Studio Cleaning

I was going to work in the studio today....but I couldn't figure out how to even walk into it.  I'm such a pig.....

I set to work on cleaning and straightening things up.  At least I got one area cleaned up. 

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Bliss.....

Could this be anything other than pure bliss???  Either that or it's the start of a sneeze.  I prefer to think it's bliss.   Thanks to Sophia for posting this on Pinterest.

I know I bitched a little about Pinterest...but just like Facebook when I first got on it....I can't quit looking at it or loading images.  It is addictive. 

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Tuesday Ramblings....

How is it we are already in February?  HA...a common theme in this blog is how fast time flies.  And it does.  I had this discussion today with one of my employees.  He's been with us for 10 years.  That surprised him.  I've been in the same job for 15 years.  I guess I like it.  I guess my boss likes me. 

I received an Excellence Award today at work.  It was a surprise...a very nice one....it comes with $250.   My boss took the time to put down on paper all the reasons why he thought I should get the award.  That, to me, means more than the award or the cash.

I had my annual mammogram today.  OUCH...not really.  It's really not that bad.  When you get your first period people like to say you have become a woman.  But there are a number of milestones that mark being a woman.  Having children...one milestone that I've never reached...and never will at this point.  Getting your first mammogram is another one of those milestones. Usually I get called back for more images.  This was the first year that I had a clean exam the first time.  I had the mammogram and 1.5 hours later I had a message on my computer that it was negative.  We have an electronic chart at the hospital so as a patient you can login and see all your test results as soon as your physician releases them.  Not bad...from exam to result in 1.5 hours....not bad at all.

Pinterest....have any of you been looking at it or using it. The images on Pinterest are really amazing.  The great part about it is seeing so many images of things that you like.  Images that you may not have run across if it hadn't been for someone else pinning it to a board you are following.  The bad part is picture overload.  When I hooked up, it loaded in all my Facebook friends who have accounts and I was immediately follwing every board they had.  I want to see what inspires people, what jewelry they like, studio ideas, decorating ideas....but I don't necessarily want to see 20 pictures of green frogs.  You have to actively opt out of seeing friends boards.  I find it's high maintenance to filter out the things I don't want to see.  It's easier to "Unfollow" the pictorially prolific as a whole.  I haven't decided if I want to continue with Pinterest.

There are just too many social networking sites to keep up with.  I just now closed my LinkedIn account.  I never used this so there is no reason to have my information out there on yet another site. 

I'll leave you with a picture of Princess Sophie and her beautiful eyes.

Weekend trip to Cincinnati

We spent the weekend in Cincinnati visiting Jason, Magaly, and Jakob.  We went shopping on  Saturday.  First we went to the outlet store for Ballard Designs, Travel Smith, Grandin Road and  Frontgate...all under one roof.  It was chair heaven.  If you ever need chairs...that is the place to go.  Everywhere you looked there were chairs.

I did find a duvet cover with a print of the streets of Paris.  We actually located the last place we stayed on it.  Of course I bought it.

Then we spent the next two hours in Ikea.  I had my pedometer on.  We walked 5000 steps just in Ikea.  I had never been to one before.  WOW.  It was mind-numbing.  The kitchen cabinets are amazing.  They have storage down to a science.  You open up a drawer or cabinet and there are all these pull out drawers for mega-storage.

Magaly modeling one of the kitchens I liked.

Lou doing his best "Vanna" in the white kitchen...hahaha...Vanna White...get it.

 Jason, Magaly and Jakob in another kitchen I liked. I think Jakob is doing the wave.

I loved the backsplash on this one.

Jakob has got to me the cutest little boy in the world.  At first he wasn't quite sure of us. 

But after a beer and checking his voicemail.... he was just fine.

Just kidding about the beer  :))
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Inspiration

Pinterst is the new time suck in my life.  It's like an on-line bulletin board where you can pin pictures of anything you like.  It's been around for awhile but has recently took off.  I was part of it long ago and have now come back to it.  Pinning pictures on-line made me want bulletin boards for my studio.  I have all these pictures and drawings and they get piled up into a stack or stuck in a file.  It's hard to use something as inspiration if it isn't visible. 

Here are some of my pins....

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Spool Holder for Chain....

If you use a lot of chain in your designs...you may have spools of chain all over the place... like I do.  I found a really cool spool holder at Wisteria.  They have pretty ribbons on theirs...really expensive pretty ribbons. 

The overall dimensions were listed but not the distance between each peg.  So I measured the picture and and did a few extrapolations and decided that this just might work.  I got it today and it's perfect. It's iron so it's heavy...especially when you put all the chain on it.  But it's going to help keep all my chain in one spot.

Keeping Up...

I feel like I'm drowning in things to do.  How do I keep up with e-mail, Facebook, Etsy, reading my favorite blogs, writing my blog, and the latest new social media toy...Pinterest.  And those are just the things I do when I am sitting on my butt in front of the TV....which is a lot more time than it should be. 

Then there is my real life activities...as opposed to the virtual ones on the computer.  Family, friends, work, exercise, my art, reading books, the house and all the chores that come with it.  Recently I've found it overwhelming.  Something has to give.  If I had the choice it would be work...LOL.  Then I would have time to do all the fun stuff. 

