Spur of the Moment Shopping Spree

Thursday and Friday were so bad that I decided I needed to pamper myself.  And what better than a trip to my favorite bead store....Bead Paradise.  I pampered myself big time...LOL.  I had been looking at their website and fell in love with way too much stuff.  And as I got a large refund from the IRS I decided to put it back into supplies.  So I took a road trip to Oberlin. 

Here are some of my goodies.

 Hebron beads.  Made from the 12th Century to around the 1880s in Hebron, near Jerusalem, using salts of the Dead Sea as their alkali.

Gaspeite

 Nickel Silver and Brass Beads

Tiny brass heishi from Nepal and charms

More brass.  Very phallic.

 Vintage Czech glass beads.

Bezel set quartz from Nepal.  These are so cool. Old and scuffed up.  They are gorgeous.

 Glass beads from Cambodia

Roman glass

Old silver pendant from India, circa 1890-1920’s, depicting the Brahmanical triad  of Hindu gods: Lord Brahma the first, with Vishnu being the second and Shiva, the third.  Circa 1890-1920



Rajasthani hero/horseman that was deified and is considered a village protectorate.  Circa 1900.

A horse buckle from India

 The next three pics are the from the same strand.  Chin/Burmese bronze bells, beads, and heishi circa 1950's

Ruth has a amazing amount of items on her website so if you want to pick up some things for yourself and don't live close enough to go to her store...you can buy on-line.  If you do live close enough...go there.  It's such a great store.  Great clothes, accessories, and obviously fabulous beads.  This is one of those places that I'd like to be locked inside overnight.  Then I could spend hours checking everything out.

Shiny Bits....

Work wasn't much better today than yesterday.  The only saving grace is that it's Friday and I have two whole days to decompress.  Not enough but it will have to do.

I polished up the pieces that I fired this week.

My mood today is.....

We've all seen the computer icons that display someone's mood....or signs on people's desks.  A little smiley face when their happy...a frowny face when their sad....and other cutesy or pathetic faces to signify various moods.  Well today my mood was......"don't mess with me or I WILL hurt you".  What kind of face do you think could relay that mood.....





Yeah.....that face will do.  By the end of the day I had to leave because I just wanted to either hurt someone or break something. 
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Fresh from the Kiln....

and they still has carbon sticking to them.  These are large pieces.  I kept making them bigger and bigger and then started to embellish with girders and rivets and drilling holes in them.  I'll polish them up tomorrow.

We need to buy a TV tomorrow.  The one we currently have is a tube TV.  It's about 10 years old.  At the time we bought it, the flat panels were just coming out but were unaffordable.  So our Sony decides when it wants to turn on.  Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't.  It will cost about $300 to repair which is way more than I want to put into an old TV when the technology has moved on.  Now I have to figure out how to dispose of it.  It weighs about 200 lbs and I want to find a place that will recyle it rather than put it on the tree lawn for the garbage men to pick up.

If anyone knows how to recycle let me know.
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Big Bad Ass Beads.....

I picked these up from Aja Vaz at Wandering Spirit Designs on Etsy.  They are fabulous!!!  And big...but light because they are hollow.  They are going to be great with the bronze.  And they've go that tribal feel to them.  Check out her Etsy shop and her blog.  Thanks Aja!!

Picutres by Aja Vaz

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Geek Joke

One of the interesting thing about working with scientists is seeing how they view the world.  What they think is interesting or funny.  One of my guys told me about a dinner party he went to where the topic of discussion was a rousing discussion about 27th president of the United States.  WOW....I had to stop my self from laughing out load....and most of you know how loud I laugh.  Not that they had a discussion about the 27th president...or any president....but that the discussion was "rousing".  I have to remind myself that I work with the cream of the crop when it comes to geeks.

So I got this joke today in my e-mail.  A little off-color...just a little...but funny...and truly a geek joke.  Not sure I believe it is an actual essay as I've seen stuff like this before.

Hell Explained By A Chemistry Student:

The following is an actual question given on a Penn State University chemistry mid-term, and an actual answer turned in by a student. The answer by one student was so 'profound' that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well:

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.  One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving, which is unlikely. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. There fore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today.

Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell.. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, 'It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,' and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct...leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God.'

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED AN A+
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Finished Pieces

Below are pics of some of our finshed pieces from the workshop with Hadar Jacobson.  It was a good weekend.  I learned inlay, how to make canes / putting those together to make a finished piece, and mokume gane in metal clay.  The only piece that I have completed so far is the inlay.  That is pictured below.  The cane pendant was still firing at the end of class and I had to leave so I will pick it up at the next guild meeting.  I have the mokume gane with me and will fire that up this week after some testing of Hadar's clay in my kiln.

Deb's piece on the left and mine on the right.

Group Photo.  These are the inlay pieces.

I really enjoyed this class and Hadar is a good teacher. Everyone is buzzing about the new techniques learned.

