Powder Metallurgy (metal clay) in a Sheet Metal World

The first part of the New Directions: Powder Metallurgy (metal clay) in a sheet metal world went on show today on the Crafthaus exhibition. 

I'm so delighted that my "Remember the little things" bracelet was selected to be a part of the exhibition. 

There are some gorgeous items on show so I hope you'll go and take a look by following this link to Crafthaus New Directions. Part 2 comes later....I'm looking forward to seeing all those piece too...

Here are a few of my favourites from Part 1:

Polymer clay and fine silver necklace by Liz Hall

9/52 Bird a week challenge - Remember the little things

I've made a couple of birdie silver bracelets this week.  It's been a while since I made this design but I had a couple of people ask for one so here is my "Remember the little things" bracelet.

Nine different squares show little illustrations of one or two birds remembering to do the important little things in life.  Each square acts as a reminder for the wearer of the important things in life to make time for:

• entertain - one bird sings to another
• stop - a little bird stops to smell a flower
• celebrate - two birds with a balloon and glass of champagne

• indulge - the bird gets to eat a yummy pie
• care - the large bird holds a net ready to catch the little bird hanging upside down
• work - a bird hanging out the washing

• love - two birds showing their love
• pamper - a bird having a spa in a bird bath
• play - two birds riding a toy vehicle

 The drawings were made into photopolymer plates to make these illustrations in the silver.  On the back of each square is printed the word "love, or play or.." that relates to the illustration as you can see here:

 

 There are a few of us all participating in the bird a week challenge, where our goal is to create at least 52 different birds this year.  Maybe I could use this for 9 weeks??? Hee, hee.  To see what the others are doing, please click on the links below.  People add their links as the week progresses, so come back later and see more.

Remember the little things....

You may remember my "Remember the little things" bracelet that I made a while ago - which depicted a little bird doing 9 different actions that we should remember to do. They were:

• play a little
• love little
• work a little
• entertain a little
• stop a little
• indulge a little
• pamper a little
• care a little
• celebrate a little

I've had a couple of enquiries lately to make individual pieces of these for necklaces.  Here's "Play a little"

and here's "work a little:

I always loved the sentiment of these....everything in moderation....finding balance (so elusive!) and feel inspired to make something else in this vein.....I wonder what it'll be...

Play a little, care a little - ladies cufflinks

Going back to my "remember the little things" bracelet that I made a while ago, I have now done some cufflinks for ladies with the little birdies reminding us to "play a little and care a little".


The cufflinks can be made from any two "little things" that were in the bracelet, such as : stop a little; entertain a little; indulge a little; celebrate a little; care a little; work a little; pamper a little; love a little; play a little. These are shown below in the bracelet below.


Sweet little reminders of the important things in life ;-D


Which two would you choose as your favorites?

Featured on "Something just to start" blog

The lovely Colleen features no less than 10 of my pieces today in her blog "something just to start".

She shows birds, animals, flowers, buildings......Great exposure! Many thanks Colleen. Good to see you back.

Her blog shows lots of work by different artists, with many gift ideas. It's definitely worth checking out on a regular basis. It's a happy place.

"Remember the little things" bracelet in Bead Dreams new publication

My "remember the little things" bracelet is shown in a new publication put out by Bead and Button Magazine that shows all the winners in this year's Bead Dreams 2009 competition.


The publication is available as a pdf download from their website for a small charge or free of charge if you are subscriber. Look in the "metal clay" section to see my bracelet.


To see the bracelet in more detail, click on the photo above or check this previous blog post and remind yourself of the little things that should be part of each day. Gosh, those birdies are busy!

Feeling like a show dog!

Woo-hoo! Or maybe it should be Bow-wow!

My winning bracelet from the Bead and Button Bead Dreams competition was just returned to me - and inside was a rosette! It made me feel like I was a winning dog in a dog show. Not sure when rosettes are given in the US - but in England - it's only for dogs or horses or other such animals! So how cute is that, to get one myself!!!! Here it is:

But now I think of it - guess you can get it for birds too!!!

However the best thing of all is that with the rosette and bracelet was a scoring card with feedback and scores on why the judges liked the bracelet and what they thought could be improved. There were great remarks and it offers wonderful feedback for me. So thank you Bead and Button jury people - that is great that you take the time to do that.

PS Latest update! My prize check just arrived! Thanks to Art Clay World USA and Jackie who were the sponsors.

