Sneak Peek and Extra Links

Very busy day!  No time to blog!  My plan is to get the new website up and replace the old one with it.  It involves some domain name rerouting that I am not exactly sure how to do, but I will get a lil help from friends today, so I hope that soon it will be up and running!  There is a sneak peek of the screenshot above!  Please enjoy this week's Extra links, and I hope to have news of the new site early this week!

A Bead A Day
Have you ever fallen in love with a piece of jewelry? Lisa fell head over heels for a bracelet on a fellow beader's blog and ended up trading for it!

About.com Jewelry Making
Tammy got the 411 on some very cool new metal stamps. Though these can also be used with clay as well.

Art Bead Scene
The Art Bead Scene begins a new monthly feature - the ABS Carnival Blog! Let the Carnival begin!

Barbe Saint John - New Jewelry from Forgotten Artifacts
Bopping Along the ICE Resin Blog hop - My resin version of Little Egypt.

Beading Arts
Do you want to try lampworking? Cyndi's been busy at the torch again.

Carmi's Art/Life World
Carmi uses a candy mold to make a new resin pendant.

Cindy Gimbrone aka The Lampwork Diva
Cindy takes a bead shopping trip to the Great White North and almost passes out!

Earthenwood Studio Chronicles
Melanie unleashes her grumpy feelings with a little rant and a bead sale!

Jean Campbell
A mystery package is the catalyst for this creative challenge. Up for it? You could win a free book!

Lorelei's Blog: Inside the Studio
Lorelei had a chance, a while back (2008) to have a nice little interview with etsy seller, Patina Queen! This is Lorelei's wire supplier, and she ROCKS!

Snap out of it, Jean! There's beading to be done!
Jean is breathless with delight when she receives a gift from her friend the artist Lisa Kan!

The Writing and Art of Andrew Thornton
Andrew shares his feelings about the awesome new Spring issue of "Stringing" magazine.

Melanie is an artist, blogger, writer, and ceramic beadmaker at Earthenwood Studio. Her beads and components can be found at her Etsy shop and her jewelry can be found in her Etsy Galleria. To comment on this post, visit the original post at the Earthenwood Studio Chronicles Blog.

Song Lore Saturday: The Comedians

This week's Song Lore inspiration is two-fold. First, of course, is a song: "The Comedians" by Elvis Costello.  It's a pretty sad and melancholy song, but one that I thought of when I saw what became the second source of inspiration.  The Art Bead Scene provided that second source with the February monthly challenge, the painting Luna Park by Vestie Davis. The visual of the painting, with all the stripes and colors, mixed with the imagery of the song, inspired me to create this piece.  Here are some of the lyrics:

 

 "I sat there alone upon the Ferris wheel
A pastel colored carriage in the air
I thought you'd leave me dangling for a little while
A silly twist upon a childish dare"

 

I made the striped ball bead just for this necklace, and paired it with a broken heart with a bandage, and a dirty red spotty link.  I added some striped glass beads as accents and some C-Koop enameled gears (aren't they awesome?) and used plated pewter spacer bars and gunmetal findings, which reminded me of the inner workings of a Ferris Wheel.

Here is a version of The Comedians, sung by Roy Orbison.

Melanie is an artist, blogger, writer, and ceramic beadmaker at Earthenwood Studio. Her beads and components can be found at her Etsy shop and her jewelry can be found in her Etsy Galleria. To comment on this post, visit the original post at the Earthenwood Studio Chronicles Blog.

Flurry of Tools and Glaze

 Nothing much to blog about today.  Well, there is, actually, but there is no time.  Alex and I have been driving around in the snow, getting tools and odds and ends, and setting things up in my little craft room.  He blogged about it, go see the pics of the shiny new equipment and read his thoughts about them!  I am racing to get some glazing done, so we can go to I3Detroit tonight to see the guys on Penguicon business, and spend the rest of the weekend playing with new crafty stuff!  Have a great weekend, everyone!

Melanie is an artist, blogger, writer, and ceramic beadmaker at Earthenwood Studio. Her beads and components can be found at her Etsy shop and her jewelry can be found in her Etsy Galleria. To comment on this post, visit the original post at the Earthenwood Studio Chronicles Blog.

Can we have Spring now?

Here's some wishful thinking for ya... "Spring Bouquet" is a necklace made by Jamie Hogsett for the Spring issue of Stringing Magazine, featuring some of the button charms I used to make.  I haven't been making these for a while, but I am in the process of whipping up a few special edition sets to match this for the Etsy shop.  Soon!

Well, it is far from spring here.  Yesterday we drove out to Grand Rapids to give a business of art talk at GVSU.  The drive got a little rough with about an hour to go, and with a half hour to go, it was downright scary.  Cars spinning out all over the road, diving into snow banks, black ice... yuck!  We got there just fine and did our talks, but were undecided about the trip back.  As soon as we left campus, the road was closed, and once we found the freeway again after the re-route, the black ice started in again.  The GPS was being unusually un-helpful, but we managed to pull off and find a hotel at about 11pm, since we would have been looking at another 3 hour drive, at least, if we didn't stop. So we stayed in a hotel for the night and made the most of it, watching tv, using the hotel computer, and snacking from the vending machine while playing arcade games (Rampage!)

Our talks went well, and it was really fun to chat with younger artists who were early in their careers.  I was not nervous at all, and it kind of hit me how unusual that was... There was a time that public speaking would have terrified me, but I do quite a bit of it now with no problem. I don't know when that change happened, but *shrug* yay me!  Anyway, I hope to give such a talk again, so I will have to look for opportunities to do that.  I have planned a panel discussion for art and craft business for Penguicon, so I think this prepared me for it. I guess I do have a lot to say about the subject, since after I was done I thought of a list of things I could have told them.  Hehe, blah blah blah.. chatty me!

Melanie is an artist, blogger, writer, and ceramic beadmaker at Earthenwood Studio. Her beads and components can be found at her Etsy shop and her jewelry can be found in her Etsy Galleria. To comment on this post, visit the original post at the Earthenwood Studio Chronicles Blog.

Pearls of Wisdom?

ooh Look at the pretties that arrived in my mail yesterday from the kind folks at Rings & Things! Two bags of their new pearl mixes! I am really looking forward to working with these!  The colors are amazing, they have a great weight to them, and the luster is beautiful. These mixes have some faceted beads mixed in, too.  I am not sure what they are, but they are very sparkly and iris-lustery, and I am excited to bead with them too! 

Today Jeremy and I are driving out to Grand Rapids to give a talk at Grand Valley State University to some of the art students.  It's about the business of being an artist.  Some days, I wonder what kind of authority I have to talk about such things, because it seems like I have so much to learn about money, marketing, and business.  But I guess the fact that I have been a self employed artist for close to 10 years means that I know a little something.  Anyway, I am excited about interacting with younger artists and spending time hanging out with my brother at the college he attended.  It will be a fun adventure today!

The pearl mixes used in the previous post, specifically referenced as from Rings and Things, were provided as promotional gifts by for review or design partnership purposes.

Melanie is an artist, blogger, writer, and ceramic beadmaker at Earthenwood Studio. Her beads and components can be found at her Etsy shop and her jewelry can be found in her Etsy Galleria. To comment on this post, visit the original post at the Earthenwood Studio Chronicles Blog.

Crusty and Blue

Thanks for your positive comments yesterday.  They really helped!  I spent the evening with my buddies laughing and having fun, and that helped too.  I am still feeling kinda crusty and blue, but at least I have a sense of humor about it, so I took these pictures of some new crusty (and rusty) and blue (and grungy) glaze tests to share with you.  See what I did there?  Clearly, I'm hilarious.

But check it out!  Its blue and muddy and grungy!  It looks like Raku but its fired way hotter and that means the color might last longer and the clay is harder, so I am less likely to break my beads.  That's always been a standard of mine... the beads I sell have to stand up to my own clumsiness and rough handling. These are tough ones!

Oh my goodness, this one looks like a rusty old piece of metal!  I love it!  I am having a hard time getting used to the feel of the dryness of the glazes though, so I think further tests will require some contrast... either a color contrast like a bright color against the dark grime, or a texture contrast like something shiny or metallic next to the dry surface.  I am making some simple pieces today to use as tests for these new glazes.What do you think of them so far?

Melanie is an artist, blogger, writer, and ceramic beadmaker at Earthenwood Studio. Her beads and components can be found at her Etsy shop and her jewelry can be found in her Etsy Galleria. To comment on this post, visit the original post at the Earthenwood Studio Chronicles Blog.

