Monthly Archives: March 2011

March 11, 2011 · 8:34 am

Afternoon at the movies

The matinee was “Made in Dagenham” about striking female machinists at a Ford plant in England in 1968. They wanted equal pay as men for their work. At a time when women did not strike, these women who sewed the pieces for car interiors, effectively stopped work for everyone at the Dagenham plant. Without seat covers, headrests, armrests, etc. the rest of the car assembly could not move forward.

I have to admit that the accent for this particular area of Great Britain was very hard for me to understand. So, right at the beginning a lot of dialog was lost to me. Mom didn’t bother trying to understand it,  she just took a nice little nap! Before I knew it, I had slept through some of the movie too. We both woke up at the intermission and discussed whether we wanted to stay for the second half 0f the movie. Why not? The 60’s fashions were fun to see, all that eyeliner and false eyelashes, short skirts, even hot pants.  The soundtrack was great. How can you not love a movie that opens with dozens of people riding to work on bicycles while Desmond Dekker is singing, “The Israelites.”  I was a sophomore in high school when it was the first reggae music I had ever heard. The closing shot was of the same group, more bicycles, (almost equal pay) and more reggae, “You can get it if you really want” , written by Jimmy Cliff.

Half of the movie was still better than none, though Mom was actually up for watching “127 Hours.”  She said, “We could have looked away when he had to cut his arm off.”

 

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March 9, 2011 · 10:45 pm

Out of the kiln…

…and into the tumbler.

I’m pretty happy with how the slump beads turned out. The fine silver PMC polishes up so nicely, that I’ll take these beads one step further by polishing them on the buffing wheel. I’ll most likely do the buffing on Friday since tomorrow is a day off island for me. I have my fingers crossed that the weather won’t be too bad and there will be a 5 p.m. boat back. (Crummy weather will mean coming home on the 3:30 boat, which does not leave enough time to see the matinee.) The movie at Reel Pizza tomorrow could be “Made in Dagenham” or “127 Hours.” (R.P doesn’t list the winter matinees on their web site.) I wouldn’t mind seeing either one, and I think Mom would go for either one, though we could probably get through the day without seeing someone cut their arm off!  Considering that the median age at this matinee is 70, they’ll probably show “Made in Dagenham.”

The wire that the beads are on is temporary. It makes them easier to fish out of the tumbler. Putting wire through beads before putting them in the tumbler will also keep that pesky steel shot from getting inside and turning the bead into a rattle.

The two beads below, without wire, had holes that I thought were too small for the steel shot to get in. Wrong! Two of these are now rattle beads.  I think I remember something about tumbling beads like this in water without steel shot to get the shot out from inside the bead. I can’t understand how that would work but it’s worth a try. (Okay. The obvious pun: It’s worth a shot.)

 

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March 9, 2011 · 12:56 am

The beads have not moved

Which means I have not quite finished that paperwork….

But it was a good day, with a visit from my friend Sember who brought delicious squash soup to share for lunch with our friend Ashley. Last night I mixed up some walnut raisin sourdough bread to rise.

So I could contribute bread to go with the soup.

 

Hmmm….I just realized the only difference between bread and bead is the letter “R.”  I really love making both! (I really love making broth?) Today was bread day, tomorrow is bead day, and somewhere in between I’ll finish the paperwork.

 

 

 

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March 7, 2011 · 10:57 pm

The thought of engaging the left side of my brain…

…gives me a headache. Would the fact that I shunned my planned paperwork for today be the opposite of a creative block?  I was going to get up and get right to work organizing the papers for my mother’s tax accountant. Instead I found it easier than ever to get right to work on finishing up some metal clay beads in my studio.

Plan B was to start in on the piles of medical receipts, charitable receipts, assisted living receipts, etc. after lunch, so I would be on my way to getting this task completed and off my mind. I don’t even have to do hard math to figure it out. I just have to organize it to get the figures I need to record.

I like using my computer for the ease of taking photos from my digital camera, looking at them, cropping them, and sorting them.  I spend a few hours at night adding to my own blog, checking e-mail, reading other people’s blogs, feeding my creativity. What I do NOT do, and have never been good at doing, is organize receipts and numbers. Excel is something I hope to do at my craft. Computer program? Online banking? Spreadsheets? Eeeek! They all terrify me. Or maybe they bore me. For some it’s an “easier way to do it” but I have yet to come out of my right side shell and embrace the left (dark) side when it comes to keeping track of figures on the computer. I know. Call me a luddite.

Tomorrow, my plan is to get up early and get this little paperwork job done, before I look at the beads I finished and fired today. If I had a digital display on my forehead tomorrow, maybe it would look just like my kiln did this afternoon:

 

Job finished. And in less than 3 hours.

 

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March 6, 2011 · 7:41 pm

Reflecting on melting snow…

…or melting snow in reflection.

