Ten Days of Giveaways: Day One: Raku and Mixed Metals

Welcome to the Ten Days of Giveaways here at the Earthenwood Studio Chronicles blog!  This event is to celebrate the fact that I just made my 1000th blog post AND etsy sale!  

Each weekday will have a special etsy listing or I will give you a chance to comment on the blog to win.  Today, I am celebrating two of my recent loves: the Raku ceramic process and working with mixed metals.  And I am giving away a whole collection of my latest Raku experiments paired with a collection of mixed metal charms and beads.  

Many Raku glazes are metallic, coming in many different colors of the metal rainbow from steel grey to pewter to bronze to gold to bright copper.  I have selected a bunch of metals from my bead collection to pair up with the metallic red, green, and bronze Raku beads above.

To win today's prize, leave a comment on the Earthenwood Studio Chronicles blog here and answer this question:  

What your favorite jewelry metals are to wear or work with?

All winners will be chosen and posted to the blog on June 15th, so be sure to check back then. You must respond to the June 15th winner post and follow the directions to claim your prize within one week of the posting.  After a week, I reserve the right to choose another winner.  Good luck and thanks for commenting!

 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.

Ten Days of Giveaways Announcement and Extra Links

 

 As yesterday's post was my 1000th post and I am approaching my 1000th sale on Etsy, I have decided to have a special 10 Days of Giveaways!  Why ten?  I guess because it is a nice round number that 1000 is divisible by and if I post 10 weekdays, it will get me through the Bead & Button Show, so I can have my posts ready ahead of time and have you entering to win cool free stuff while I am frantically running around and getting ready for the show, doing the show, and traveling!  We both win!  So Monday through Friday of this week and next week, look for a post telling you how to win something cool.  I will choose all the winners when I return from the show June 15th.  Feel free to spread the word and check back often!

And here are this week's Extra Links:

 

A Bead A Day
Looking to make some super-sized jewelry just perfect for a princess? Lisa uses large blueberry briolettes and a swarovski mix to create just that!

About.com Jewelry Making
Tammy ask in this quick poll about how you use social networking to promote you and/or your jewelry business.

Art Bead Scene
ABS is here to help you with your business. Check out Zazzle to customize your earring cards for your jewelry business.

Barbe Saint John - New Jewelry from Forgotten Artifacts
Book Review: Wrap, Stitch, Fold and Rivet

Beading Arts
How many people out there are participating in the Bead Journal Project this year?

Carmi's Art/Life World
Carmi's button maker is the reason for this new vintage image necklace.

Cindy Gimbrone aka Lampwork Diva
This week's Wednesday Wire is a free tutorial, "Matchin' by Wrappin'."

Earthenwood Studio Chronicles
Learn about the Raku firing process and see the results of Melanie's new Raku adventures!

Humblebeads
Heather shares some time management tips for creatives.

Jean Campbell
Jean reviews Kate McKinnon's wonderful new addition, Sculptural Metal Clay.

Snap Out of It, Jean! There's Beading to be Done!
Jean is delighted to review Totally Twisted by Kerry Bogert! You will LOVE this book which focuses on wire and art beads!

Strands of Beads
Melissa discusses the process of reworking a weak necklace design - the revised version of which now appears on the cover of The Best of Step by Step Beads.

The Writing and Art of Andrew Thornton
Like Czech glass? Andrew hosts a giveaway courtesy of Raven's Journey. Find out how you can win these luminous beads! 

 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: A Thousand Beautiful Things

"Every day I write the list
Of reasons why I still believe they do exist
(a thousand beautiful things)
And even though it's hard to see
The glass is full and not half empty
(a thousand beautiful things)"

Welcome to my 1000th post! It happens to be on a Song Lore Saturday, so I chose a fitting song to inspire me this week.  This week's inspiration is Annie Lennox's "A Thousand Beautiful Things".  Yeah, Annie got to me again (like she does).  She is such a wonderful songwriter with such a powerful voice.  This song brought to my mind imagery of eyes, with its various mentions of seeing, the "thousand beautiful things", and especially the line "never want to close my eyes again". 