I guess this is where setting priorities comes in.  I have to pare down what I do to the most important and essential.  I just haven't decided what those are yet....I haven't made setting priorities a priority :o   Work obviously stays.  It's what allows me to do all the fun stuff.  I have to get into a regular routine of exercise...that's my commitment to myself.  Art also has to stay...it's my passion and keeps me sane. 

Mindless Internet surfing and TV have to go.  LOL...over the weekend I was up until 3AM on Saturday night watching a Benji move...Benji!!  I get sucked into a story and I have to see the end.  Even with movies I've seen before.  Time to stop being an electronic zombie.

I need to limit the number of e-mails I get.  I clear out my mailbox and by the next day I have over 100 e-mails. To much advertising and e-mails lists.  Time to opt out. 

For some reason Timothy Leary's phrase...Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out seems to be fitting.  Not in the way that it was originally interpreted by the drug culture of the 60's.  But in my way...being present, focusing in, and opting out of the extraneous noise in life.  I guess I just set my priorities. 

I did get some time in the studio this weekend.  I had previously made a bunch of molds from some artifacts and amulets.  Here are some of the pieces straight out of the kiln....you can still see some of the carbon stuck in the nooks and crannies.

This first pendant was made from a vintage textile block I found on Etsy.  I added faux rivets to the piece and used a triangle needle file to carve out the open spaces.

This was the block and mold that I made this from.  If it was oiled up enough I could also impress this directly into the clay.

This pieces was made from a vintage die mold that I found on Etsy.  This one was easier in that I just pressed the clay directly onto the mold (pictured below).  I put faux rivets in all the little divots around the edge....and luckily they all stuck.

I bought a handful of Buddha amulets from....Etsy.  I molded most of them.  The amulets themselves are clay.  They are really cool but too fragile to use directly.

The next two I left without a bail or hole for hanging.  I am going to use real rivets and mount these on sheet metal or maybe silver PMC.

This one came from a really cool coin that I got on.....say it all together now....Etsy.   It's an Indian temple token from the 1700's

 It's funny...I've looked at a lot of pictures on Pinterest this week of "masters" and "excellence" in metal clay.  There is no doubt that a lot of work was put into those pieces to make them complex, perfect, polished and gorgeous. 

LOL....There is a lot of work put into my pieces to make them look wonky, old, scratched, and beat up.  Sometimes I sand down the details.  I decide on a direction of wear and run files across the pieces to scratch them up.  I use an exacto knife to up-end the edges and chip pieces out of them. 

(Heavy Sigh)....as always, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
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Mold Making Monday

Yesterday I was off work...waiting for the delivery guys to show up.  After 30 years I finally bought a new bedroom dresser and night stand. I bought from a local furniture store that sells pieces for Yutzy's Woodworking.  Yutzy's is located in Millersburg Ohio and the pieces are Amish made.  It took 8 weeks for the pieces to be made but it was well worth the wait.  They are gorgeous and the craftsmanship is outstanding.

It's so nice to have drawers that glide open silently rather than ones I have to yank, pull and tug on.  It's also going to be nice to not have sawdust on my clothes.  The old pieces are antiques....which in this case just means OLD.  I had glued and nailed and put both pieces back together more times than I want to remember.  The last straw was when I went to open up one of the drawers and the whole front of it pull off in my hands.  Hence...new furniture.

So, while I waited for them to show up I pulled out the molding material and went to work.  I found some interesting wooden print blocks from India on Etsy. 

I also found an Etsy shop that sells Buddha amulets.  The shop is based in Thailand.

I also have some small brass African masks.  There was a DUH moment here.  Not an AHA moment because there was no epiphany involved.  It was more of an....I have been so stupid moment.  Usually when I make molds it involves pressing the item down into the molding material. When they are relatively flat...like coins...this works well.  When they have high relief or have a shape other than flat it becomes a problem.

I have been stuck in the way I do things.  I've always put the molding material on a flat surface and pressed into it.  Sometimes with deeper things I pressed right through the molding material.  It never dawned on me to pick up the molding material and press it onto the item I'm molding.  I did this with the mask since it was deep and rounded.  You can see that the molding material is cupped around the mask.

Love those DUH moments.
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Make your own mud cloth

Here's a fun site at the Smithsonian...Discovering Mudcloth.  You can design your own mud cloth with their interactive software.  Fun!!  And you can print out the design to use for making texture sheets or etch copper plates for your metal clay designs.

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Priorities....

At the beginning of every year people talk about resolutions and set their priorities for the year. I would have done this New Year’s Eve but I was too busy drinking champagne and wrapping balloons around my head. I was having a good time. We all had a good time.

So I’ve been thinking about my priorities for the year. What I want to accomplish…things I want to learn. We do this at work. This year it is mandatory to write an IDP….Individual Development Plan. Organizations do this at a very high level….they write strategic plans….but they usually don’t require each and every employee to do this. The employee’s IDP’s has to align with the goals of the organization. The idea is that if all the employees have goals aligned with the overall organization then the organization has the collective momentum of everyone moving toward the same goals.

So if I have to write one for work I should at least give some thought about my personal goals. There are so many things I want to do, books I want to read, jewelry I want to make, places I want to go.  I need another lifetime.  I don't have the time to do everything so it's time to prioritize....to figure out what is important....what direction I want to take....at least for now.

Maybe my first priority should be to not wrap balloons around my head.
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