Conference

It's busy here! Lots of lectures and seminars and friends to have fun with - so no time to blog I'm afraid. I come home Sunday night - so I'll share some more stories then....and hopefully get around to finishing some bronzclay pieces off too. Have a great weekend.

BronzClay II

I had another great day 'playing' with the bronzclay. It was fascinating to see all our pieces come out of the kiln after 9 hours of firing. They were fired with 2 different types of carbon (the pieces are buried in carbon to block oxygen from the firing)- and each one gave differing results in terms of the patina it created on the pieces. My photograph of my pieces - still components - came out worst than yesterday's on my phone - but I'll attach a small one to show the variations:
You'll see that the two circular pieces in the middle are quite different in colour and have dark greens and blues in them - with polished high points showing up in golds (maybe you can't see - but take my word for it!!). They are leaves on one circle and flowers on another and will become earrings....one day. They were fired in the carbon derived from coal and it tends to give the darker colors. The other pieces (apart from the tiny I-don't-know-what at the bottom) - were all fired in carbon from coconut shells. It gives a lovely golden finish.
My birds and more sculptural pieces are firing tonight - and its a mystery to know how they will turn out. There were some surprises today - mostly pleasant - amongst everyone's pieces -and the favorite being some bells and "ringing" pieces! I tried a little noughts and crosses game today, some hand cymbals/chimes...and lots of other little things...can't even remember them all.... Tomorrow we'll pick them up - but won't be able to finish them off and polish them until I get home.

Looking forward to the start of the conference tomorrow.....

BronzClay (Trademark) - or Bronze Clay

So I flew to Chicago yesterday then rented a car - ( why do they always want to give you a minvan when you order a compact??????!!!!!) and drove to Purdue university - West Lafayette in Indiana where I will be for the week for a conference and workshop. This morning I got up at the equivalent of 5am California time and it did not feel good! Anyhow - went to my first day of a two day workshop with Celie Fago - using the brand new product BronzClay. It is just being launched this week here at the conference. It is like the silver clay that I use for my creations - but obviously, is bronze! Only a handful people have ever used it and they were the testers......but it seems that we are really testers too. There aren't answers to the many questions we have - it is new stuff and we need to try and see if something works. Obviously, the testers have come along way and it was really helpful to hear from Celie about her experiments and see her beautiful results. Very inspiring.

Bronzclay is 11% tin and 89% copper along with water and binding materials. And we had a whole day to play with it. Here is a photo of some of things I made - pre-firing and finishing.
Apologies for the photo quality - but I only had my phone with me. Anyhow - you will see some flatter pieces, some curved pieces and some more sculptural pieces (yes, a Bronze version of Quentin sneaked in....if he works out). One of the biggest differences between Bronzclay and silver clay is that when you fire it, you need to deprive it of oxygen. All pieces are therefore fired in activated carbon in the kiln. The whole firing process takes about 9 hours - and so the pieces above are "cooking" as I type.

Here is a photo of the pieces created by the class and just going into their stainless steel container with the carbon.
As bronze is cheaper than silver - alot of us wanted to work larger than normal - without that fear of "wasting" money if it didn't turn out well that goes along with using silver. To that end - Quentin quail in bronze today may be too large to fully sinter in the kiln....but you don't know until you try.

There are two types of activated carbon you can use and depending on which you use, you get different patinas. And I think it is the patinas which are going to make this such a popular product - not only for the artist but for the buyer as well...the lovely green and blues and golds......Hopefully I'll get photos tomorrow to share with you.

Its just great to be at the forefront of new products. I have a whole day to play again tomorrow - so fingers crossed that some of our experiments have worked! We'll learn from them, whatever happens!

Silver conference

I'm on my way to a "silver" conference in West Lafayette, Indiana! I'll tell more when I get there. Looking forward to it - especially as it is the launch of a new bronze clay that I will get to play with for a couple of days...plus lots of other interesting sounding presentations......and I'll get to meet some other silver clay artists.

Quentin Quail and family

Finally I got a photo of Quentin and his new family. Not a great photo as I didn't have my camera - but at least its a few glimpses. Q is very protective - we often see him in the garden - standing on something to give himself a little height to see what is going on - like here on our bench by the pond - and then down below him is Queenie and the babes. Anything gets close to them, and you hear a few squeaks and all the babes run together.

Well this morning, we looked out of the door near our bedroom and all the quails were on the wall....all except Junior that is! As you can see from the photo - there is Quentin and Queenie...and lots of tiny little babies...but Junior is down on the ground.... Junior looked up at all his family as they looked down on him - but he was stuck down there, as he can't yet fly - so he didn't know what to do. Poor little Junior. Now it gets a bit scary - read at your own risk! Queenie took the babes to the back and out of the way so no one else fell off and Junior suddenly ran to the left onto the grass. Gosh - he runs so fast - especially considering his legs are sooooooo tiny. Anyhow, he ran...and Quentin followed him - but still on top of the wall. Then Junior ran back to the right....and then back the other way again.....and so it continued for a while, back and forth. Quentin kept an eye on him and you could hear little squeaks.......but everyone was up on the wall, except Junior.

Junior was getting quite distraught by this stage, so eventually, Quentin jumped down to be with him. "Yeah" for Quentin! At this point, Queenie reappeared with Junior's brothers and sisters and now they all ran along the length of the wall to where it joins the ground. The little guys then all had to jump a short distance to reach the ground and then Quentin lead them up this leaf undergrowth area back to the higher ground. If you look carefully - you can see a few little babes in the undergrowth picture!
Luckily the adventure was now over - all babes were reunited together with Daddy Quentin and Mummy Queenie.

And the question that you are about to ask is .....how many babes are there? Looked like 13 in total!!!

So now we have to come up with 13 new Q names for all these Quentin and Queenie babes.

A few minutes later, Quentin was back in his protective mode - this time sitting on top of one of our solar lamps - keeping an eye on who was around his family.

I know - it's not really a post about jewelry - but Quentin did inspire my original Quentin necklace - see July 2nd post and here too. Send you name ideas in the comments section!

Riding along in my automobile....

So I'm looking to get a new car. I've had mine about 5 years...it's out of warranty, and it seems that lots of little things go wrong with it. To be honest, it's probably not lots of little things, but one thing that didn't get resolved for ages......and meant the engine light kept coming on...which was always worrying..... I have now got it mended - but the service I've had is just awful! I've found someone local who was nice and easy to get on with - but they couldn't find what was wrong with it. When I finally found someone who could repair it, they were rude and patronizing and ...just a horrid experience. So...moving on....... Try something new.

So I recently test drove a mini cooper s. It was fun. I liked the drive. Very different from my current car. I was half thinking about the convertible, but I don't like the design. With the roof up, there is such a big expanse of "black" in the back and visibility looks bad through the back window. With the roof down, the roof has nowhere to go? It just hangs out in a mess. So I'm thinking the hardtop. Maybe in a few years they will improve the design of the convertible...

But then you get all these choices! Build your own mini!!! Great idea - but I'm just not used to choosing the design of the dash and trim......never mind what mats I want in it and what about stripes on the front and roof color......It's a great idea - if I ever make up my mind.......And as long as I can stop my husband always going on about the "old" mini he used to drive back in England......Hmmmmmm.

Anyhow - after test driving the mini - I made this little car necklace. I know it doesn't look like a mini - more like a VW bug...but it was meant as a "generic" car - a cute and playful design. That's what I'm looking for in my car.....
My latest thoughts for my mini were to get a yellow one with a white top...and maybe get a large flower decal to go on the door.....but then with the flower, my husband might not want to drive it!!!!

What I'd really like however, is a lime green one.....but it's not a color they can do and it seems a bit silly to get a new car and then respray it. But, as my nephews know - lime green is my favorite color! How cool to drive around in a lime green mini....... Maybe I'll just have to settle with adding some lime green to a car necklace!!!

Anyone out there got good mini stories and ideas for me??

Hair barrettes

It's always been one of my gripes in life how, if I'm going out for an evening, or just somewhere nice, I put on my nice jewelry, then go to clip something in my hair - and the clip is always so basic! It's either plastic or a base metal....and I've adorned my body with precious metal - and cheap looking plastic goes in my hair!

So finally I got around to using some of my silver clay to make some hair "jewelry". Barrettes came to mind and so I've tried a few different designs - the "flowers in my hair" one, pictured above; a more everyday one, like the "village" below; and the "love birds" below - but since starting on these, I have ideas for more elaborate ones with dangly bits as well.

