Dia De Los Muertos inspiration..and latest fall porcelain creations

Carol Dekle-Foss

The colorful shades of autumn and the crisp air have finally arrived here in Northern California. This is my absolute favorite time of year for so many reasons. My creative juices are alight with fire and I find myself losing time playing in the studio.

This creative stirring has been very productive!

For one, I have accepted Karen's Dia De Los Muertos, a celebration of life challenge. Are you participating? We would love for you to join us! For me, this holiday was somewhat of a mystery. I knew the basics, but to help me with what I wanted to make for the challenge, I set out to learn more about this special occasion.

Some very cool facts I found interesting:

The Ofrendas or altars, are built inside and are decorated with many obejects, including the loved one's favorite items, photos, Cempasuchil or Marigold flowers, pan de muertos and sugar skulls. The children's altars are decorated in a special way to include miniature toys, tiny food etc. The Marigolds are also used in many other ways including decorating the graves. 

They widely display beautiful Papel Picado, or cut paper banners. I love the fact that there are still artisans in Mexico that hand cut these banners. Here's a short video in English on the history the Papel Picado if you're interested.

I think what amazes me most about this beautiful tradition, is they portray the dead as humorous, happy, and fun, and not macabre in any way.  Also that the children are included in the celebration honoring their deceased loved ones. I have a new appreciation for this holiday, and plan to attend a local celebration to learn more. Here is a list of events in the United States as well as a few abroad if you are interested in attending one. How amazing would it be to go to one of these celebrations in Mexico!

  I was so inspired by Sherri's shrinky dinks and hand-drawn shoes that I thought I would try and draw my own sugar skull. I used common motifs and then embellished with a bit of my style. 

These pendants will be included in a shop update tomorrow. 

 

I think they are adorable! I've saved a few for the challenge, and will probably end up keeping the finished pieces to wear during Dia De Los Muertos.

Here are some new designs coming out of the kiln as well.

 I love the intricate stained glass look of these leaves.

And more leaves.

Another skull design.

Ronnies beads. He nailed the fall colors!

All beads and pendants shown will be included in the shop update that will be happening tomorrow.

We hope you join us for the Dia De Los Muertos challenge! You can find out more details here.

Latest porcelain creations..

Carol Dekle-Foss

Hi Everyone! I hope you have had a chance to enjoy some wonderful summer activities! I have stayed home most of the time, which isn't like me. This time of year, I'm usually camping, visiting the beach, or hiking in our amazing Sierra Foothills. After the accident though, I felt like I had lost three months so I have been really focused on catching up and working on new designs. 

 Lately, I've been influenced by affirmations and positive quotes, so I've been incorporating some of my favorites into a new line. Below are a few I've made so far. 

My first batch of "it is well with my soul." I just love this quote. I made them into pendants so they can be worn close to the heart. They need a different glaze for sure, one that highlights the font better.  I changed the design to include a cute border.

These pendants are in their greenware state, I'm so excited to see them glazed! I plan on making more designs like this. If there is an affirmation or quote that you think would be a great addition, please let me know!

Latest designs fresh out of the kiln...

A new petal shape.

More yummy cherry blossoms.

Mandala, lotus and swirl charms and pendants.

First try at the "just breathe" quote. 

A large flourish pendant.

These beads are supposed to be carved with lotus petals. Ugh...not quite as I had envisioned!

Also, I've been working on some porcelain cone ring holders. I like the swirl leaf base and the shape is good, but I wasn't going for little brown turds. Lol! I think spaced in my booth they won't look like turds in a toilet. Hahaha! I'm working on the glaze color. Any suggestions? 

Alright ya'll, give it up for the husband!

Ronnie's beads...

and his very first pendant!!! Isn't it adorable?? It's so much fun watching him play with clay.

All of the above will be listed by the end of this week to our Etsy store here. Minus the turds. Haha! 

Thank you for reading. I hope your were inspired to create!

Ring display-TUTORIAL...and latest porcelain creations

Carol Dekle-Foss

Hello everyone!  Recently, I ran into the problem of not having a way to display new rings for an upcoming festival. I wanted to display them in a simple, unique way that would make each ring stand out. It seems like booth design is an ever evolving challenging process! For me, rings are the most difficult to display.

Here's what I came up with for the festival.