"I thank you for the air to breathe
The heart to beat
The eyes to see again
(a thousand beautiful things)"

So I wanted to continue with the textures and concepts I have been working with already and create some eye motifs with them.  I didn't want to make a very literal eyeball pendant...I think that doing designs with eyes can be very disconcerting and they scare people sometimes. It can freak people out to have a piece of jewelry looking back at them. So I went as abstract as I could and did the pointed oval shape with a hole cut out, which resembles an eye.  I love that shape... the Vesica piscis or Mandorla... it has such religious and regal connotations.  I also made a few teardrops in the matching texture, one for each eye.

"So... light me up like the sun

To cool down with your rain
I never want to close my eyes again
Never close my eyes"

I plan to celebrate this landmark post, as well as my (hopefully upcoming soon) 1000th Etsy sale with a special treat!  Check back tomorrow for this week's Extra Links and my special announcement about my  celebration which starts Monday!

 

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.

New House Pendants and 999 Blog Posts

So here are some pictures of the new Enjoyment House Pendants. They are one of my big new items for the Bead & Button Show, but I am previewing them for you in my Etsy shop.  Each one is unique and not able to be reproduced, so if you see one you like, get it now!  I called them Enjoyment Houses because "Raku" means "enjoyment" when translated. Oh, and the blogging team over at the Beads of Clay blog wrote a post about different Raku techniques (including mine). So check it out if Raku interests you!

So I have a kind of big announcement to make!  Today's post is my 999th post here on this blog.  Can you believe it?  I started this blog early in the new year of 2005, obviously the result of some business new year resolutions. There have been some times where I have posted nearly every day for months on end, and some times when I haven't posted anything at all for months.  In the last couple of years, it has become a part of my daily routine to blog.  I have used this space to pimp my business, toot my horn, whine and complain, and share my joys and sorrows.

And as I am closing in on my 1000th blog post, I also happen to be closing in on my 1000th Etsy sale. I don't know if that is a coincidence of if the two are related, but it seems like a good round and arbitrary number to celebrate!  I am planning a couple of special things for the blog and etsy shop to celebrate in the next couple of weeks while I get ready and am off at Bead & Button, so keep checking back!  See you tomorrow for post 1000!

 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.

Peek at Production and New Colors

Here is a look at some of the pieces I have made for production for the Bead & Button Show.  These are all going to be Raku fired.  I decided on house pendants and little square pair links that go nicely with them.  I tested enough to know that I think I can pull this off, so I jumped in and am taking a bit of a risk.  I really hope people like these!  I will show you some finished houses tomorrow, and if you are interested, I might even list some on Etsy before I take them to the show.  Let me know if you are interested, ok?

These are tests of some of my underglazes fired Raku style. They are much brighter and are more consistent than the Raku glazes, which will make a nice contrast, I think.  They capture some of the smokiness and have some depth, but will be really bright against some of the crusty metallic finishes.  I am very excited to start using these color combinations in the next firing!

 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.

More Raku Process Pictures

I got my buddy Jer to send me the pics he took on Sunday when we did Raku.  That's Randy helping me, sorry the pics chopped your head off!  Above, I am taking a kiln post filled with pendants out of the kiln (which is unplugged, so there is no electricity going through it anymore...important!)  This must have been the second or third pull from the kiln, as I can see the fire in the bucket in the bottom of the picture, so i already did at least one.

Here I am bringing the post to the bucket o' sawdust fire and putting it in.  More fire!  whee!

And here I am taking more sawdust from another bucket and sprinkling it onto the hot beads, making more fire!