Classes always seem like a good thing when I first hear about them but as the weekend approached all I wanted to do was stay home. I know I sound like a broken record, but working full time wipes me out by Friday afternoon and the thought of spending the entire weekend in a workshop was not what I wanted. But I have to say my mood turned around very quickly when I started to work with the clay and doing the inlay. It's a simple technique and there are lots of possibilities for it. And things only got better from there. I've never made canes before...that was fun. Putting them together in a piece can be challenging when you start to fill in the gaps with inlays. At one point I thought my piece was going to be horrible. But once you have a solid, dried piece you start sanding off the surface to reveal the canes. That's the fun part...seeing how your design is coming out. Same with the mokume gane. As you condense and squish all those canes together it isn't very appealing....until you flip the piece over and start to see the burling that is occuring on other side. The pic below is from Hadar's blog...hope she doesn't mind. It is a mokume gane donut pendant. Very Cool!!

Thanks Hadar.  I'm a fan!!


Class with Hadar...

Hadar Jacobson is in town to teach a workshop for our local PMC guild.  I've never worked with her clay before so this was a chance to try it out and learn some new techniques.  I wasn't sure if I was going to like mixing up my own clay, but it was easy and much cleaner than I thought it would be.  Today we worked with bronze and copper.  We did inlay and created bull's eye canes. 

It's a two-stage firing schedule, the first stage is to burn off the binder.  For the second stage you let the clay cool down and then refire.  Tomorrow we will work on finishing the pieces we made today and hope to get a second firing in with the cane pieces we made today. 

Here are some pictures from class...

 Deb... my partner in crime for the weekend.

 Vanessa and Katie

 Pat, Marilyn, and Noreen

 Kaite and Hadar

 My first piece.  Bronze inlaid with copper.  Still sanding it down.

My sanded piece before it goes into the kiln

 Group picture

The firing container is a ceramic blanket.

 Sally, Katie and Hadar

Me...hard at work.

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What I've been up to....

Working away in the studio....LOL.  One of the guys at work heard me talk about "the studio".  He asked (seeming somewhat impressed)..."you have a studio??"   No...I have a room.  As small room at that.  But it is my studio.  As is my dinning room table and my laundry room. 

Besides it sounds better to say "I'm going to work in the studio" rather than "I'm gong to work in my room".

So here are some new pieces....

The surface design is from a photo I took of an ancient, cracked tablet.  It's why I love museums....so many ideas

 I've been riffing off the idea of girders and rivets....for a long time.

 

 And for some reason I have been making stalactite shapes.  They make good earrings or necklace embellishments.

 This is something different.  I was experimenting with carving.  I started with what was suppose to be leaf veins but it turned into a stick figure, then one that was running.  The best of the three is the one on the right.  It's very fluid.

A big pile of bronze.  I've gone through about 800 grams in the last few weeks. At some point I need to start making things.

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Best compliment so far this year....."WOW"

I ran into one of the guys at work today.  He works on the dock and we have known each other for about 10 years now.  I know his wife and his kids used to take martial arts with Lou.  I see him maybe once a week.  This morning as I walked in he stopped to talk some business with me.

As I walked away I heard him ask..."What have you been doing?".  I turned around to see if he was talking to me...he was.  "Have you been taking martial arts?".  I realized he had noticed my weight loss.  I'm down 40 lbs. now.  I smiled...a really big smile...and told him I have been doing Weight Watchers.  He looked me up and down and said...."WOW" and then gave me the thumbs up. 

I have been smiling all day. 
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Polishing up the bronze

I've been polishing for the last few days.  I don't know why I hand polish my pieces instead of throwing them into a tumbler.  I guess it's part of the process for me.  After putting all that work into making the piece before it goes into the kiln, I have a need to come full circle by polishing. 

So all that color you see when they come out of the kiln....gets polished.  Most of it goes away leaving just a shadow of what was there.  Some pieces retain  more color than others.  Don't know why.  It's a mystery!!

 A big ass lentil, some coins and other pieces.  The coins came from molds of the originals.  I bought some ancient coins a while back so I could mold them.  The coins are really cool and some date back to 300 A.D.

 The piece on the right really held onto it's color when I polished it.  Again...I don't know why.

 I drive through an industrial ghetto on the way to work everyday.  There is one bridge I go under with these huge metal girders and rivets...hundreds of huge rivets.  Seeing this everyday has sunk into my conscious and subconscious brain.  You see girders and rivets show up in my work all the time. 

 The pieces with holes will be laced with leather.

I love the piece in the center.  It came out much better than I expected.  It's from a mold and very dimensional.  More coins

 Except for the sundial, these pieces are Adinkra symbols from Ghana. They each have their own meanings. I made these too large. I need to make them much smaller.  I can see these being worn as small medallions close to the neck or included in a grouping of items. 

The sundial is from a pottery shard in the Louvre.

Smaller pieces, earrings, and some dog bones that I used as connectors in necklaces. 

I still have more bronze pieces to make. The list is piling up in my head.  I'll get back to the bench again Thursday night and over the weekend.  And the housework will once again pile up....I need a maid...anybody want to clean my house for jewelry??

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