 I just cut a slot into little wooden rounds! They display nicely this way, and I also like being able to move them about. The only problem is the rings keep falling over! So annoying. 

 I decided to give it another try and do a tutorial with what I came up with. 

I have a plethora of little rounds that my husband cut out and these leather swatches. I wanted to use what I had on hand so this is what I made.

I just glued two rounds and a piece of leather together. I cut the edge of the leather as well to make it look a bit worn and frayed. It's deeper now so the ring sits in there much better. I'm still deciding if I like it though. See, always a work in progress! If the customer wants, I can always include the display with the ring as an added bonus!

Here are the easy steps:

After I glued all the pieces together and let dry, I marked the thickness of the band with a sharp edge.

I then used a diamond cutoff wheel and flex shaft to cut the edges. A tiny saw blade might be better for this step, but they freak me out! Yep, I'm scared to death of saws, even tiny ones!

I improvised here and used a little screwdriver as a chisel. I hammered the top of the screwdriver lightly to cut out the ring slots. It's so simple and fun to make! 

I think I like the idea of cutting out larger rounds that can hold 5 or 6 rings, and then have 3 or 4 scattered around the booth. That way I can organize them by style. We'll see!

Also, last week my husband and I were able to play with clay. 

I never get over how different they look when they come out of the kiln!

Here are some of our favorites.

Oval Deep Roots pendants.

These mandala pendants are so yummy!!

Sacred spiral pendants. Oh my, I love the swirling glaze pooling in the crevices.

Such a sweet detail. Leaf swirl pendants.

Dreamy cherry blossom pendants! I have a few listed in the shop.

And lastly, these adorable teensy weensy beads. They are so cute!

So how do you overcome the challenge of displaying your jewelry? I would love to hear from you!

Hoop Boot Camp: Filling the Void - By Karen McGovern

This is my first boot camp post ever!  The theme is hoops, and I decided to show you one of my favorite designs--a hand constructed copper wire hoop, centered with a cold connected, gorgeous copper enamel disc by MaryAnn Carroll.  I use this design in many ways--as a pendant, as a bail, and as a connector, earring dangles, etc.  It's lovely, easy and super-versatile!

So, let's get busy!

For the purposes of this tutorial, I will be making a simple, stand-alone pendant.  You will need:

Wire snips or wire scissors

4.5 inches of 14 gauge copper wire
3 inches of 14 gauge copper wire
1 one-inch enamel copper disc with a 1/16th hole in the center

Decorative bead(s) with 1/16th holes (I used a textured aluminum disc and a nugget of turquoise)
1 brass micro screw and nut
Micro screw driver
Flat nose pliers
Round nose pliers
Easy Solder sterling silver solder paste
Solder pick
Dremel or flex shaft with a 1/16th drill bit or EuroPunch tool
Flat file
Round end hammer or riveting hammer
Solder block
Hand held micro torch
Quench pot with water
Pickle pot
Sanding sponges
Polishing cloth

Hammer flat and wide one end of the 3-inch length of wire and drill or punch a 1/16th hole in the end. File flat the ends of your 4.5-inch length of copper using a flat file, and form a nice, round hoop.  I use a ring mandrel, or any round thing that fits the wire (bottle tops, pipe, whatever I have handy).  Once the hoop is formed, place it on a solder block and leave the ends slightly apart.  Fit the drilled wire in the gap, centering the end with the hole inside the hoop (overlay your enamel disc to make sure it will be nice and centered inside the hoop and the holes line up).  Make sure all the wires fit snug and flush.  Add a dab of Easy Solder paste where the wires meet and fire with the torch until the solder flows.  Pick up with flat nose pliers (careful, it's screaming HOT),  quench and pickle for about 15 minutes.  Rinse, file away any excess solder and polish to your liking.  At this point  you can also texture and patina the hoop any way you like.  Copper is great to patina in heat, and the colors you see here in the finished pendant were achieved using only my micro torch.  Seal with wax or spray acrylic, whatever you like.  Next, place the enamel disc and decorative beads on the micro screw, feed the screw through the hole in the center wire and attach the nut on the back.  Make sure to tighten the screw well.  Snip off the excess screw length down to about 2mm, the place the whole thing face down on a bench block.  Hammer the end of he screw flush with the nut, flaring the excess so the whole assembly is fixed in place.  Use a round head hammer or riveting hammer for this.  Finally, hammer the remaining wire end flat or blunt and bend it over using round nose pliers to form a looped bail.  Trim the wire as needed to create whatever type bail you like.  You can wire wrap this or squeeze it tight with flat nose pliers.  I simply looped the wire over the fat part of my round nosed pliers and squeezed it tight together with flat nose pliers.
 