After letting the fire go for a bit, Randy put the lid onto the bucket, putting the fire out (kinda) and letting it smolder with thick smoke.  The lid doesn't fit the bucket so it is not a tight seal, but I am not sure that's a bad thing.  The smoke is what makes the beads look so great so having the fire start up and start smoldering again may not be a bad thing.  The last firing I did had not so much smoke and flame, and was disappointing, so I am sticking with what we did this day as a mark of success.

I love this picture, looking all ridiculous in Alex's welding goggles!

 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.

Headaches and Experiments in Raku

So yesterday afternoon a headache started to settle into my brain.  I figured I was just hungry (even though I had eaten enough good things all day) so I worked through and loaded the third Raku kiln.  In retrospect, I should have listened to my body, had dinner and lots of water and gone to sleep, but I am stubborn.  I finished the Raku, but I was lazy and sloppy about it, and the headache put me out of commission for the rest of the night.  After about 14 hours in bed, I am feeling much better and headache free.

Anyway, I am not going to call yesterday's firing a failure.  In fact, there were several interesting and sell-able pieces to come out of it.  It did contain mostly old discontinued stock that I was just playing with, so no real loss.  I learned what happens when I cut corners and get lazy though... some pretty un-spectacular pieces.  I was in such a hurry to get done and on with my dinner and nap, I stopped the kiln a little early, so some glazes didn't get to temperature.  But, these were not Raku glazes, they were standard glazes, so that gives me some good info.  I think Raku glazes have a pretty wide firing range because many people fire differently.  Also, I tried a new firing method, placing a stoneware bowl filled with pendants and buttons on top, and pulling the whole bowl out with tongs.  Hanging in the center of the bowl from heavy high temp wires were the hearts shown above.  These were my first fully glazed pieces!  I had some trouble with the hearts sticking together after they were in the sawdust, so I will have to be more careful next time.  It also took me a long time to get the bowl in, and I put the other beads in right after, not allowing for them to smoke between placing them in the sawdust.  Again, this was my laziness to blame.  I didn't have fresh sawdust or enough to sprinkle onto the beads either.  So I learned how important that is for good Raku.

I learned a lot from this firing and got some good pieces from it.  At least I learned these things on an experimental kiln, and not one full of my brand new work!  I spent yesterday morning making new houses and square pairs specifically for Raku, so I am looking forward to doing a lot more next week after the wedding!

 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.

I Love My Friends

 

  After a whirlwind day of crafts yesterday, I have the house cleaned up and I am starting in on the week's heavy production schedule.  Yesterday the bride-to-be made a super cute game themed seating chart poster while here, and there were attempts at making a backdrop for the wedding with PVC pipe and fabric.  Along with that was much shenanigans and fun!  Also, I did a Raku firing with my friends, which resulted in some really great new pieces... more house pendants!  There were pictures and even video taken, so hopefully they will turn up so I can blog about it sometime.  No promises though, LOL. I love my crazy friends, I must say!  And the warm weather and outdoor silliness made me look forward to summer, which will start for me after my big show...

There are only two weeks and two days before I leave for the Bead & Button show.  Also in that time is a wedding, rehearsal dinner, two projects to write and ship, a book submission to complete, a haircut and a vet appointment.  So I better use my time wisely.  The weekend full of friends was fun, but its about the only social time I can squeeze in for a while.

  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.

Busy Weekend and Extra Links

...wishing for pretty blue skies today...

Here is one of the cloud pendants in seafoam with white bubbles. I really like this one and will probably stick to this format.  I will be listing it in the Etsy shop.

It's Sunday morning and I am looking forward to another day with friends.  Friday's Bachelorette party went well and the bride to be seemed to have a great time.  I did not win big at the casino, alas, but I had a good time.  I ended up getting my shipping and a bunch of work done on Saturday morning, which was unexpected!  Then I did the Road Rally with Alex and the boys, driving all over Rochester answering trivia and solving puzzles.  We took second place!  And more importantly, we raised money for charity.  YAY!  Today is the wedding work party so I am expecting to put random crafty skills to work to do the assorted things that need to be done.  It is looking like a beautiful day, so hopefully we can do some of the work outside while grilling food.  Hope you all have a great rest of the weekend!  Here are this week's Extra links:

A Bead A Day
Lisa explains her thoughts behind part 1 of a new bracelet project.

