Girls day out

Recently I had a lovely family come over to my studio to make some jewelry: Jenni, Phoebe and Eve.  It's sort of a complicated story to tell you how I met them - originally a year ago - and that meeting was very brief, but a connection was made that resulted in us all having a great day together.  Jenni is the mum and Phoebe and Eve are her daughters aged around 14 and 11???

They'd never made jewelry before and we had a fabulous time trying out silver metal clay and then they each made an aluminum/aluminium bangle.  It was pretty quiet though - lots of concentration going on!

They had to go back to England before the pieces were fired, so I finished them off and sent them to them.   Not sure if they have received them yet.

The photos are of the pieces before they were fired. Jenni did the bird on the left, Eve did the bird on the right - the collared dove, and the heart, and Phoebe did the stars.  I'll show photos of the finished pieces when I know they have received the jewelry themselves!

I hope they enjoyed the day as much as I did :=D

Weekly bird in the hand

I've missed a couple of my "bird in the hand" posts I'm afraid as I've been away, back in England - so that means I have even more to be grateful for this week!  Here's this week's list of the things that I am grateful for:

Photo by Navicore

• being surrounded my like-minded people
• having tender, sincere conversations with casual friends that takes the friendship to another level
• sunshine and warmth - it got up to 79 degrees here this week
• seeing the turtles in the pond, warming themselves on the duck platform
• getting back into singing
• being asked to participate in new things
• new opportunities
• the excitement of new ideas
• meeting new people
• enjoying the yellow of the daffodils
• seeing all the blossom on the trees
• seeing the brightest blue on a male bluebird as he flies around the vineyard with his Mrs.

It's like a week of new life with the flowers/blossoms, birds, turtles and new beginnings.  Has spring sprung in your heart yet?

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.

Article about our "Bird a week" challenge

A friend, and one of the members of our "Bird a Week" challenge - Joy Funnell, wrote a lovely article about the challenge in the online magazine "Metal Clay Today". 

It's definitely worth a read. Joy describes our goal to create a different bird each week for a whole year, and then goes on to say how she decided to make it harder on herself by making all of her birds in silver clay.  It's great to see the photos of Joy's weekly birds, including one of my favorites, the wonderful birdie faces brooch shown here as the heading to her article:

To read the whole article, just click on www.metalclaytoday.com and there is a link on the right hand side to the magazine.  It's a great magazine.

So glad to see you thrive with this challenge Joy.  What will next year bring????

Weekly bird in the hand

Here is this week's list of things I am grateful for:

"Shall we dance?"  Photo by mikebaird

• Matt, Peter, Mary and Fin - my sister and her family, who arrive back in England today :-(. We'll miss them. After staying with us, they enjoyed a few days in Yosemite and some in SF. We had dinner with them on Wednesday night.  We so enjoyed our time together.
• Our pond. I've taken to trying to find a little time each day to sit at our pond. It's so peaceful - apart from all the wildlife!  I love watching the great blue heron; the turtle on the duck platform, soaking up the sun; the kingfishers; the red and blue dragon flies; the frogs; the fly catchers; the fish and tadpoles; and occasionally, when I sit quietly, Quentin and his new family of tiny quails wanders by.  
• My voice lesson. I had such a great voice lesson this week.  Just exciting! Thanks Karen.
• My dear friend Clare whose birthday it is today
• My dear friend Fabienne whose birthday it is today
• Walking in a quiet area and listening to the silence.
• The joy of learning

Animal tracks bangle

My animal tracks and bird tracks silver bracelets have always been popular so I thought I'd try using tracks on an aluminum bangle.

I dyed the background a new color - it is called olive - but actually came out grey - but I quite like the smoky color effect. It's not very different from the aluminum color itself but does add a little something.  I know, I've been using a lot of color in my aluminum, so this one is a little different as it's just greys and black, but I like the subtle grey with the strong black. What do you think?  

And can you identify the animal tracks?  Go on, give it a go......

The perfect bangle for a hike in the woods.....

My Google Reader - Studio ArtOcrat

By now, you may be noticing a theme in the blogs that I follow - they are all pretty colorful!  And today's blog is no different - it is Studio ArtOcrat.

Pragya, the blog author, describes her blog as "all about pretty birdscapes and beautiful things" - and it is indeed.

Here's one my favorite of her prints, which I've just purchased.  And in my style, her titles add so much more to the pieces too. I love this sentiment:

It's raining love, why keep dry?

She is a beautiful illustrator and I love the uniqueness of her one of a kind bird pictures with their own "bunting" that drapes outside of the frame.  Here's a couple of  examples:

Celebrate Love

Grassland

Isn't it a great idea?  It makes the picture seem interactive and you can position the bunting how you like.

And yes, she does flowers too and other animals - but of course, the birds are my favorite!

Rainbow Magnolias

Curly Sheep

You can see her full portfolio of her work on Colorflot.com and also her Etsy store.

I'm looking forward to putting up my birdie print from her in my studio and then getting one with bunting too!!  How happy that will look!

Hope you enjoy having a little stroll through her bird garden...

And don't forget - please leave comment with the url of one of your favorite blogs so that I can take a look at it...

Merry Go Round - Get out of your comfort zone and try something new

It''s time for another ride on the merry-go-round! Jump on and join a group of 8 artists/crafts-women as they link around the world and tell you a little about their lives in art and craft.

This month's topic is : Get out of your comfort zone and try something new

It seems that I could answer this question nearly every week!  With my jewelry this year, I've been out of my comfort zone quite a lot both with learning the colored anodized aluminum techniques and with  the Master Muse challenges.

