Clothesline Festival 2015

I am gearing up for the 2015 Clothesline Festival in Rochester this Saturday and Sunday.  Booth A2!

http://mag.rochester.edu/events/clothesline-festival

A slate full of brooches made from vintage candy molds and new disc necklaces!!!!!

Private Lessons-Part 2

I worked with a wonderful woman yesterday who wanted to learn how to use the images from the lowly bottle cap.  I showed her how to pull the plastic liner out, flatten the bottle cap, trim it, sand the edges and to punch a circle in it. We stayed cool by working in my basement studio.  A fun and productive afternoon.  She intends to use these bottle cap images for a piece of assemblage art.  She told me that she is being drawn more and more to metal.  Not a bad thing, in my opinion!

House Sales

House sales still are one of my top places to obtain great tins.  These are from one 1/2 mile from my house last weekend. The cowgirl images are so cool.  Do I cut that tin or not?

Getting Ready

I am getting ready for a vendor mart sponsored by the Quilting By the Lake conference put on by the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn, NY.  Thinking about quilters and how they like to put things together inspired these necklaces and bracelets.

Private Classes

I spent the last two afternoons with two sixteen-year-old girls working on different jewelry techniques using recycled materials.  The first afternoon was devoted to filling bottle cap with miniature objects and pouring resin on the top to capture the objects.  

During the second afternoon I showed the girls how to take jewelry apart and put it back together using looped wire and jump rings.  They sorted through piles of junk and broken jewelry to find just the right pieces to work with.  Their homework the night before was to look through the book  Rejuvenated Jewels  by Amy Hanna to get an idea of how one can take pieces from many sources to create a new and unique wearable art.  They also brought along some silver charms from a family member to incorporate in the work.  Both came up with stunning designs.

Clocks 2, 3. and 4

Here are the rest of the clocks I have been working on this week.  Nice to work in a bigger fashion.

Clocking It

It has been awhile since I have written.  Developing new products takes awhile.  I have been ruminating on making a tin clock for sometime now and have finally collected the ingredients to mix up the  recipe.  Here is my first attempt from start to finish.

Wanting to cover wood, and using recycled wood, it took me awhile to find pieces the right size.  My clock components hand an hour hand of 9"  so the wood had to be large.

A hole needs to be cut to insert the clock works.

Someone had given sheet aluminum, I think for roof flashing.  It has sat around my studio for some time now but I could see the possibilities forming. I encased the wood in the aluminum which gave me a canvas to play with: to add color.

For the first clock I chose no numbers just two axises of color and some circles to suggest locations on a clock face.

Today I added the hands and a battery and it works…keeping marvelous time.

On to the next one!