About.com Jewelry Making
Tammy recently took a trip to the Bahamas and discovered some souvenir pennies in her purse. They were so bright and shiny they had to be turned into jewelry.

Art Bead Scene
It's the fifth month anniversary of the ABS Carnival Blog! Come see how we've grown!

Barbe Saint John - New Jewelry from Forgotten Artifacts
Take a jewelry class with me at CREATE!

Beading Arts
The new Rubber Glass silicone has inspired Cyndi to create some beginner projects!

Carmi's Art/Life World
In an effort to use all that she buys, Carmi repairs and recycles vintage metal from Paris.

Cindy Gimbrone aka The Lampwork Diva
Cindy's starting a new feature on her blog - The Wednesday Wire! Come take a look!

Earthenwood Studio Chronicles
A gift from a local potter starts Melanie on a new clay adventure: Raku!

Humblebeads
Heather explores 23 days of inspiration as she gets ready for the Bead & Button Show. See how Van Gogh has inspired her through the years.

Jean Campbell
Jean's just full of travelogues, isn't she? This time she went to a Kansas bead retreat.

Lorelei's Blog: Inside the Studio
Voting has now opened in the Bead Star competition, come check out my 5 entries!

Snap out of it, Jean! There's beading to be done!
The best wedding I never went to! My editor's incredibly romantic wedding -- Australian Beading Magazine

Strands of Beads
Like several of her esteemed colleagues, Melissa has a few pieces in the Bead Star competition to show off this week!

The Writing and Art of Andrew Thornton
Andrew has six finalists pieces in the Bead Star competition. Please take a moment to vote!

Missficklemedia.com 

Vote for your Bead Star Favorites! 

  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: I Feel It All

Today's Song Lore inspiration is "I Feel It All" by Feist.  This song is a little sad, but it fills me with hope.  To me, it is about the end of a relationship that has ended because it was the best thing to do, even though it was painful.  But I think it is also about letting yourself open up to new love and experiences, getting past the pain and sadness, and learning from your mistakes.  And not being afraid to actually feel the pain and sadness to get through it.

"I feel it all, I feel it all
The wings are wide, the wings are wide"  

Clearly, it is the wing imagery from this song that has inspired me.  I made the pair of wings above as the inspiration for another song. As soon as people started seeing them finished and glazes, they were asking if I would sell pairs of wings that could be linked together, which I intended to do from the start.  Something like the pair of wings below; the first pair made as a custom order.  But I thought it would be fun to have a pendant that had the wings already joined, so I took a pair of wings made in wet clay and melded them together to make a new design.  The carving was a little large, so I fired it hot to shrink it down, and I am hoping it will be a more manageable size when I mold it.  I think there is a lot of potential for this new pendant too, including several options for hole placement and the idea of adding another molded element to the center to give it wings!

"Fly away
Fly away to what you want to make"

 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.

Time for the Weekend

No time for work this weekend, I have a full schedule!  I'm going to a bachelorette party tonight at the casino downtown (my first time to either such thing).  I've got $20 budgeted for the slot machines... I'm a high roller, you see.  hehe  I have the place cleaned up for a house guest tonight and a work party on Sunday to make favors and such things for the wedding next week.  Whee!  And tomorrow night I am going on a road rally with Alex, which his family organized for charity.  That's a lot of stuff, whew!  It will be good to be around friends and doing stuff, because I am in a bit of a funk lately.  Doing the Raku this week really helped, especially because it was so successful, but I am still feeling kinda blah.  Stupid money woes, mostly, nothing I can really do anything about, which is the most frustrating thing about it all.  Anyway, I hope to do the Song blog tomorrow, but other than that, it's a pretty work free weekend.  Time to have some funs!