But I've been COMPLETELY out of my comfort zone starting cartooning classes! At school etc, I always studied the sciences - and was even told I couldn't study art.  That was all very useful when I worked as a scientist for many years - but now it doesn't really help me much!  I've never learned to draw and have absolutely no natural talent for it.  I just can't draw. More recently, this has been a frustration ( and embarrassment ) for me.  But the idea of learning to draw traditionally hasn't really appealed to me, so instead, a few weeks ago I decided to try a cartooning class.

And my conclusion is that cartooning would be a lot easier if I knew how to draw!!!  I have found myself being very uncomfortable.  I had no idea how to start.  So I began by trying to use my jewelry sculpted characters to help me to draw, and thus my first drawings began with Humphrey and Trisha shaped birds.  You can see my attempts here:

 

Then I needed to give them better expressions....but how do beaks work? how does a bird smile?

My teacher suggested I look at making the wings more feather and fingerlike:

Then I was encouraged to try other bird shapes:

And then other animals:

 

 

And then I scanned in one of my drawings into the computer and colored it in:

What I like best about the class is how my drawings have now influenced my  bird sculptured jewelry.  Here is a bronze bird where I added eyebrows and eyelids for more expression:

And here is another bronze bird with more feather and finger-like wings

And here is a much more expressive and animated bird - Jump for Joy!

When I started the class, I didn't have a clear idea of why I wanted to do it.  I don't want to be a cartoonist or illustrator...but I just felt I should explore it.  As you can see, drawing is a real challenge for me and most of my drawings look like a young child did them. 

But I love the way that I used my jewelry to initially help me start drawing and now my "drawing" is helping my jewelry.  What a nice circle.

I still feel very uncomfortable drawing - and showing you it here - but at least I'm trying.  It's also giving me confidence to try on aluminum too and create a new range of doodled jewelry:

So I don't know if I'll ever feel comfortable drawing - but I do think we all need to stretch ourselves and this is definitely a stretch for me.  And you never know how learning one thing will affect other things in your life!

Go on  - try something new this week! 

If you need more inspiration, click on the links below and see how the other merry go rounders have been uncomfortable!!  We live in all different places around the world, so time differences may impact when we all get our blog post up.

Kim at Vilt a la Kim - http://viltalakim.blogspot.com
Sara at Crafts of Texture - http://sarastexturecrafts.blogspot.com  
Fabienne at Easterya Jewellery Creations - http://easterya.blogspot.com
Mariana at Florcita - http://www.florcita.eu/
Agathe at Le Bar du Vent - http://lebarduvent.blogspot.com
Lily at Lily Pang Art and Design - http://lilypangart.blogspot.com
Mitsy at ArtMind - unable to join in this month - http://artmind-etcetera.blogspot.com

What's our story?

Here's a chance for you to name and decide the story of these two little birdies.  What is their relationship? Have they just met or are they related?  What do they call each other?  What are they talking about here?

What do you think....any captions for the photos??? 

I have my own idea but I'd love to hear your version of their story.

Friday night....

Hmmm....it's Friday night what should I do......

Oh goodie - here's Trisha.....

" Fancy going out with some friends sweetie?"

Hmmm. I guess not.  Quiet night in for two instead.....but then we are lovebirds so I guess that is good!

Merry go round - Does geographical location affect your art/craft?

It''s time for another ride on the merry-go-round! Jump on and join a group of 9 artists/crafts-women as they link around the world and tell you a little about their lives in art and craft.

This month's question that we will answer is: How much, if at all, does your geographical location affect your art/craft?

A bird in the hand.....

A piece that reflects how fortunate I feel to live in such a wonderful environment.

 I feel so lucky to live in a lovely rural environment in Northern California.  The scenery, the birds, our vineyard, the wildlife, are all so beautiful and inspiring so it naturally plays a huge part in my creations. Also the fact that I feel so comfortable, happy, and at ease here frees my mind so that I can be creative.

The only grape design I've ever made!

We have many lemon and citrus trees in our garden

While I have done very few obviously vineyard inspired pieces - ie only one grape necklace, we named our vineyard Birdland Vineyards for a reason! We get lots of different birds visiting us all the time - building nests, bathing, eating, singing, growing....  And if you've ever seen any of my jewelry - you'll know that birds feature in more than 50% of my work!

We built a duck float for our pond one year and thus came this ring!

There is a certain tranquility to our home.  When people come and stay, you can see a visible difference in them after they've been here 2 or 3 days. Their shoulders drop, they relax, they breathe slower and more deeply......The wonder of nature is all around and you can't fail to be affected by it.  It is a little piece of heaven. 

In terra pax - On earth peace

And when you live in this environment,  it seems obvious that I would categorize my jewelry in terms of "playful, happy, serene, homey, and comforted".   Those are the emotions that surround us and thus my work reflects that.

"Songbird" - we  are lucky enough to share our property with countless songbirds everyday

So yes.  My geographical location - my little slice of heaven - plays a huge part in all that I create.

I hope you'll check out how the geography of the other merry go rounders affects them by clicking on the links below.  We live in many different places around the world from Singapore to Turkey to the Outer Hebrides, to the Netherlands ...... so it'll be interesting to see how these places affect the artist who lives there. (Remember that this also means that we live on different time zones so some may post later than others.)
Thanks for looking.

Alison at Tweed Delights - http://idreamoftweed.blogspot.com
Mitsy at ArtMind - http://artmind-etcetera.blogspot.com
Kim at Vilt a la Kim - http://viltalakim.blogspot.com
Sara at Crafts of Texture - http://sarastexturecrafts.blogspot.com  
Fabienne at Easterya Jewellery Creations - http://easterya.blogspot.com
Mariana at Florcita - http://www.florcita.eu/
Agathe at Le Bar du Vent - http://lebarduvent.blogspot.com
Lily at Lily Pang Art and Design - http://lilypangart.blogspot.com