Grumpy Sale

 Ok, I am not going to lie, I am rather grumpy today.  I woke up to huge piles of snow that I don't want to shovel, and its a shipping day.  Then the mail came and my cable and internet bill went up inexplicably by over $20, which makes me mad.  Add to that the looming pile of tax stuff I have to do, and the worry about how much I will owe this year, and it makes for a grumpy me.

 

 Also, I am upset by recent blog posts and emails from my fellow artist friends who have had their copyrights infringed upon and who have had their works blatantly copied.  This is an issue close at heart, because it has happened to me too, and it is upsetting.  It makes me angry and its hard not to get down about it, when we artists work so hard to eek out a humble living, barely able to afford luxuries like cable tv.

 

 Anyway, I probably shouldn't blog in this state, so I decided to do something more positive and I put some things on sale, like the Steampunk Samplers above, and brought back out some of the Studio Sale Bundles that I have listed in the past. You can find them in my Etsy shop under the section Grumpy Sale.  Thanks for stopping by, I hope to be back to my normal self soon!

Melanie is an artist, blogger, writer, and ceramic beadmaker at Earthenwood Studio. Her beads and components can be found at her Etsy shop and her jewelry can be found in her Etsy Galleria. To comment on this post, visit the original post at the Earthenwood Studio Chronicles Blog.

Ice Resin Blog Hop: Colored Resin Experiment

Well, today is the last day I will be posting about Ice Resin for a while.  Today's picture is an experiment I did with colored dye in the resin.  Wow, I thought photographing the clear resin was hard... this is even harder!  But it's an experiment, so I will show you the best I can.  I mixed some amber resin dye in with my last little batch of resin, and poured it into this ceramic box pendant.  The pendant had already been finished, with the hand and gems and gold leaf already glued in place.  The resin gives is a kind of creepy look... I am glad I didn't use the red dye!  The colored resin has potential, though, particularly for casting it, which I plan to do in further experiments.

One of the interesting things that happens with the resin when poured over transparent gems and stones is that they seem to disappear! Above the hand in this piece is a rectangular glass stone that looks like a faceted smoky quartz.  It looked lovely before the resin was poured, but it turned into just a little ghostly rectangle, barely visible at all!  I have had that happen to smaller stones with mirror backs, and they end up just a little colored shape without dimension.  It's something I will have to keep in mind as I pick through my large collection of glass gems.

I hope you have enjoyed seeing the things I have been making with Ice Resin.  I have certainly enjoyed working with it and sharing with you!  Look forward to more in the future!  I leave you today with this week's Extra Links: 

A Bead A Day
Are there color combinations that are always in style? Black and white seems to fit that description.

About.com Jewelry Making
Tammy reminds you about a thriving jewelry community and how to keep up with news on her site.

Art Bead Scene
Art Bead Scene teams up with Margie Deeb for a color challenge.

Beading Arts
Cyndi's new bead embroidered necklace has everything but a name!

Carmi's Art/Life World
Carmi restrings a strand of cheap plastic beads with a wristlet. Repurposing is great!

Cindy Gimbrone aka The Lampwork Diva
Inspired by the color of summer gardens in a seed catalog, Cindy creates a new bead.

Earthenwood Studio Chronicles
Celebrate the many uses of Ice Resin with Melanie's blog latest blog series which highlights some of her newest works

Jean Campbell
Jean reviews Margie Deeb's (pretty fabulous) Spring/Summer 2010 Color Report.

Jewelry & Beading
Have you heard of Zulugrass? Find out about the wonderful industry that's helping to support the Maasai, and enter to win a piece!

Lorelei's Blog: Inside the Studio
Lorelei is still a little nervous to try her hand at using resin. But the pendant in this necklace turned out nice at any rate.

Snap out of it, Jean! There's beading to be done!
Jean is embroiled in a conundrum--help a girl out!

The Writing and Art of Andrew Thornton
Working with Jill MacKay's new line of decorative bezels, Andrew experiments with resin and takes advantage of the bezels' deep walls.

Melanie is an artist, blogger, writer, and ceramic beadmaker at Earthenwood Studio. Her beads and components can be found at her Etsy shop and her jewelry can be found in her Etsy Galleria. To comment on this post, visit the original post at the Earthenwood Studio Chronicles Blog.