 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.

What's Raku?

aww... this was my favorite pendant of my first Raku firing, and I broke it. I'll glue it together and keep it for myself.  Look at that RED!  woo hoo!

I want to tell you a little bit about the Raku process as I am practicing it.  First of all, Raku is an old Japanese technique that is very different from the newer Western technique that we call Raku today.  You can read about both Raku techniques in detail on Wikipedia.

My Raku technique involves taking my little electric kiln outdoors and setting it up for a cone 06-04 glaze firing (about 1800 degrees or so). I set the kiln to start firing and I stick around for a couple of hours to watch the progress.  When I am able to look in the kiln with my safety welders goggles and see that the glaze is melting, I turn the kiln off and unplug it.  With someone's help opening the kiln, I use a pair of tongs to remove the shelf or furniture that contains a row of beads and plunge it into a bucket of sawdust.  The bright orange heat of the furniture and pendants makes the sawdust go up in flames!  After a little bit of flaming, I put a lid on the bucket and let it smoke. If there are more beads in the kiln, I continue the process until I am done, and then I wait for the smoke to clear and things to cool off to sift through the burnt sawdust to find my treasures.

As you can see, Raku is very dramatic!  It involves glowing hot kilns, fire, and smoke!  So it is a lot of fun to do... but the real reason is the results of this firing on the glazes.  Western Raku uses glazes that produce many wonderful, random, and unexpected results!  The smoke and oxygen deprivation makes many of the glazes, particularly ones that contain lots of heavy metals like copper, to have oilslick and metallic rainbow effects.  Also popular are dry crazed surfaces, crackles, and other spectacular metal mimicking effects.  I think these surfaces are perfect for the one-of-a-kind industrial based designs that have interested me lately, don't you?  If you have any questions about Raku, please ask them in the comments and I will try to answer or find the answer.

This is my first batch of Raku pendants, which will be available in my Etsy shop.

 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.

Raku Glaze Test Prep

 Wow, I actually did it!  I got yesterday's pendants bisque fired last night and glazed them up for Raku today!  I took the little kiln outside and it is heating up now.  I must admit that I really don't know exactly what I am doing here.  I put in a cone 04 and hope to catch it before it bends and turns the kiln off.  (any of you who Raku with a kiln that has a kiln-sitter... how do you regulate the temperature?)  I only have the 20-ish pieces shown above, so I should be able to handle this amount. I put them on three long kiln posts set horizontally and I hope I will be able to carefully remove the posts from the kiln with my tongs without all of the pendants falling off.  I might have to think about making some kind of kiln furniture to make this easier, but for now I hope to just see if it kind of works and how the glazes look.  I took notes (see them in the pic?) so I will know what glaze is on which piece.  Oh I hope some of them turn out!  Bouncy Raku Dance!

  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.

A Gift from a Potter and Clay Thoughts

I was recently contacted by a fellow potter that I know from the annual Potters Market, who had a fun thing to offer me.  Jan Robb makes wonderful functional pottery and tiles in rich green glazes with leaves impressed into the clay.  Her work is quite lovely... you can find it in her Etsy shop.  She makes tiles and uses a tile press to make them (which is a bit more advanced than my method of hand hammering the clay into molds, and one of the reasons I don't make a lot of tile).  Anyway, her process leaves her with some extra slabs that are a little too stiff for her to use again in her work.  She would have to reprocess the clay and doesn't have a pug mill set up.  I hate reprocessing the tiny amount of clay scrap that I create with my work, so I don't blame her.  She called me up to see if I could use the extra scrap and I thought I would give it a try!

Jan's clay is different than mine.  For these tiles, she is using a production porcelain. I use a more traditional porcelain which is ultra white and contains a lot of English Grolleg China Clay.  These clays feel different when working with them.  The production porcelain contains a lot of ball clay, which increases workability and gives the clay plasticity.  It also helps it fire white while giving it some structure to make it feel a little more like stoneware (without the grog).  My porcelain is very soft and silky.  I have said before that it feels like cream cheese, which can be lovely for its fineness, but is also very frustrating to work with.  I used a few of the slabs that Jan gave me and found I needed a little time to get used to the different texture, but ended up making some fun things already, so I am excited about using more.  Also, they are in a perfect pre-slabbed form, so I can just give a simple roll of my brayer to smooth the surface, and it is perfect for me to start stamping textures into!

Now, one issue with changing to a different clay body is that my glazes may not look the same on the clay.  Instead of doing extensive testing, I decided to make some one of a kind pieces and use this clay for a whole different way of firing: Raku.  I have been wanting to do this for so long and I think it is finally the time.  So I made the pieces above and am going to test them out soon (maybe tomorrow!  Its supposed to be nice out!)  I know I have been promising to Raku for a while, but this time I really mean it...

I love this long pendant!  Must make more.  Thanks again, Jan for the clay!

 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.

Honored and Flattered!

So today in my email inbox, I got my daily bead fix from Interweave's Beading Daily and was pleased to see a picture of a necklace I designed for Step By Step Beads back in October 2008.  But I was downright flattered to read what editor Leslie Rogalski had to say about the piece!

Leslie Rogalski: "This may be the most challenging post I’ll ever write––to choose favorite projects from all my years as editor in chief of Step by Step Beads....That said, I do have an affinity for projects that called out to me more than others, simply for personal reasons. Here are just six of my fave designs and why I like them:

"Cool things to string

Many designs were about fast fashion. Using simple stringing and wire techniques to combine outstanding elements made several projects stand out for me. One was Melanie Brooks’ Steampunk necklace. Using her own ceramic beads and pendant, Melanie interpreted this style with mixed media, including metal chain and interesting dangles. Her design evoked a steampunk style without being derivative, so the necklace appeared fresh and new."

Wow, that was a wonderful thing to hear from such an awesome person!  It takes me back to when I wrote that project for Step by Step, right around the same time I wrote the article about steampunk in beading for sister publication Beadwork.  I had been working on my steampunk line and blogging about it earlier in the year and decided to work up the courage to ask the editors if I could write about steampunk for one of the Interweave bead magazines.  The genre hadn't quite hit the beading world yet, so the response was "steam- what, now?"  It was really fun and scary to present my ideas about it, and very thrilling to see them accepted!  That was my first cover and one of the few full articles (for Beadwork) I had ever written.  I was very proud of my work.

Now of course, steampunk is all over the beading world.  It is such an amazing genre that it was sure to catch on and spread like wildfire!  I like to think I helped that happen a little bit with my articles and projects, which I think were some of the first introductions to steampunk for some beaders.  I still am very interested in steampunk and it has influenced my work, but I have moved onto other things as well.  It is nice to look back and feel recognized for work well done.  Thanks Leslie! You made my day!

 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.

Head in the Clouds and Extra Links

 I've been working diligently on production this weekend. Making and Making more, thinking about nothing and everything as I work.  When I am able to concentrate some serious hours into working, I am most able to relax.  I realize that this is a little odd, but it is pretty awesome.  It means that I love my work so much it is when I am actually the calmest and happiest.  It's when I am not working that I get stressed.  So I have been busy with my hands in the clay and my head in the clouds.

Which make me think about the cloud pendants I recently finished.  I made this design a few months ago for the blog. I guess I am not all that excited about them, because it took me a long time to finish some.  I did one earlier that was seafoam with little white bubbles, and I liked that, but these new ones don't impress me much.  What do you think?  Maybe they look too brainy to me, I dunno.  

Anyway, I am hoping to do more production today.  Perhaps walk the dog at the park, maybe pick up some groceries, maybe work in the yard.  There just aren't enough hours in the day to do all I want to do.  I will leave you with this week's Extra links, and the hopes that you have a wonderful Sunday:

A Bead A Day
Creating jewelry for special vacations can help you look forward to upcoming trips and keep the memories fresh afterwards.

Art Bead Scene
Art Bead Scene has a new look and some new opportunties to get involved. Come see! 

Beading Arts
Rubber glass? Rubber glass?!? What the heck is rubber glass? 

Carmi's Art/Life World
Carmi uses some amazing digital images to create a new resin filled bezel necklace. 

Cindy Gimbrone aka The Lampwork Diva
Check out the new beads on Cindy's site - Turquoise Sky! 

Earthenwood Studio Chronicles
Melanie starts production for the Bead & Button Show and has studio pictures to prove it! 

Humblebeads
Heather shares some sketches of possible designs. 

Katie's Beading Blog
This week, Jean Campbell interviewed Katie for Beading Daily. Read some bonus Q&A on Katie's blog. 

Snap out of it, Jean!There's beading to be done!
Jean reviews Kate McKinnon's inspiring new book, Sculptural Metal Clay Jewelry, with DVD included! 

Strands of Beads
Melissa shows off new designs using cool skull beads and charms from Rings & Things 

The Writing and Art of Andrew Thornton
Andrew hosts another Thursday Giveaway! This time, the prize comes courtesy of Natural Touch Beads! Find out how you can win some awesome resin jewelry components!  

 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: Crucify

So here's the thing.  I wanted to do these awesome pieces for today's Song Lore inspiration.  But I wanted to do something really different and experimental.  I had big dreams.  But it didn't really work out the way I hoped.  This blog is about process and I like to show the good with the bad, so here it goes.

Today's song is Crucify by Tori Amos.  It's a pretty intense song and one that I have related with for many years.  I listen to it to remind me to not give up too much of myself, which I am prone to do.  Anyway, the imagery in this song is intense.  When I listen to it, I see nails, chains, and cages swirling around in my head.  So I wanted to experiment with embedding actual nails into my clay.

 "I've been raising up my hands

Drive another nail in

Just what God needs

One more victim"

The pieces above are the most successful of this series, as I inserted the nails and removed them prior to firing.  They are glued in place post-firing. But what I really wanted was to fire the nails into the clay, so they were an integral part.  That produced some unusual, almost comical results.  Particularly since I was going to a very raw, violent look.

The nails melted!

I used steel finishing nails, thinking they would withstand the high temperatures.  They made it through bisque just fine, but when I did my cone 6 glaze (around 2200 degrees) they puffed up and got all melty.  It's almost Tim Burtonesque, really!  Experimental... yes! Totally not stable or usable though.

But wait, there's more!  The line of the song that really strikes me is:

"I know a cat named Easter, he says will you ever learn

You're just an empty cage girl if you kill the bird"

So I wanted to do an empty cage.  And a dead bird.  Yeah. Kinda morbid, eh?

The cages were a good thought and there might still be potential there, but I think that might be a better project for more traditional wire and soldering, which I am perfectly capable of doing, if I had the time.  I liked the idea of clay and metal together to make a cage, but it just didn't work out the way I thought it would.

The one design that might actually work out as a series is based on this line:

"And my heart is sick of being in chains"

Very simple, very literal... hearts with chains embedded into them to make patterns.  And I was thinking of hanging chains from the bottom holes of the hearts, post firing.  I figure these will be glazed in very earthy and metallic rusty glazes. 

So there you go.  Not so bad, I know, but not what I wanted. *sigh*  It happens sometimes in art, that the vision and the finish product do not add up to the same thing.  It happens a lot, actually. So this was not an entirely successful Song Lore experiment, and it was kind of important to me.  Oh well, carry on.  They can't all be Birdhouse in Your Soul.

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.