Clockwise:  Bits and pieces, setting up the wire for soldering,
lining up the disc with the center wire, adding a dab of Easy Solder paste

Clockwise:  Firing wires together, the hoop after pickle and heat patina, assembling the
disc stack onto the micro screw, view from the back prior to fixing in place with the nut.

View from the back after the nut is attached, trimmed and flared, below that
using round nose pliers to bend the wire to create a bail, and the finished pendant.

Voila!  You now have a cool pendant with endless possibilities.  Go bigger, or smaller. Make it in brass or silver wire.  Fill the center with stacks of flat beads, layers, resin papers, whatever!  Add dangles below (which I plan to do with this pendant), leave the bail end wire longer and add more beads before bending to form the bail, curve and twist the wire into a super-fancy bail, whatever you want!

If you make this, please share photos and let me know what you think.  Enjoy your hoops!!

**Note:  For the pendant pictured here, I went a step further and soldered a nugget of sterling silver to the head of the micro screw prior to assembling.  Sometimes I like the industrial look of the screw head showing, but wanted a more organic look here.  Just dabbed a bit of Easy Solder to the tip of the screw, used a third hand to hold it to the nugget and fired with my micro torch.  This is a simple, quick way to give the screw an upgrade!

Sources: 
Easy Solder Paste, Cool Tools
Enamel Copper Discs, MaryAnn Carroll
Copper Wire, Etsy, Rio Grande, Objects and Elements, Home Depot
Micro Screws, Objects and Elements
Micro Torch, Etsy, Objects and Elements, Amazon

Resin - A Love/Hate Relationship by Karen McGovern

Resin has come a long way, baby. I've recently been experimenting with jeweler's resin, thanks to the inspiration of Susan Lenart Kazmer and her Ice Resin. Ice Resin is a fairly recent development in the mixed media art jewelry world, an easy to use, crystal-clear resin specific for jewelry design. The possibilities are endless...fill bezels and embed gems, color it with inks or powders, layer it, add metals, glitter, dried flowers, coat art paper, anything you can think of. It's quite amazing what you can do with a bit of imagination and some free time.

As you probably figured out from the title of this post, I both love and hate resin. I love it because my head is filled with a million ideas to use it, I hate it because I am the most impatient person on Earth and have limited time and space to work on jewelry in the first place. Working with resin takes time, patience, and attention to detail. Three strikes, I'm out!

For those of you that haven't tried Ice Resin (or similar products, the are several jeweler's resins out there now), I encourage you to do so, but be prepared. You need a dedicated, clean space to work, and a clean, dust-free space to cure. Cure time is at least 24 hours. I'm including some links and photos here of my favorite products and artists working with resin to inspire you. It really is a fantastic art product that totally frustrates the Hell out of me! I long to be able to create works like these, from Altered Alchemy and Susan...gorgeous! Sigh....

I am a schizophrenic artist at best. I flit between projects, never make the same thing twice, and jump between media like a jack rabbit. I also screw up...a LOT. So, I shall share my most recent resin screw-up, which I actually managed to salvage, thanks to a surprising automotive product. Are you on the edge of your seats yet??

I recently was inspired to make a ring based on a pomegranate. I constructed a brass ring with a dish-style bezel. Really pleased with how that turned out. I planned to fill the dish with tiny garnets in resin, representing pomegranate seeds. As usual, I was going for broke, in a hurry, and mixed what I thought was the perfect amount of resin, and set my garnets. Lovely. I carefully placed the ring in a clamp, set it in a dust free space (a shelf in my kitchen) and tried not to have a brain embolism waiting 24 hours. The next day I snatched the ring from the clamp and found the garnets resting in a pile of sticky goo. What the...?? Okay, maybe it needs to cure a bit more....imagine the Jeopardy theme song in the back of your mind as I waited, and waited. Test number two, now 48 hours...still a pile of goo, with garnets in it. Craptastic! At this point I had to accept that I had not mixed the resin correctly. I obviously used too much resin and not enough hardener, even though I thought I was being very careful. You need to be precise, one part resin, one part hardener. Soooo, I spent an hour scraping the mess out of the setting. When I was done, the setting was free of most of the resin glob, but still coated with a film of sticky gunk. How to clean? I didn't 't want to use paint thinner, I was afraid it would affect the patina I had painstakingly created on the brass. Salvation came in the form of a can of WD40. I knew WD40 worked well to remove adhesive residue, so I spritzed it into the setting, and wiped it around with a Q-Tip. Viola! The resin wiped away completely, and the patina wasn't affected at all. Rinse, dry, ready to go again. This time I used calibrated syringes to measure out the resin and hardener, mixed, poured, set the stones, and THANK YOU JESUS IT WORKED.