Just making them pretty and with some movement too.... I haven't made any of these more elaborate ones yet.... - but that is what is in my mind! It's a great shape - just a rectangle to work with - you can add what you want for a design and I do attach them to a base metal clip - as it is a secure means of staying in the hair (- and is not visible!). Functional, but now jewelry for the hair!

So, of course, what happens? I went to my hairdressers this week...was a little fed up with my hair and hanging flat - so she cut it! So now I can't wear hair accessories in it any more!!!!


Well I guess we don't always design for ourselves...I mean, I make cufflinks occasionally!!!

Happy flowers

This is my happy flower necklace and earrings set. It has been an interesting set as I have refinished it several times. I guess therefore, it's story is more of an epic - but I'll keep it brief!!

I first made the piece a year or so ago by shaping the silver and then cutting out the petals and stems. For a while I left it like that - and here's it's photo below:


But it didn't quite do it for me. So I had another idea, I would put polymer clay in the cutouts and give the pieces a little color. I really love color - and working with silver doesn't exactly satisfy my bright color desires.......so I added some green polymer clay and it took on a more four leaf clover look rather than flowers. I left it like that for a while......(Sorry - no photo I'm afraid.)

But then I didn't like that. The clay looked too heavy and solid for delicate little flowers or leaves, so after a few months, I took the clay out and so now I'm on my third and final (?) rendition! I used a uv resin to fill in the petals and leaves. I decided to have different color flowers for the necklace and earrings. To fill in the resin in a piece with no back - ie cutouts - I had to secure the back carefully first and then color the resin, then cure the resin in uv light. The resultant look is what I was after all the time however - a translucency that reminds me of the delicacy of petals and flowers. When the earrings hang, the light shines through them so nicely with a delicate but definite color to them.
So, some stories start in one direction, go off on a tangent for a while, then end up somewhere else. Now when I look at this necklace and earrings, it makes me happy and makes me think of real flowers....which is why I call the piece "happy flowers"!

Quentin and Queenie babies

Yeah! Quentin and Queenie quail have had babies (see post July 2nd!). Just saw them for the first time today. Couldn't count them all - but it looked like 12 or so........They were running along the path into the lavendar - Quentin leading at the front and Queenie following up at the rear, making sure everyone kept up. I'll keep trying for a photo..... The babes are soooooooo tiny and soooooooo cute.

Need to start thinking of names for them.....All suggestions gratefully received......

Vegetarian bracelet

A couple of months ago, I got into making texture plates. Texture plates are made from silicone rubber or polymer clay and you press a texture in the rubber/clay, let it set and then you can use it on the silver metal clay that I make my jewelry from, to put the texture onto the silver.

I'd tried a few different object...shells, shoe soles, fabric......but then I was in the grocery store one day and all I could see was the textures of the vegetables! I figured it might be fun to make a bracelet out of vegetable textures. Maybe then if you wore it, it would count as you having your 5 veggies a day!!!!

So I set about making the texture plates and hunting out new vegetables, that maybe I didn't eat regularly but that had a good texture! I had hoped that it would be easier to identify the veggies textures once they were in the silver - but I think it's too tricky. A couple are easy I think - the corn on the cob and the frozen peas. Can you see them?

As for the others, I'll list them otherwise we could be here forever!
In the photo above, start from the square with the circle cut out of it as square 1, and the veggies I used are:

Square 1 - brussel sprout (cut surface)
Square 2 - broccoli
Square 3 - celeriac
Square 4 - corn on the cob
Square 5 - avocado (skin)
Square 6 - dried morel mushroom
Square 7 - romanesco cauliflower
Square 8 - frozen peas
Toggle - same as 1 - brussel sprout.


Can be worn by meat eaters too!

Charm swap - Wine time

I've been busy making charms for a charm swap. I'm going to a conference and workshop on the 14th of this month, all about metal clay. Part of the social time of the conference is that, if you choose, you can bring a number of charms, all the same design and then on one evening, there is a social gathering and people exchange charms . I haven't been to one of the conferences before so not really sure how it will all work -but it sounds like fun. Some people have reportedly made 50 charms to swap!!!!! Wow - a bit beyond this first timer's goal I think. Especially as I'm not really a charm bracelet sort of person in the first place. In fact, I think I'm going to put the ones I swap onto a silver bangle instead of bracelet........See how it looks. I've made 20 charms - will be interesting to see what I get in return.

