my house out like that, all would be right in the world, my little world.

next, I will work on my posts for project 365, which sadly, has been neglected, and will not be a true experiment in pictures every single day. I will post what I have, and promise myself I will get back on track!

i think it's finally done...

I've been working on this one for quite a while...



I bought these garnet last summer (I think), and then was faced with the quandary of what to do with them. I loved the boldness of the Wilma Flintstone I had made last winter, so I took some cues from there. After trying several combinations with the garnet (which is black red, quite opaque)I settled on turquoise and copper. I had tried combos that were more "formal", but I really like the casualness of this arrangement. I then decided to fabricate the bead caps, because everything I was trying to accent with just didn't have enough presence. The front of the necklace is on memory wire. I then had to create the back of the necklace. My first design had these bars that looked like horse bits. They succeeded in hurting my neck (this thing weighs a ton)so I realized I needed something wide, to help support the weight of the stones and keep them from digging into my neck fat.


The clasp is also now nearly invisible, which in this case is a good thing. Now I think I will sell her. I have this pathological desire to keep all the pieces I create that I adore. They are much like children, I think, I need to set them out into the world, if it will have them.

PS: any opinions on using the background paper? I kind of like it, but don't want anything too distracting. Here are pictures without background

Please comment...

stopgap measure

Took this yesterday, thinking my new pink sweater would look lovely against the fresh pale green sproutiness- well, I was wrong, but thought it looked OK as black and white. I only have a few minutes, I am busier than a 1 legged man at an ass-kicking contest at work, and it seems I will be getting busier in general. My girlfriend Mary, online entrepreneur extraordinaire, has graciously agreed to SELL MY JEWELRY! I am a combination of trembly, sick to my stomach and that-girl throw my hat in the air excited.
I think this could really happen....
shit

oh and here's the link!