Monthly Archives: October 2009

I leave Islesford on the 8:15 boat tomorrow. (Thursday) The trunk show at Val Storm’s house in Greenwich is SATURDAY!  While I wish I had found time to make some bracelets, I have a good collection of earrings and necklaces. And for those of you who have a hard time finding clip-0n earrings, I’ll have this selection with me:

With an assortment of glass leaf beads, I decided to make drops with them and see what they would look like strung together to hang in groups from a necklace. They needed some silver as a compliment, so I picked  bunchberry leaves to use for texture on some silver leaf dangles. Here’s the result:

Whether I make them myself out of silver or bronze, or drill rocks from the beach nearby, or find vintage glass beads or funky stone beads, I just love being surrounded by them. Sometimes its hard to finish one piece, because a different jar of beads has caught my eye and I’m already thinking about what I want to make next, with those.

(I have had a lot of bead exposure getting ready for the show at Val’s in Greenwich.  It’s been great!)

Saturday, October 31.  10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

At the home of my friend Val Storms.

19 Burying Hill Road

Greenwich, Connecticut.

Need directions? Call Val at 203 661-5948

Hope to see you there!

Here are some of the earrings I’ll have with me:

The earrings above are designed to reverse from this to this:

Ruh roh! I ordered more, but it won’t be here for a few days!

Time to re-hydrate my unfired scraps, so I can keep making  silver beads to get ready for an upcoming trunk show. Below, one of my favorite tools. The coffee grinder. All sizes and shapes of unfired PMC mistakes go in here. Also all of the PMC dust I’ve saved from sanding.

Ta da! Fluffy and finely ground!

Add distilled water with a sprayer and stir until the clay pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Don’t add too much water or the clay will get too sticky to work with.

This part I added to my re-hydration routine after learning how to mix bronze and copper clay powder from Hadar Jacobson’s blog. Oil the inside of a notebook cover and roll the clay out flat. Keep doing this to condition it.

(Kind of a dorky photo…)

Look how much clay I mixed up compared to 45g of PMC+.

This really works for me in a pinch. The  fired clay is more porous than clay fresh out of the package. If I am making pieces I need to solder after firing, I prefer fresh clay. But this reconstituted version works well for beads with a lot of rough texture, or pieces on which I will apply bits of PMC sheet. Below are the pre-fired pieces I was able to make from that big lump of re-hydrated clay scraps. (Thanks coffee grinder from Rite Aid! You were a bargain for $15!)

Looking east from the mail boat last Saturday morning.

Back home on the island, looking west on Saturday afternoon.

with some of the bronze clay and PMC beads.

Above: Bronze clay with copper clay inlay.

With a little extra time before an appointment in Bar Harbor, I took a spontaneous drive up Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park. The foliage was incredible on the drive up the mountain, but so was the traffic. I had not counted on the steady stream of buses and cars. The top was windy, and there were many people, so I didn’t stay long.

The islands in the distance make up the Town of Cranberry Isles. Islesford is the second island from the left.

I did not notice until I was done, that my new digital camera was not set on the highest quality setting. I took these photos taking at night in my kitchen with the Ott light and no diffuser. (Except for the silver pair of earrings. Those photos were taken using a milk jug over the top to diffuse the light.)  I find it hard to make time to take photographs of my work. But, unless I get better at making time for the photos, the blog goes stale and the Etsy page gets put off for another week…or so! (I’m pretty happy with my little black stick for the earrings. Its a great prop. A piece of driftwood, colored with black magic marker.)