Ice Resin Blog Hop: Song Lore: Shipbuilding

"With all the will in the world
Diving for dear life, when we could be diving for pearls"

 

Today's Song Lore inspiration is the song "Shipbuilding" by Elvis Costello.  It's a very melancholy tune, both in sound and in content.  The piano and sad trumpet (by Chet Baker) make me think of slow, rainy days. The lyrics have a bit of a social/political message to them.  From Wikipedia: "Written during the Falklands War of 1982, Costello's lyrics discuss the contradiction of the war bringing back prosperity to traditional shipbuilding areas of Merseyside (Cammell Laird), North East England and Belfast (Harland and Wolff) to build new ships to replace those being sunk in the war, whilst also sending off the sons of these areas to fight and, potentially, lose their lives in those same ships."

So with the sound and the words of this song, I was inspired to make this series of pendants.  They are made of brass frames, filled with paper from a vintage card of an illustration of ship imagery.  Each contains a baroque freshwater pearl and bits of metal that have a nautical feel to them.

Just a few days after making these, I saw this huge piece of architecture on the water in Marquette.  I am not sure what it is exactly, but I think it has to do with harboring the mining ships and I think it is quite old.  It was really interesting looking, and I wished there was not snow up to my waist and freezing weather so I could have explored more.  Below, is a live performance of Elvis singing "Shipbuilding".

I think I am going to hold onto these pendants and save them for my bead show next month, instead of listing them on Etsy. If you are interested in any of them, feel free to contact me.  You can see the whole set in my Resin Play Day photo set on Flickr.

Melanie is an artist, blogger, writer, and ceramic beadmaker at Earthenwood Studio. Her beads and components can be found at her Etsy shop and her jewelry can be found in her Etsy Galleria. To comment on this post, visit the original post at the Earthenwood Studio Chronicles Blog.

Ice Resin Blog Hop: Portal Pendants

 

Do you remember the portal pendants I made for the Song Lore Saturday inspiration of Squeeze's "Pulling Mussels from the Shell"? Well, I recently finished them, each with a special unique collage!

  

All three of them have a fragment of an old postcard with Asian ship and water imagery in the background.  They also each contain a shell that I picked up at the beach in St. Maartin while on the Bead Cruise.

 

Each one has its own little collection of metal charms that reminded me of portholes and compasses, to go with the ship and beach theme.  There are also gears and pearls and little bits of glass to tie all the colors together.  I like them because they remind me of the Cruise, like little wearable memory boxes!

Melanie is an artist, blogger, writer, and ceramic beadmaker at Earthenwood Studio. Her beads and components can be found at her Etsy shop and her jewelry can be found in her Etsy Galleria. To comment on this post, visit the original post at the Earthenwood Studio Chronicles Blog.

Ice Resin Blog Hop: Rings & Things Product Playtime

Many moons ago, sometime around Christmas, the kind folks at Rings & Things sent me a goodie bag of things that I am still working with.  Included in one of the goodie bags was the two gold plated Tierracast pewter components above.  I loved them, but needed to wait until inspiration struck, and until I was ready to mix up Ice resin again, because that little frame link is perfect for working with resin. The frame is small, so I wanted to attach it to a bigger pendant, and to tie the bright gold of the frame in with the darker tones of the lower piece that I was planning, I added the gold bird into the collage.  I just cut and filed off the loop that made it a charm, and set it in with the collage of paper and glass gems.

For this piece, I used a little vintage Valentine card with a bird image.  The bird has a card in its mouth that says "truly thine" and is colored with many muted jewel tones.  The frame link contains a little scrap from an old dictionary page with the word "beast" as well as some jewels and metal bits that echo the pieces in the lower pendant.

The gold plated components used in the previous post, specifically referenced as from Rings and Things, were provided as promotional gifts by for review or design partnership purposes.

Melanie is an artist, blogger, writer, and ceramic beadmaker at Earthenwood Studio. Her beads and components can be found at her Etsy shop and her jewelry can be found in her Etsy Galleria. To comment on this post, visit the original post at the Earthenwood Studio Chronicles Blog.

