365 Pendants

No updates…

365pendants — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 23:29:17 +0000

My apologies for the lack of updates recently. If you’d like to see what I’ve been up to, stop by my main blog at http://www.michondesign.com/jewelry-blog. I update that one at least once a week, and I’m starting to post my new work there, rather than here, so that it’s all in one place.

tutorial links

365pendants — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 17:58:06 +0000

Here’s a link to where I publish my jewelry tutorials. So far, there are only a couple of things there, but I will be gradually adding more.

Another in progress piece

365pendants — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 21:29:16 +0000

silver and pearls

365pendants — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 20:29:24 +0000

This pendant was made with sterling silver scrap wire and some freshwater pearls. Sculpted and fired with my torch, pearls added using cold wirework.

BIG resin pendant – in progress

365pendants — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 23:23:58 +0000

This pendant is very large – I used the lid of a tin that had candy in it as my frame. Next I added the colored background and the long, snaky copper shape.

The feather is a pheasant feather that a friend from a bead forum sent me a few years ago – her husband hunts pheasants for food, and she had the idea to save all the feathers in case her crafty friends could use them in art projects. I like the idea of making use of every part of the animal, and not letting anything go to waste.

The little hardware bits were a find at the local salvage store near my studio. I bought a pound of assorted random hardware parts. I’ve been using found hardware in some of my resin work, but had used up all the interesting things I’d found on the street. Since the whole point of using found objects is that they are used and/or discarded, I was really excited to find neat looking scraps and tiny screws and things at the salvage store. I’m using someone else’s discarded items, and they were exactly the right things for making jewelry – tiny screws and nuts and washers, and some other tiny hardware bits that looked interesting. I spent some time sorting through the area that had metal and hardware scraps to find what I was looking for, but it was worth it. I plan on purchasing more jewelry supplies this way in the future – it’s economical, I find really interesting things, and it’s good for the environment to buy used and reuse things that would otherwise probably go to a dump somewhere.

I’m not sure what else is going into this pendant, but I think it’s going to be a good one. Definitely for the person who doesn’t mind making a statement – I think it’s three inches in diameter.

New Resin Pendant

365pendants — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 18:01:42 +0000

This pendant includes a paper flower (still leftover from my wedding, which was a few years ago), an interesting piece of hardware I found, and a background I made from blending eyeshadow colors.

Knot – finished

365pendants — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 16:21:59 +0000

Knots

365pendants — Thu, 31 May 2007 19:50:21 +0000

This knot is made from Argentium silver wire. The photo was taken after pickling off the excess flux, but before other cleaning and polishing – see why I like working with this stuff? Very minimal clean-up involved. I’ve since tumble polished it and now I’m trying to decide if it’s done – a very minimalist piece – or if it should have some stones and things added to it.

This is one of several knot pieces I have in progress at the moment. I’m happy with the knot aspect, which is something I’ve been thinking of playing with for a while, but I’m not sure quite where I’m going with these.

In the meantime, I’m finishing up some resin pieces that had been set aside since the Maven Fair. I have a show this Sunday with the Pleasanton Craft Mafia (it’s at A Work of Heart Studio, 1060 Willow #7 in San Jose, CA from 11:00-3:00) and I’m hoping to have most of the currently in-progress resin pendants finished in time for the show. I did the last layer of resin on about 5 or so last night, so if it sets up well, I should have time to drill & add bails, but the pieces that still need another layer most likely won’t be done until Guerilla Fashionista in July. But more about that later….

Bobble Cuff

365pendants — Thu, 24 May 2007 22:52:10 +0000

I crocheted this cuff bracelet over the weekend. There’s an explanation of how I made it in the tutorials section of my blog on my jewelry website. It’s basically three staggered rows of the bobble stitch, with a row of single crochet in between each bobble row.

Better picture & a WIP

365pendants — Fri, 18 May 2007 22:24:18 +0000

Here’s a better picture of that fused pendant. It is so hard to accurately capture the detail, but you get the idea. I’m getting faster with my fusing technique, and figuring out some tricks that get the pieces to turn out the way I want them to, rather than leaving it up to trial and error. That’s one of the great things about mastering a technique – when you first learn it, there’s so much experimentaion, which is really fun and creative. Then as you get better at it, you can control the results more, and that leads to a more purposeful design process. At least that’s how it works for me – once I have a technique “down” designing becomes easy, and I often get design ideas from my experiments while I’m working on mastering the technique. I’m at the point where I can control the type of fusing I’m doing on this style pendant, so now I can focus on trying some designs I’d been thinking about.

I also got up the courage to try a design that I’ve been thinking about for a while. It involves metal “knots” that are fused at the ends. I guess the basic idea was originally inspired by Loren Damewood’s intricate knotted metal rings, but I had a more freeform style in mind (of course). I have a couple that are ready to be tumble-polished, and then I’ll decide if I’m going to add any pearls or stones to them.

I also started the piece below, which is maybe going to be a pendant and maybe part of a bracelet. I haven’t decided how much I want to embelllish it yet, so it’s sitting on my soldering pad until I figure out how to finish it.