Good Luck necklace

Ladybirds are a sign of good luck and I was recently asked to make a ladybird necklace for a customer. This one is made using silver and color anodized aluminum.

The aluminum leaf is impressed with the veins of the leaf.

Hope you like it - and hope it brings the wearer good luck.

Happy Easter

Hope you are all having a lovely Easter.

Our Jack Rabbits seem happy hopping through the vineyard.  Maybe they are searching for eggs?

This little bunny looks like he's pretty happy too!

Fresh as a daisy

Are you feeling fresh as a daisy today? I do hope so!

And if you are not, then maybe my new aluminum bangle will cheer up your day!  

And why are daisies considered to be fresh, you may wonder? The English name daisy comes from the old English "daeges-eaye" or "day's eye", referring to the way that many daisies open up their petals during the day, but then close their petals at night.  So I guess, the idea is that closing it's petals suggests it goes to "sleep" at night and so wakens up in the morning all fresh and alert and well rested - and thus "fresh as a daisy".

What a nice thought.  I love the fresh green on this bangle that shows off those fresh daisies too.

Have a good night's sleep tonight!

Take time to smell the roses

Life frequently seems so busy: so many different things to do, so many calls for our attention, so many distractions..... So we need to remember to take time to smell the roses.    Just think about how it would feel to bend down and stop and smell a rose.  That's quite a powerful image, isn't it: that beautiful perfume; the pretty color of the rose; all those delicate petals. Just thinking about it brings about a sense of calm.

And that's what this bangle is all about. It is a wearable reminder that we need to take time during the day to smell the roses.   Of course, it doesn't have to be roses or smelling anything - just stopping, pausing and breathing deeply and noticing what is around you.

The bangle came about from my first attempt at Adobe Illustrator. Readers of this blog may recall that I've been wanting to try Illustrator for some time, so this little rose was my first attempt. Very basic but I like the soft pinks - and being blonde - I wear quite a bit of pink :-D A dear friend of mine said that blondes should wear pink all the time!

Anyhow I think it would make a nice mother's day gift, or a gift to a busy friend or relative who could do with slowing down a little. What do you think?

Weekly bird in the hand

Here's this week's things that I am grateful for, my "bird in the hand":

Photo by USFWS Headquarters

• blogs.  I love reading blogs and am right now finding some great vegan recipes that I'm trying.  Today I'm making a raw lemon tart.  There is so much variety out there but it's tricky to not just get 'consumed' by them all  - hee hee!
• catching up with friends
• watching rabbit ears twitching below the window, when I couldn't see the rabbit!
• getting our raised beds ready for veggie growing
• choosing a new pomegranate tree for the garden
• hearing good news about my nephews
• hearing that both grandchildren - and their parents(!) will come and visit - one lot in May and one lot in June
• being inspired with new business and jewelry ideas
• finally getting over the hurt from a nasty customer. I'm hoping I'll get back into jewelry making this week or next. My mind's been buzzing so I'll plan on writing a blog post to tell you what's been going on and what's coming up.
• watching the great blue heron at the pond
• learning lots of new things

Hope your week has been full of new things too. Here's to a great week coming up - and don't forget to change your clocks this evening.  One hour forward.

New Window Bangles

My jewelry is selling well at Grace Cathedral and so I made a few new bangles this week.

They were made from the St Matthew Window in the Chapel of Grace.The window was created by Charles Connick and is the first window as you enter the chapel.

Connick's chapel of Grace window designs, like the chapel architecture, were inspired by the famed and still-surviving Sainte-Chapelle - a private chapel attached to the royal palace in Paris. This chapel is considered one of the highest achievements of Gothic architecture - and   is somewhere I would love to visit one day........

The new bangles feature both the full length St Matthew window and also just small vignettes. I like the one shown above on the left as it has bunches of grapes on it...merlot?

 I need to make some more necklaces too, so I'll show you those when I'm done.

Vibrance and Grace

I took some of my 'stained glass' aluminum jewelry down to Grace Cathedral this week for them to sell in their gift shop.  I was delighted that they wanted to stock it.

The jewelry is all based on the stained glass windows in the cathedral (yes, I have permission to use it).  The colors are so vibrant, which is why I chose to call the series "Vibrance and Grace".

It'll be interesting if I see any of the congregation wearing it when I go down to sing on Sunday.

I heard that they went on sale on Tuesday and two pieces sold straight away!  How encouraging is that.

Now I'm working on some new windows - and it looks like I need to get working!

Review of my "bird a week" challenge

Yesterday I finished my 52nd bird of 2011!  They were all part of my "bird a week challenge".  If truth be told, I made more than 52 birds in the year, but for the challenge, we only counted those that were a new design, and some of my extras were repeats of designs that I'd done before.

Looking back at them, I used 17 different materials to make the 52 birds.  Here are the main media:

• 18 were made from silver
• 12 were made from aluminum
• 5 were made from steel
• 3 were made from food items

11 of the 17 media I used, I had never tried before, so it was a big learning year.  The new media included encaustics, printing from zinc plates, plaster wrap, wax, and plasticine illustrations.