Ice Resin Blog Hop: Shadow Brick Pendants

 

Thanks for your comments on the Sweetheart Brick Pendants I posted yesterday!  It has been really great to see these old pendants that I made so long ago finally get finished and come to life!  Today I have some even older pendants to show.  I made these brick bead pendants out of a variety of dark stoneware clays many years ago.  They took a long time to construct, as the insides were painstakingly carved out by hand.  They were also tumbled in a rock tumbler after they were fired to get a very smooth surface.  I made many collages in them, but I love them even more now that I can collage and capure the imagery in resin!

 

Unfortunately, I seem to have developed an allergy to something in the red and dark clays (possibly iron) that makes my hands crack pretty badly.  As much as I love the look, I am hesitant to try using iron rich clays again.  But I think I can get a similar look with porcelain and dark glazes... maybe something even more interesting!  I spent part of today sketching out some new designs for pendants I can make to use with resin.  I was thinking pieces that are a bit more organic would be fun, and probably much less time consuming than the ones I am showing today.  Heck, if I could make more than a few at a time, I might even start to sell the pendants without resin for *you* to make resin collages in... what do you think?  Would that interest any of you?  Leave me a comment and tell me what you think!

Melanie is an artist, blogger, writer, and ceramic beadmaker at Earthenwood Studio. Her beads and components can be found at her Etsy shop and her jewelry can be found in her Etsy Galleria. To comment on this post, visit the original post at the Earthenwood Studio Chronicles Blog.

Ice Resin Blog Hop: Sweetheart Brick Pendants

 

Here are a couple of pendants I made with vintage valentine cards.  These are a little different than the ones I made in brass bezels, as they are collages formed in handcrafted terra cotta brick bezels.  I made these bezel frames a few years ago, but I guess I was just waiting for the perfect material to use to fill them.  I tried a variety of glues and varnishes to protect the contents, but I have found Ice Resin to be the perfect material to use for them.  These have more of an earthy romantic feeling about them, I think.  They are more hefty and chunky, which is something I like in a focal piece.

  

These pendants remind me of this photo I took today of a snow covered sculpture against an old brick wall. I am still in Marquette, Michigan, and had a nice time exploring the town, despite the heavy snow today.

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Melanie is an artist, blogger, writer, and ceramic beadmaker at Earthenwood Studio. Her beads and components can be found at her Etsy shop and her jewelry can be found in her Etsy Galleria. To comment on this post, visit the original post at the Earthenwood Studio Chronicles Blog.

Ice Resin Blog Hop: Sweetheart Pendants

Welcome to my entries in this week's Ice Resin Blog Hop! I plan to blog about Ice Resin all week, so keep stopping by if you are interested in seeing more.  You can also click on the Ice Resin tag to see some of the work I have already blogged about.  Enjoy the Hop!

My latest experiments with Ice Resin started when I visited an antique store last month.  I was with my sweetie, Alex, and his family, and came across some boxes of old posted greeting cards and postcards.  They had used stamps on them and faint handwriting, and beautiful artwork.  Most of them were from the early 1900s and 20s.  I felt very connected to those love notes from strangers from times past, so I picked up a few with the intention of using them in some new work.  Here are a few of the pieces I made with them, made during the week of Valentine's Day.

The pendant above was made using a Circle Bezel pendant from Vintaj. I glued down a circle cut out from one of the cards, which has some sweet little flowers and hearts in a faint gold foiling on a red background.  I used a little bit of clear glue to secure some of the other pieces: the brass key, base metal cross compass element, glass stones and seed beads. After the glue dried, and I had a bunch of other pieces ready, I mixed and poured the Ice resin over the piece.  It is really just that simple!

The pendants above and below were made in the same manner as the first one, but I used a Bamboo Bezel from Vintaj for these. Instead of using it flat the way it comes, I used a dapping block to dome it, which makes a nice deep surface for layering items to collage.  It also make a really great look when the resin is poured, because the depth of the resin really amplifies the contents within.  In the bottom piece, I experimented with using some waxy colored pencil to color in the base of the brass before I started gluing the paper and items to it.  In future experiments, I am looking forward to playing more with pencil and maybe even some paint.  The possibilities are endless!

These pendants can be found in my Etsy shop.