WD40, the miracle in a can, and the ring that tried to kill me.

The moral of this story? Patience is indeed a virtue, which I do not possess...and, WD40 is pretty awesome.

Also, there is another type of resin out there for those of us who need instant gratification. UV resin. Lisa Pavelka's Magic Gloss is a pre-mixed, ready to pour resin that cures in sunlight in about 5 minutes. It must be exposed to UV light to cure, you can even purchase a UV bulb set-up specific for this resin. Nunn Design also has their own version, and the product is fantastic. BUT, you cannot color or free-embed anything using this resin, since the UV light has to penetrate completely to cure (yes, I learned this the hard way). I love this product for coating paper/photos or filling bezels that are fixed with items glued down to the base. Resin-coated papers are my favorite thing at the moment...more on that in my next post--"Resin-nating" (see what I did there??).

 

A necklace I made featuring vintage nudes UV-resin set in steel wire frames.





Until then, give resin a try and let me know,what you think. Share some pics and stories about your experiences. Stay sticky, my friends....

 

Inspiration, Dimension, Tutorial of sorts……..

By Staci L. Smith


I love the beach.  I could spend hours upon hours, just standing there, where the land meets the sea.  When we go,  I can often be found scouring the shoreline for goodies……mostly sea glass, but also shells, old, full of holes, broken, smoothed, beach stones, driftwood, and anything that makes me look twice.

They end up in bowls and cups and sometimes just piles everywhere in my home. I just love to look at them, and they always inspire me, and remind me of the shore I long for.


You see, I love texture, so to me, these little items that I collected become endless inspiration.........the shapes, lines, and TEXTURES find their way into my jewelry.

I promise, this is going somewhere!  Stay with me.

So the other night, I was in my studio, with lots of sheet metal. I wanted to make something with texture and dimension to it. I tried some fold forming and made some cool leaves…..but I needed it to be round. Thats what was in my head, and I wasn't going to rest until they I had them (I am drawn to circles and spirals, in case you didn't notice..…)

So I got out my handy dandy, super awesome, disc cutter and began to cut out discs. I cut them out in all kinds of sizes, and then I went further and cut some of the centers out of them too. I planned to make some funky version of a lentil bead for charms and pendants.

Since I walked you through the inspiration, I will walk you through the process. It amazed me how simple it was. It amazed me, how transformed my little metal discs were. I loved it so much, I made a zillion of them (ok, not a zillion, but a lot for sure)!

First, take two discs, one a little smaller than the other.

Place the larger disc on the dapping block, and dome it.

Take the smaller disc, place it on a rubber block, and with a center punch, make pointy dots on it for texture. (you can make any texture on yours, this was inspired by a shell a found with little points on it)

Then place that disc, texture side down, in the dapping block and dome it.

Then punch a hole in the larger disc towards the top.

Smear some Easy Solder Paste on the bottom disc where they will meet.

Put them together, lentil style, and place onto your solder block.

Torch it.

Quench it.

Pickle it.

Voila.

Then tumble and patina.  These were antiqued in Liver of Sulphur.

There are still cookin’ in some cool Miss Fickle patina’s.

Do they look sea shell like in nature?  Do they have that "found by the sea" feel to them?  I think they kinda do.....
Tomorrow these will get buffed, and sprayed, sealed and then waxed.  Then, they are ready to go.  Some for my designs, some for my shop. 

See, you can take any simple design idea (like a lentil style bead) and turn it into something all your own....all you need is a little inspiration!!

Have you ever taken a common shape or form, and re-made it into your own style somehow?