Most of the birds were "generic" but there were 9 specific species that I made, as follows:

• 1 eagle
• 2 bluebirds
• 2 herons
• 2 quail
• 1 robin
• 3 penguins
• 1 owl
• 1 parrot and
• 1 kingfisher

If I were to choose two techniques that I now wish I'd explored a bit more and tried more birds with, they would both be illustrations - one was a pencil drawing and one was a illustration with plasticine.   

Screaming Eagle - week 1

Great Blue Heron

I would really like to be able to illustrate and as I was lucky enough to get Adobe Illustrator for Christmas, I'm hoping that this is a skill that I can develop in 2012.

Here is a slideshow of all the 52 different birds.  Tomorrow I'll let you know about the others who joined me in the challenge.

Stained glass window bangles

I finished off some more stained glass window bangles today, in blue colors!

As I'm now looking to link back to a previous post regarding the predominantly red window bangles I've made, I realize that I didn't blog about those - only showed you the window photos! 

Anyhow, today's bangles contrast with the ones you haven't yet seen (!!!) in that they are predominantly blue!  They are based on the windows in Grace cathedral, San Francisco. Beautiful colors and more traditional in design that the others.  I'll show you the red ones another day...soon!

I had good news this week that the Gift Store at Grace Cathedral is going to stock some of my stained glass window necklaces, earrings and bangles...just as soon as I get them there.  It'll be nice to have my work sold where I sing.

Radiant earrings

I made some stained glass window style earrings yesterday with anodised aluminum and love the bright colors.

All those primary colors, and with the black accent.

I think they will be lovely for festive parties over the next few months...can be worn with black and add real brightness and radiance.

And yes. I did a pendant to go with them too - shaped as a gothic arch.

The aluminum means that they are all lightweight too, so don't drag down your neck or ears!  Not a good party look :-D

Stained glass windows

While I haven't been making much jewelry recently, I have been busy learning new things - namely Adobe Photoshop.  I want to do more stained glass window bangles, but I've never grasped Photoshop and as I need to do some photo manipulation, I've been working through the AdobeTV tutorials. They are really are good. 

When I was at the cathedral in SF on Sunday, I took quite a few photos of the windows there and so have lots of material to jiggle around with on photoshop.  There are some contemporary windows and also more traditional ones at Grace, so it'll be interesting to see how they all work out.

I get a great deal of satisfaction learning new things and while I had tried photoshop before, it was more just me fiddling around and trying to figure things out, rather than actually going step by step and following tutorials etc. It now makes much more sense and I can see myself using it for lots of different things.

And soon, there will be new bangles - if my manipulations work out!

Do you use photoshop in your work? 

(Oh dear! Looking at this post now, you can see that I am really my father's daughter! Some of you may recall his "Sunday's spotlight" blog posts, with photos of stained glass windows in them!  Am I on the same slippery slope :-D ????????)

Life on the ocean wave

A customer in Germany asked me to make her a bangle like my "ride the wave" bangle, but in a larger size. 

Hmmm. An interesting request, as now I had to remember how I did the first one!!! Yes, I'm not one of those people that has a little book and fully documents her experiments!  I guess I did enough of that when I was a research scientist.  Luckily I still had the "ride the wave" bangle so managed to figure it out and blended some colors.

Here's the result - a lovely blues bangle - either singing the blues or life on the ocean wave!

Off it went yesterday, across the waves to Hamburg.

Father and Daughter collaboration - Stained glass windows

Today's bracelets are a collaboration between my father and myself.  Any of you who remember him as my guest blogger for a few years, writing "Sunday's spotlight" may well recall that he loves photographing churches/cathedrals and flowers.  Yes, a few other buildings get thrown in occasionally, but it's very rare to find people in his photos.

I was checking his Flickr site the other day as he had added some new photos and saw a lovely photograph of a stained glass window from Peterborough cathedral.  It was a beautiful bright window, with such rich colors. 

Photo by Pete2010

Immediately, I thought it would make a wonderful color anodized aluminum bangle.

And indeed it, I think it does! The richness of the reds, blues and greens contrast so nicely with the silver of the aluminum and the black.  It is just rich!  You can see the saint with a bird here in this bangle (- maybe my dad knows the background to the window and who this is?):

I'm loving wearing one. And yes, it's shiny!  Quite a contrast for me who normally wears matt!

I think I'll be taking some down to Grace cathedral when we start singing there again next week and see what reaction I get.  What do you think?

Thanks Dad. It was great to take something you created and use it in one of my creations.  There may well be more of these in the future!

32/52 Bird a week - Happiness

For this week's bird, I made two bluebirds of happiness. 

They are made from color anodized aluminum.

They are very friendly and when they get together, they tend to chat quite a lot.  Luckily when you wear them as earrings, there is a little separation so they are quieter! 

We've had two batches of bluebirds nesting in our boxes this summer and both have yielded a few babies.

They don't look very blue yet, but then, I guess they need feathers to look blue!

They are useful birds to have in the vineyard - not just because they bring happiness (!), but also because they eat insects and thus keep the insect population down on the vines.

 

Take a look at the other birds that people have created as part of the bird a week challenge. The links are below: