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Monday Musings

I have been thinking about my "new Project" that I am going to undertake. This will be a theme which I will explore and from that exploartion will hopefully evolve some new jewellery designs.

So that hardest thing, is to create the theme for which I should explore.

So I am now going to grab a dictionary and randomly select 10 words, here goes :

Navel
Gory
Crayon
Jet
Receptor
turnabout
Feeler
cog
Avenge
Dapper

So I now have my 10 randomly selected words. what to chose and how to chose!!!!

I think for started I will select two words at random and see if that is a direction to move in.

So the two words chosen are Feeler and Avenge ( I asked my two kids to pick a number between one and ten)

So that will be my starting point for my new project

Avenge Feeler.

Now to write the brief.

The BRIEF

Explore the words "Avenge Feeler" using drawing, painting, writing and by making models in a wide range of materials.

Narrow down this exploration into a series of wearable pieces of jewellery. This jewellery can be in any format, be it rings, earrings, brooches or the like.

Produce and make for sale at least three items that follow your theme.

Saturday Ramblings------my new quest.

Creating a new range of jewellery is about research, experimentation and lots of soul searching. It has been a very long time since I embarked on such a journey.

Typically my working day revolves around creating a new and unique piece of jewellery for a client, based on their brief. Whilst this is very interesting and very exxciting working for the client, it never leads onto a body of work, as I simply don't have the time to invest in all the research.

So starting today, I will be setting my very own brief, to explore a theme, as yet undecided.

It is all very exciting, as I have no idea where this new project will lead and ultimately what designs will come from it.

I think, writing about the process and documenting it here, is a better motivation tool than doing it just privately.

So feel free to pop by my blog and catch up on my progress.

Friday Finds-----etcArts

Some beautiful maroon bowls by etcArts. You can visit their Etsy shop by clicking HERE

Based in the USA but shipping available worldwide.

Not only do the bowls look top notch, but I think the photo is fab as well.

Pop by and have a look at the shop.

Instructables.com.........Thursday Tutorials.

So Thursdays are reserved for tutorials.

I enjoy having a wander through www.instructables.com.

It is a user created site where anyone can upload their own tutorial on any subject. The users of the site can then vote on it and there is also the odd competition.

I submitted my very own tutorial 2 months ago and as we speak it has had over 40,000 views. So pop by and have a look at my instrucatable or have a browse in general.

Click Here

A recnet commission - Wednesday Weddings

Welcome to Wednesday Weddings. Here is a commission recently undertaken for Ruth and Martin.

Ruth had a rather beautiful, Art Deco style engagement ring with a green diamond flanked by two baguette diamonds.

The brief from Ruth was to create a wedding band with a cut-out section so that the two rings could nestle together nicely and to set it with two matching green diamonds.

I am afraid the lovely green colour of the diamonds is slightly lost in my photo.

Front Page on Etsy.

It is always nice to see your work, selected by others and it hits the front page of Etsy.

I am over the moon.

Edit - 20 seconds after I took this screen grab, it sold, so it was a very short lived fame. Booo. But I made a sale . Yaay. But I am not on the front page any more. Boo. But it will be going to a happy home. Yay.

A fabulous artist - Tuesday Artwork.

So welcome to Tuesday Artday.

On Tuesday's I explore the artworld and hopefully bring you some beautiful images that may have escaped you.

I love the work of Michele and the simplicity of her art. you can view more images of her work at her Etsy shop

Original ink drawings coloured with gouache. so lovely, that I bought three little ACEO's myself. I can only say of them, that the photos don't do the art any justice and I just love my new purchases.

What do you do to jump start or stretch your creativity?

So this is the question posed by a fab group of jewellers. I am a member of Jewellery Carnival and here are the others

http://lorahartjewels.blogspot.com/

http://www.creativetexturetools.com/news/

http://www.kaskiles.com/

http://www.fleseri.com/blog/

http://angelacrispin.canalblog.com/

http://penny-candies.blogspot.com/

http://gentrydesignco.typepad.com/jewelrydesignchronicles/

http://www.lorrene-davis-designs.blogspot.com

They will all be answering this question today on their blogs, so pop by them all and see what words of wisdom they have, as for me, read on and I will give you my answer.

What do you do to jump start or stretch your creativity?

For me, creativity starts with a question. ( I haven't actually done this in a long while as most of my work nowadays is from direct briefs from clients to make bespoke items. So the inspiration comes from the clients own requirements.)

The question which kick starts my creativity is a simple one. What does X mean? It doesn't really matter what the "X" is so here are some examples

-What is love?
-what is imprisonment?
-What is danger?
-What is pattern?
-What is flight?

The list goes on and you can imply inject the word / phrase/thought that turns you on.

I write the question down , then try to answer it in as many ways as I can, both literally and laterally. I brainstorm the theme and put down on papaer as many ideas as I can about the question.

From those scribbles, I then get a particular part that I would like to explore further.

So just one line of thought might go something like this......

What is flight? - fly-flying-freedom-air-escape-space-sea-we all fly- birds fly in the air- fish fly in the sea- we fly on the ground-to run- to evade- to flee- to be pursued-criminals-police-good-bad-world war II-Nazis-Jews- camps stopped the flight- freedom-we are all free- we are never free- free from work-haave to work- jobs imprison us- the homeless are free- nothing to worry about-worryless-free from concern-happy.

So this is just a very small snapshot of the type of thing I would do. then I find myself focusing on one aspect of the scrawlings. The idea of being fre, having a home and a job, but you aren't really free, you are a prisoner of your financial commitments. You have to work to pay the bills for the home you don't own.

I would then start up a list of things to draw that would help to explore this idea. So homes are our jailors, they allow us out in the morning to go to work to earn the money to pay for them, then we have to go home at night to sleep and they imprison us once more.

so now with an idea I would be out drawing doors, windows, and anything that connected with this thought process of freedom /flight. I might draw a front door, a lock, a window, a commuter, the train station - taking people to work - so that they can pay for their homes.

This would then continue until I am happy that I have a whole bunch of sketches. It might happen over just a day or a week or several months. Then from these drawings, I would start to refine futher sketches until something started to develop. Once I had a drawing that I liked, I would start to mess with materials. paper, string, mud, food, - whatever was required to bring those images to life. These models would then be the 3D starting point to making an item in metal and ultimately into a piece of jewellery.

Repairing a broken trophy

The mending of a trophy 130 years old.

I had to repair a trophy that was brought to me. The first thing was to make a simple cone, then shape it to fit the trophy base.

















































































I have now soldered the cone to the trophy base, having removed the old broken one.






























Soldering the trophy back together again

Vote - The results

So last week, I asked you to vote on the pictures in the next blog entry below. The green and the grey.

The green won with 80% of the votes.

In the meantime I have been taking some more photos and here is my (I think) improved photo.