Toot, Toot, Toot!!!! (blowing my own horn!)

I just came second in the Bead and Button Bead Dreams 2009 competition!!!! Yeah!!!!

You may remember that I entered this competition in the spring along with the Fire Mountain Gems one that I am currently making pieces for.


The winning piece for Bead Dreams was my "remember the little things" bracelet. This is the bracelet that reminds you to take time to:

Stop a little; Entertain a little; Indulge a little; Celebrate a little; Care a little; Work a little; Pamper a little; Love a little; and Play a little.


Each of the nine squares on the bracelets depicts a little bird doing the "little thing". The reverse of the square shows the word of his action.

It feels great to get this recognition. And to go with all this fame is also a cash prize! Guess I'll be buying some more metal clay!!!

So time to do square number 4 now "celebrate a little".

New story bracelet

I've been making some photo polymer plates for a new "story" type bracelet. It'll be in the design of the "remember the little things" bracelet but the story is based on the following quotation by Victor Hugo:

Be as a bird that, pausing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings.

So it'll be like a 'do not worry' bracelet.... A reminder that we all have strength within us, even when things seem to be tricky.......

I share four of my initial sketches - which is very brave of me, as I can't draw - but it will give you an idea of the process and how I start. Hopefully you can match the sketches to the quotation......


Then hopefully next week, I'll finish the bracelet and you can see the end result.

If you have a story or quotation that you think would translate well into a bracelet - do let me know!

Through to the final.....

As I told you last month, I recently entered a couple of competitions and have just heard that my "remember the little things" bracelet has just got into the final of the Bead and Button competition. The first stage is showing photos of the piece, and the second phase is that I just sent the piece off to them!

I'm excited just to have got this far. Feels great! Maybe I should follow the bracelet's example and "celebrate" a little!


Remember the little things: stop a little; entertain a little; indulge a little; celebrate a little; care a little; work a little; pamper a little; love a little; play a little.

Remember the little things - how it was done!

Thought I'd share with you how I made the "remember the little things" bracelet.

It all started with an idea to do a story-type bracelet. I had this idea a year or so ago but had never figured out anything more than that. After I did the animal and bird tracks bracelets, I decided that using that style would work.


The idea was that I would take 9 drawings/illustrations, make photo polymer plates (PPPs) from them, then use these plates to make the squares for the bracelet and voila!! Easy!!!!

I really can't draw so getting the illustrations was the first trick. I put a request in on Alchemy on Etsy for someone to do some drawings for me. I ended up choosing two artists. The one for this bracelet was Deanna Maree from NSW Australia. I'll do the other bracelet one day in the not too distant future so then you can see that....

I found it to be an interesting process to come up with an idea for the bracelet that was more story-like in that it took 9 squares to tell it, instead of the usual one image with a necklace. I decided on the "little things" and then told Deanna my thoughts and ideas.

Deanna was great. We worked back and forth quite a lot. Her illustrations are lovely but we had some tricky times with the fineness of the lines. First of all, getting fine lines to show well enough on the PPP's was difficult - but then I found that some style of illustrations didn't really show up well when in the silver. I found that telling a story in silver needs bold simple lines and in the end, I took Deanna drawings and adapted them to make them work for the silver, changing the bird, and a few other things. It was a learning process for both of us but good to work with another artist. She subsequently made her drawings into a collection of cards.


The drawings were then transferred onto transparencies and I created photo polymer plates which were then used to make the 9 front squares of the bracelet in metal clay. Once dry, I used little straws as spacers on the back to attach the back part of silver. These spacers make the 'track' so that I can link all the squares all together.

I then decided to name each square with what it represents so made PPPs for the words too and added these to the back.

Each square was sanded, popped into the kiln for 2 hours, more sanding and polishing, assembled and you have the bracelet!

In reality, the drawing part of this took a long time to figure and decide on and the rest what pretty quick.

Remember the little things....

It's all too easy to rush around, getting caught up in work or something else, and life gets out of balance.

So as you own personal reminder, here is my latest bracelet entitled "Remember the little things". It illustrates 9 different things to help us find that elusive balance.


Remember the little things: ( the squares from left to right )

Stop a little....

Entertain a little....

Indulge a little....









Celebrate a little....

Care a little....

Work a little....









Pamper a little....

Love a little....

Play a little....








I'll tell you more about how I made it in an upcoming post. Hope you like it......