The tricky part was coming up with a design. Simple and quick were two words that came to mind if I was contemplating making 20 of something!!!! But I also wanted it to say something about me so when people see them, then could connect it back to me. I read on the yahoo group that some did charms in the shape of their state, or as a shell if they live by the ocean or.......

After a bit of umming and ahhing - I decided on a wine bottle. We have a small vineyard and grow merlot grapes - selling most of the grapes to a winery, but keeping some for our own wine. I plan on taking a couple of bottles of our wine to share during the conference - so therefore thought maybe the wine bottle would be a reminder for those who get the charm, to connect it to me. I put the B initial on the wine label - as our vineyard is called Birdland Vineyards and also my surname begins with a B......

Hope people like the charms. The photo of them all makes me think of the children's counting song "Ten green bottles"! I'll post some photos of the ones I get in return when I get back from the conference.

Call for artists - and share the creativity

I'd love to hear the stories behind some of the art or craft that you have created and where your ideas came from. They can be simple stories or more meaningful ones - just a way for people to get to know the artist a little better. Please email me with you stories and photos . I look forward to publishing them on this blog.

A study has recently be published by the Northwestern University entitled "The Participation Divide: Content Creation and Sharing in the Digital Age". The research found that men are more likely to share their creativity while online. Men and women were seen as equally like to pursue creative endeavors over the internet, but women were less likely to post their creations.
The researchers concluded a possible reason was a "lack of perceived skill is holding women back from putting their creative content out there"....but there was no clear reason for the discrepancy. So let's make an effort and share that creativity!!

Picnic time!

Happy 4th July! Maybe today is picnic day.....the sun is shining, there are 4th of July parades in the US today.....so pack up that picnic basket and find a nice place in the sun to eat lunch...maybe take a bottle of champagne and have an easy day.

I love picnics! Especially since we've moved to California where you can just trust the weather! How many picnics did we have in England where it was freezing cold or drizzly or just miserable. My dad often jokes that all picnics with my sister mean that the weather will be bad! But we would try - sitting there shivering and pretend to be enjoying our outdoor meal!

But maybe you need to choose your location carefully. Because if you go down to the woods today........


you maybe have to watch out for the teddy bears' picnic! Teddy bear earrings and a little teddy bear on a picnic blanket with a slice of cake, cup and bowl of fruit!! I made this set for my friend Janet. The teddy bears' picnic story has always been one of her favorites and she shared it with her daughters and son and now shares it with her grandchildren. The grandchildren's bedroom in her house is decorated around the teddy bears' picnic theme with a gorgeous mural painted on the walls. It looks just wonderful and now she gets to wear her teddy bears' picnic too.

The other picnic basket is hollow formed in fine silver and supplied on an interchangeable charm necklace, so when picnic time is over, you can take it off and add another charm or pendant instead. This is available for sale here.

Anyhow - hope you have a good 4th July - and find time for a picnic.

I'm a little teapot

I'm a little teapot, short and stout
Here's my handle, here's my spout
When I hear the teacups, hear my shout,
"Tip me up and pour me out!"

Do you remember the little teapot children's rhyme? Did you used to do the actions? One hand on your hip for the handle and one hand raised for the spout? Or is it only an English thing?

Yes, tea still has a great association with England, even though everyone seems to drink it all over the world. Well, not quite everyone. I hate tea. Ugh! Can't stand it - even the smell of it. And I'm English. I think really that was the reason I had to leave England and move to the US. The tea association was just too much for me. So I move to the US and think I'm saved from all those tea drinkers......but then I find new friends invite me around to their house -and they think "ah - the English - I'll get some tea in for her and make her a nice pot/cup". Ugh!! So yes, when I first moved here, it was like I was haunted by my English tea phobia!!!! Everywhere I went, someone made me a nice cup of tea!!! Out of politeness I did try to drink some of them - but then couldn't do it!

So, it seemed fitting that as I can't escape tea, I had to make a teapot! I've made a couple of versions/sizes of this and the design has just been accepted into the finals of a design competition here in the US! So fingers crossed!

The small version of the teapot is currently available for sale here in Euros and here in dollars.

Anyhow - to all you tea drinkers out there - enjoy!!!! And to the rest of us - put the coffee on!