Please visit the other bloggers in the Blog Hop to see the amazing things they are making with Ice Resin:

Shea Fragosohttp://www.whathappensnext.typepad.com/
Karen Burns http://web.me.com/vintagefindings/Vintage_Findings/Blog/Blog.html 
Lisa Sommerville http://www.lisasomerville.com 
Molly Alexander  http://beautifullybrokenme.blogspot.com/ 
Ro Bhrun http://robruhn.blogspot.com/

Keecia Frazee Deveney  http://www.lemoncholys.blogspot.com/

Mary Jane Dodd  -- Mary Jane  http://mairedodd.blogspot.com/

Melanie Earthenwood  http://earthenwood-beads.blogspot.com 

Kerin  Gale http://remnantsofolde.com/posts/

Vickie Hallmark http://fiberartglass.blogspot.com/

Jess Italia Lincoln  http://www.vintaj.com/wpblog/

Jill Liles http://livngoodjewelry.blogspot.com/

Heather Powers  http://www.humblebeads.blogspot.com 
Art Bead Scene http://www.artbeadscene.blogspot.com/ 
Amy Purdes http://www.spritecreations.blogspot.com/ 
Jenny Barnett  Rohrs  http://www.crafttestdummies.com/ 
Stephanie Rubiano  http://www.soigathered.typepad.com/

Objects and Elements Design Team and Susan Lenart Kazmer 

Jen Cushman  http://www.objectsandelements.typepad.com/jencushman/

Deryn Mentock http://somethingsublime.typepad.com/

Kristen Robinson http://kristenrobinson.typepad.com/

Barbe Saint John  http://barbesaintjohn.blogspot.com/

Susan Lenart Kazmer http://susan-lenart-kazmer.blogspot.com/

Melanie is an artist, blogger, writer, and ceramic beadmaker at Earthenwood Studio. Her beads and components can be found at her Etsy shop and her jewelry can be found in her Etsy Galleria. To comment on this post, visit the original post at the Earthenwood Studio Chronicles Blog.

Valentines and Extra Links

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! I am spending the weekend up in Marquette, Michigan with my sweetie.  I am writing this on Saturday afternoon from the hotel, where Alex is napping, tired from the 8 hour drive here.  There is a snowdrift outside my window that is almost as tall as me, but I am warm and cozy inside, with the lure of a steamy hot tub down the hallway.  I am just working on some blog and etsy stuff until he wakes up. I plan to list a bunch of new resin pieces in the Etsy shop soon, in preparation for the Ice Resin Blog Hop that starts tomorrow.  Stop back next week to see all new work!  Here are this week's Extra Links:

A Bead A Day
Need a quick gift or new piece of jewelry for work tomorrow? You can't miss with black Econoflex Softflex wire!
About.com Jewelry Making
Ever thought of applying for a jewelry making grant? If so, here is news about how to do so as well as some important tips to follow.
Art Bead Scene
Art Bead Scene Unveils the February Monthly Challenge - Luna Park by Vestie Davis.
Barbe Saint John - New Jewelry from Forgotten Artifacts
Avoiding work by showing off some new jewelry pieces and other eye candy
Carmi's Art/Life World
Carmi attempts to explain how one necklace turns into two.
Cindy Gimbrone aka Lampwork Diva
An addition to the Grunge Bead Series - Grunge Faux Bois!
Earthenwood Studio Chronicles
Melanie shows off the necklace she made for the Bead Soup Party: a delicious blend of stone, pearls, glass, ceramic, and brass ingredients.
Jean Campbell
Jean did a little product scouting in Tucson...check out her favorite finds!
Jewelry & Beading
Cyndi has a great giveaway going on: TWO gift certificates for Murano glass jewelry!!
Lorelei's Blog: Inside the Studio
The connection you can have with a customer, is a treasure. Collaborating on a necklace, Lorelei and JoAnn create a wonderful keepsake.
Snap Out of It Jean! There's Beading to be Done!
Book review by jean: feel like learning new techniques? Try this new text with fab photos!
The Writing and Art of Andrew Thornton
Using components from Artbeads.com, Andrew creates a Valentine's Day worthy necklace named, "Not Without". 

Melanie is an artist, blogger, writer, and ceramic beadmaker at Earthenwood Studio. Her beads and components can be found at her Etsy shop and her jewelry can be found in her Etsy Galleria. To comment on this post, visit the original post at the Earthenwood Studio Chronicles Blog.