Barbara S Fernald Jewelry

When teaching a beading workshop to elementary school students:

• Terry cloth hand towels under the work surface will keep beads from rolling all over the place.
• Leave beads at home if they don’t have large enough holes for the elastic to pass through.
• If you think it’s smart to bring a battery  powered bead reamer  to enlarge the holes in Fimo beads – be prepared for the 8 year old boy who will insist on using it to enlarge holes in just about anything. “Wow, this bead is getting hot!”

During the one hour workshop at the Islesford School, for Inter Island Event, I was amazed at the patience in all of the young students as they waited for me to get to them to help finish off a bracelet, glue a knot, or give them more elastic. They were all great.

I learned that it  may be just too time consuming to use inlay as a technique when making these bronze and copper clay beads. After spending hours getting the copper pressed into an indentation in the dried bronze surface, drying it and then sanding the excess copper from the surface, I finally realized I could probably get a very similar result by rolling pieces of wet copper clay into the surface of wet bronze clay and vice versa. More experiments to come. I’m not sure how these inlay beads will fire. In the end, they are pretty thin. The non-inlay beads are an experiment in firing a piece of fine silver in the bead. Not silver metal clay, but fine silver wire. The plan is to torch fire a silver inlay in these. Also not sure what will happen with the wire when I torch fire.

And, I learned just how much I have missed having a super macro setting on my little digital camera, when my new Pentax arrived this week. This waterproof, dust proof and shock proof baby should be able to withstand all of the times I toss it into a canvas bag or my back pocket.  I can once again start playing with shots of something only 1 cm away.

It’s also been too long since adding to the blog. Sheesh. How can it take over a week just to catch up on life? I’m looking forward to more bronze and copper clay work tomorrow and Friday.  Meanwhile, there are always ongoing silver clay projects:

Look what washed up on the beach in front of the Twinney House.

Henry critiquing Ashley critiquing Charlie.

Group shot before last critique.

After lunch the workshop was officially over, but quite a few people returned to Gilley Beach to paint some more. Henry finally gets to paint one of his own.

Zoe. Totally undaunted by painting on the largest canvas she has ever tried.

After feeling totally daunted by my first painting of the morning, deciding all it needed was a smile painted across the bottom to look like a Muppet instead of a landscape, I tried a different approach as Henry announced 15 minutes were left until we would gather for the last critique, and then lunch. This is not necessarily finished, but I like the starting point.

Tomrrow, the jewelry studio. AAAHHHH!

Another incredibly sunny day. We painted near the marsh. An initial talk by Henry and then off to paint.

(I know. Living on Islesford is like living in a painting all the time. It is beautiful and inspiring. I promise I never take it for granted.)

Morning critique:

A jewelry designer’s third attempt:

A chance to see everyone’s work, back at the restaurant:

The perfect plein air sunset:

…I finished some necklaces to drop off at Alone Moose Gallery in Bar Harbor.

Back home on Islesford, in time for the start of the plein air painting workshop. Everyone met over lunch at the Islesford Dock Restaurant. Painter and instructor Henry Isaacs makes some opening remarks.

Henry and his sidekick Ashley Bryan talk about oil paints.

First critiques:

I’ll admit to being way out of my comfort zone with oil paint, or any kind of paint for that matter. Some of the frustrating moments made me want to come right home and get out a fresh package of metal clay. But on the way home from dinner, with the full moon peeking out from the clouds, I was much more aware of the shapes and colors in the sky. I really look forward to day 2 of the workshop.

with all of the storm surge from Hurricane Bill. We had no rain or high winds, but very high tides and high seas.  Everyone on the island was out and about at 1:30 p.m. (high tide) Checking the waves from Gilley Beach, to the Coast Guard Beach, to Marsh Head, to Bunker’s Cove. Most of the fishermen moved their traps to deeper water before the storm hit, but traps an buoys churned around in places no one expected.

There is no way to capture the power of the waves in a photograph. Although I gave it a try. What amazes me in looking at these photos is that the sky is just as wild as the water, but none of us looked up to notice!

The first two photos look toward Marsh head, taken from my Pentax. The next three were taken at high tide and down loaded from my FlipVideo camera.

We were standing in the woods to get this shot of waves breaking well aboverthe high tide mark.

Holly Kellogg and I challenged each other to send in photographs of our PMC  work to the PMC Annual #3. The 2009 edition will be published this fall. A total of  456 images were reviewed by a four member panel to select the 109 photographs that will appear in the book. Participants come from eight countries and 25 states in the U.S.  The challenge was worth it! Both Holly and I will each have photos in the upcoming PMC Annual. We are psyched!

When I looked at the list of this year’s selected artists, I saw that Jackie Haines is the only other participant from Maine. How cool that we were together at the Northeast Harbor Invitational Arts and Crafts Show last weekend. I told her I thought it was fun that we were the only ones chosen from Maine, and there we were in the same little show in N.E.H. Her response, “I got in?” She had not yet seen the list published on the PMC Guild Web site.

I am in good company. I love my growing network of PMC artist friends, and I love that we are going to be published this fall.

Do holes shrink?

In my metal clay world the answer is yes and no. How can that be? I read in one of my books, (but I’ll be darned if I can find the quote or source) that since a hole is a void, there is nothing there to shrink or grow. So how can a “nothing” shrink? But, when making a ring out of PMC, one must account for the shrinkage of the clay to insure a proper finished size. In that instance the hole in the middle of the ring actually does get smaller. It shrinks. But when I drill a hole in unfired clay, to accommodate an ear wire, the drilled hole does not shrink when its fired.  You would  think that the hole would get larger as the clay shrunk in on itself, pulling away from the hole. But that little drilled hole stays the same size. The same with these earring and necklace components. I used a cutter to take make a hole in the flat bead. The cut out piece shrunk, the larger earring piece shrunk, but the hole stayed the same size that it was before firing.

A bezel made of PMC will shrink during firing, but the hole I cut to set the moonstone  below, stayed the same size. I think I need some physics to understand this.

I’m off on the 8:30 boat to set up for the Northeast Harbor Invitational Art and Craft Show at the N.E.H. Neighborhood House. If you’re in the area, please stop by and say hi.

Thursday , August 13,  from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Friday, August 14,  from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Saturday, August 15, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

until the Northeast harbor Invitational Craft Show at the Neighborhood House! For a look at all of the good company I’ll be in, please check the link, lower right.      ( http://nehnhi.blogspot.com)

Stop by and say hi, or feast your eyes anonymously!

Here are three of the necklaces I’ll have with me: