9/17/15

Bracelet Bonanza B*tches!

Ah, bracelets. So easy to design, so fun to make, so freaking impossible to photograph.
Uranomancy. Grey Victorian tribal rustic assemblage bracelet with rhinestone crown.
If I lay it like this, you can't see the back section, like thus and the whole thing looks awkward, like so and you can barely see any of it.
Uranomancy- divination by studying the heavens
That Dark Thread of Sadness. Victorian tribal rustic assemblage bracelet with garnet.
And what unholy mess is this?

You're basically hoping the viewer can re-construct it in their minds.

That Dark Thread of Sadness.
The glittering dance of brilliants must be strung on that dark thread of sadness which is time.

-Vernon Scannell
Utter Your Meaning. Victorian tribal rustic assemblage bracelet.
Utter Your Meaning.
Hark, below, the many-voiced earth,
The chanting of the old religious trees,
Rustle of far-off waters, woven sounds
Of small and multitudinous lives awake,
Peopling the grasses and the pools with joy,
Uttering their meaning to the mystic night!

--William Vaughn Moody

Check out how I connected this mini rhinestone buckle to two strips of leather. And with this I've used up my experiments with Chinese ink painting decals. I haven't made polys in a while, I have a bunch of ideas. Though now that I have the new 'puter, I should be thinking on the next tute... *groans*
Hybrid Zone. Victorian tribal rustic assemblage bracelet with rhinestone buckle.
Hybrid Zone.
Added some soldering to several of these babies. I'm lazy about soldering which I shouldn't be cuz it's not hard and it always looks so good. Here the clasp and the link holding it to the rhinestone piece are both soldered. Both piece and the crown in the first image were from Kathyhaul. Yup, still.
Mask of Divinity. Earthy brown rustic assemblage bracelet with Baltic amber, Buddha and Virgin Mary..
Mask of Divinity.
Whenever you have stash you don't know what to do with- make bracelets. They are so much more forgiving than necklaces. Like the huge tigereye above, I feel like it would be just a little bit boring on a necklace, but it looks awesome on the wrist.
I just used my flex shaft to file out a concavity on the reverse side so it would lay snugly against the wrist and voi-la.
And it further illustrates my current obsession with mixing religions.

Old brooches are perfect for this too (i.e., the rhinestone crown above). Can't count the number of pieces I've clipped the brooch findings from, curved and gotten myself the perfect bracelet link. And who wears brooches nowadays anyway? Well, someone or I'da never sold all them brooches, but still.
Abyssal Zone. Blue iridescent rustic assemblage bracelet cuff. 
Abyssal zone-The deepest depths of the ocean that never receives light.

Finally finished this one I first showed you how long ago? Back in March. Using the glass sent to me by darliciousrejuvenations.
Underwater Tribute. Tribal gypsy bangle stack in blues and greens.
Underwater Tribute. See those torch enamel beads? They were made and gifted to me by RomAntiqueSoul who sent me a whole bunch of things including the amber chips I used in the rings below. I know!! Notice that one of those beads was made from scratch using just wiggly wire. I know!
Oceanic 1. Bangle stack. Rustic tribal gypsy bracelet set with cuff in blues and greens.
Oceanic. Again, bracelet stacks. For fun makie times without any of the strictness necklaces and earrings demand. Why aren't these the only things I make?

In fact, all the non-stack bracelets above were originally meant to go in stacks, As they developed, I was surprised to realize they were nice enough to stand alone.
No Greater Agony. Rustic pink red earrings torch enamel, garnet, raw rubies.
No Greater Agony. 
I haven't forgotten you, earlobes! Torch enamel by 4Ophelia, real rubies.Asteroids. Rustic asymmetrical earrings with labradorite and aquamarine.
Asteroids.
OMG, this super rough Indonesian glass is giving me a gray-gasm. Why do I love gray so much? I adore gray and asymmetrical and rough and iridescent and this pair has everything I love in such an unassuming little package.
That Look of Otherness. Rustic Baltic Amber and apatite ring
That Look of Otherness.
She always had that about her, that look of otherness, of eyes that see things much too far, and of thoughts that wander off the edge of the world.
-Joanne Harris


Not only does this ring feature the aforementioned amber but also a bunch of broken apatite beads were salvaged here as well. Nothing need be wasted. 
Where You Fear to Live. Rustic Baltic Amber cocktail ring
Where You Fear to Live.
Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.

― Rumi


Here I fitted chips and chunks together like a jigsaw puzzle into an oversized vintage bezel which I riveted to a salvaged tin band. I made a lot of crumbs when cutting the larger pieces into shape so I used them to fill the edges and gaps by melting them together with a polymer resin. It was all very experimental and I'm amazed it worked.

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So recently an acquaintance of mine said something to the effect of "why don't you leave the spiritual stuff to the spiritual people," after I'd made an offhand remark about not necessarily believing in anything per se. Now, aside from that being just a terrible idea, it made me feel like I had to explain a bit about my relationship to belief systems and about my spirituality. You can go over on my instagram to read some of my thoughts on all that jazz in these three posts. Really, it's quite brief considering the infinite enormity of the subject.

While you're at it, go over to everydayfemenism and read this exceptional article about cultural appropriation. We who use "ethnic" or "tribal" elements in our work have to be especially mindful of this aspect of our racist society. I briefly address this myself in the second of the instagram posts I linked to.

~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~

Now where were we? Oh yeah.
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9/6/15

Leather Feather Blog Hop!

So a while back Rachel Mallis convoed me out da blue and asked if I wanted to be in a blog hop for her leather feathers. I've never played with leather feathers so I was like sure! Now, I was on the etsy app at the time, you see, so her name wasn't clickable. Usually, I'd just go right over to her shop and check out her style. But without realizing it, I just assumed she was the maker of these:
Which I've seen recently, and are actually from TreeWingsStudio. When the feathers arrived, they were actually:
Which I loved! Incredibly soft, thin, and in a very 'me' color-scheme I could easily incorporate into my makies.
OK, but then I was telling Mr. Devices what a goof I am for agreeing to a blog hop without even seeing the key element, so I etsysearched leather feathers to show him the ones I thought it was... and what I got made me realize how much I'd truly lucked out.
Image result for leather feathersImage result for leather feathersImage result for leather feathersImage result for leather feathers
I actually think all these examples from Google Images are lovely (really!), just not something I could have done anything with.

Phew! ANYways...
Obviously, the feathers cry out to be made into earrings or hair pins but I thought it was unfortunate that I'd only be able to make one pair of whatever. Knowing me and my aversion to symmetry, well, here's what I did:

OOne is antique lace stitched over a wire frame (dark steel, so no oxidizing later to mark up the already-grungy lace) and the other is a tin cut-out over which I added layers of embossing powders with touches of alcohol ink around the edges.

I later realized that I did all that stitching with crazy fragile old lace that tears if you breathe on it, so I added layers of polyurethane (Varathane, for sealing polymer) on the reverse side to keep it strong and even flexible. When I went to snap an image of the reverse sides to show y'all how I'd made them I found my city of origin on the tin! You can see I marked it with the magenta on the image- just on the picture, not on the actual tin, ya goofball.  Click on it!
Added all kinds of danglies and voi-la.
Now that's some serious asymmetry there. I managed to balance even the tiny variations in shade across both earrings- see how parts are more yellow-cream and others more grey-white? 
Trying to get these to hang right was super aggravating. I'd had in mind a lot longer hanging strips of leather ribbon in a more Native American style but oh well. You can't see but the mop button is carved in a cool Art Deco pattern. I'm a novice at hair pins, it was harder than I thought.

So that was my leather feather adventure. Thank you so much Rachel, I hadn't down a hippity-hop in years and I had fun. Here's the other participants to go check out:


9/4/15

Great Grays, Grateful Days.

Again, my love for lariats takes over. Liberosis. Buddhist Victorian tribal lariat.
Liberosis- n. the desire to care less about things
-The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
RomAntiqueSoul asked where I got the horsehair in a comment on the last post. You know what? It was a gift from BeesonPie a couple years back now. Thank you BeesonPie!
And good for you RomAn with your month 2 at the gym! Starting's the hardest. Keeping up with it's also hard. Improving is hard. Plateauing is hard... Not doing it is hard... Breathing is hard...
Everyone You’ll Ever Meet. Rustic coin and crystal lariat with labradorite.
Everyone You’ll Ever Meet. 
“Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.”
-Bill Nye



Skye commented, "So what did you make with the broken drill bits? Come on... anyone else, the beads would've broke... but Fate gifted you with bits of drill bits to play with... so PLAY WITH... just.. careful of sharp ends >.< lol"

While I'm super flattered by your faith in me... um, no. I did nothing with the broken drill bits. There was a time when just reading that comment would have been a challenge I'd have tried to rise to. I tried to make stuff out of actual found objects... that I picked up off the street. I sweated to make trash look good man. Now I work smarter not harder. Or something. Yeah, I certainly don't work harder.

Uranomancy- divination by studying the heavens







13 commented, "I must admit the listing does my head in. Some days I just want to put 'You know you want it, just make it easy on yourself and hand over the money.'"
Can we make that a thing?
Actually, I've come up with a bit of a shortcut on that. I use my ipad, y'all have smart phones surely you can use those. Go to your 'notes' app. Instead of writing, press the microphone button on the keyboard and talk away. Describe the pieces as best you can, then email it to yourself. You'll have to do some editing since some jewelry terms like "briolette" the software will put down as -this happened to me today- "Brie will let." And clean up whatever awkward phrasing, etc. It's ten times easier than writing it down. Editing and shining things up is always easier than starting from scratch, in all forms of creation. Except maybe for human reproduction.
Brave and Quiet. Cast blade choker necklace.
Brave and Quiet.
You are so brave and quiet I forget you are suffering.
-Ernest Hemingway
So check it out. I made this strange pendant by carving the shape out in a cuttlefish bone and pouring in molten pewter.
Here are some more attempts. Kind of a fiasco but I'm still trying.
Also here and in the final piece below, I'm doing a sorta different style of link. More space between beads so it's less busy and I don't have to add chain or cord to make it less busy, as much. Or something.
How long is Forever. Rustic gray Buddhist lariat.
How Long is Forever.
Alice: How long is forever?
White Rabbit: Sometimes, just one second.
-Lewis Carol

I made some bar chain you can see in a couple of these. Doing a lot of religions-mixing. Can't resit. Also can't stop obsessing over gray. Grey is so subtle, so lovely, so sensitive to the tiniest changes in hue or gradient. I can't get over how much I love it. It's quiet, minimalist, gives nothing away. It can be young or ancient, refined or rustic... It has all the intrigue of a soft-spoken stranger as you begin to realize they're infinitely brilliant. Leaves you wanting more.
Untold Story. Baltic amber and rustic bell lariat.
Untold Story.
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
-Maya Angelou

Margaret Zipkin wrote, "Seeing that you have a new blog post always makes my day too."
I tend not to answer comments like these cuz it's not a question but you don't know how lovely that is to read.
Juliette Williams wrote, "As for the gifs, they all make me laugh so it doesn't matter if you've posted them over or not".
*bounces up and down in chair*
Beatnheart wrote, "You're a marvel PMS and all."
*gets teary-eyed*
Julie Wong Sontag wrote, "I always do a little leap when I see a new post of yours".
*does a little leap*
Kirsten Jakobsen wrote, "Once again I am amazed at your skill at getting great ideas".
YAAAYY!!! I love to think of new ways to bring little things together. It might be the single thing in the world I'm better at than anyone else. In all other ways I'm such a hot mess, but I guess you only need the one thing. Then when your inspiration runs out you can feel like a total looser again, it's fun.

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