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March 5, 2011 · 8:34 pm

Satisfying and sleepy Saturday

Today was the perfect day for catching up on rest. Not that I really needed to, but I pretty much did nothing, and it felt great.  It was one of those gray, almost rainy days, with temperatures in the 40’s. Warm enough to let the fire in the wood stove go out for a while. Bruce called at 9 a.m. to say he was coming home on the 11:00 boat, a few hours earlier than originally planned.  I decided that I would soak up my last hours of solitude by reading my book. I could head into the studio in the afternoon, right?  Well, I didn’t. After lunch, both of us hit the couch for more reading and naps, happy to be together in our companionable silence. A late afternoon walk,  a mushroom omelet for dinner, and a movie from Netflix made for the perfect end to a pretty easy day.

 

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March 4, 2011 · 9:40 pm

Another slump bead day

I spent most of my time in the studio, today, trying out more ideas with the slump beads, working in a little larger size.

I wanted to do what I was able to do with the smaller slump beads. That is, to get the heat of the cup warmer  to expand the second half of the bead as it dried. I tried it with three of the larger size beads, but it didn’t work. I still think the beads will look great, but I was going for a puffy little tummy like on the smaller bead below.

 

Meanwhile, the bead levitation experiment totally worked!

 

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March 4, 2011 · 12:43 am

Patina on copper

An experiment. I have only tried this once before, on two bronze/copper metal clay pieces that hit the trash pile soon after. So this really felt like the first serious attempt at patina.

In trying to step back a little from the über expensive PMC, I started thinking about what to do with some small copper discs, and how I might combine them with sterling silver sheet. I dapped the discs into nice little hemispheres, drilled holes in the center, and hung them on some wire. I then suspended them in a jar with paper towel that had been soaked with vinegar and ammonia. I tossed a little sea salt on top because I thought that might make a difference. Other than knowing that these 3 ingredients would cause some kind of reaction on the surface of the copper, I didn’t really know what I was doing. Sometimes it’s easier to just go ahead and try something when you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t you think? I mean, there were no expectations of how this should come out, so I couldn’t really do it wrong. It helped knowing that my friend Trish has come up with some beautiful patinas on copper by just winging it.

Day 1, the beginning:

I let the jar set for 2 days. Though after the first day, I just dumped the copper discs right on top of the paper towel and sprinkled more salt of them. When I took them out, they looked like this. Kind of wet and gooey. Um, I thought patina was dry on the surface….I left them out on paper towel and went off to my workshop weekend.

Once I came home they were dry, but the green flaked off easily. So I took them to a ventilated spot and sprayed them on each side with a fixative spray. When they were dry (a day later) I used Renaissance wax to seal them again. I’m not sure how much this will protect the patina. But I’m not planning to wear these as beads next to my skin or clothing. I’m going to rivet the discs onto silver shapes for a dangle earring. As with any new design, I’ll test it out myself, first, for wearability.

You know, this is kind of a stinky, lengthy process. I have bought some beautiful patinated beads from Shannon LeVart at Miss Ficklemedia. Now there’s a woman who really knows her metals and patinas. One could learn a lot from her about this process. She has a tutorial available for purchase on her Etsy site. Someday I might buy the package and try her technique. Meanwhile, I can keep experimenting a la Trish, or buy my components from Shannon.

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March 3, 2011 · 10:51 am

No A.B. last night

The aurora borealis was not visible last night. The temperature was down to 8º with lots of wind when I got up at 3 a.m. to reload the wood stove, so I was just as glad not to be going outside for a better look at the sky.

However, the angel Gabriel made an appearance this morning on the glass door of my wood stove. That was almost as good as seeing the northern lights.  An Elvis sighting would have been most excellent, but hey, a visit from Gabe was pretty cool, too.

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March 3, 2011 · 12:42 am

Draping jigs

Today I made some wire jigs on which to drape metal clay. I just learned this technique from Fred Woell’s workshop last weekend. The idea is that metal clay, draped over metal (in this case the wire), will dry quickly and release easily when the supporting piece of metal is heated. Draping the wet clay allows for some interesting shapes to be made into beads.

PMC shapes drying on an electric cup warmer.

Hollow beads ready to be fired in the kiln.

I had planned for such a long studio day today, but it took me forever to get settled into work. Some days are just like that. I finally got around to it after catching up on some reading and taking a little nap. The sun came out for a while this afternoon so I also went for a low tide walk on the beach while the temperature was still around 40º.  Considering how unfocused I felt, I was actually happy with what I accomplished.

The temperature is already down to 15º and I will set my alarm to wake up and add wood to the wood stove. Bruce usually wakes up at some point every night and refills the wood stove, but tonight he is away. Tonight is also supposed to be a good night for Northern Lights, with all of the recent solar flare activity. So far, there is nothing but a lot of stars in the sky. (Which is pretty special in itself and I never get tired of seeing the stars here. ) I’ll be checking the sky again when I get up to put wood in the stove. If there is anything going on, aurora borealis-wise, it will be worth it to bundle up and go out to see it.

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