Finally Something New

I have been wanting to make this for a very long time. I had the idea so long ago to mount a butterfly in an old broken vintage clock but I was never able to get to making it until now.

                                                         Vintage Clock Butterfly Display

I have always loved old clocks and have collected them for a long time. I never cared whether they worked or not. In fact the more worn the better.  I have always wanted to use a full spread butterfly in some of my work. I thought that I would love to do some wall hangings but did not want to frame them how they are usually framed in a shadow box. One day it just hit me that there is just enough space between the clock face and crystal to mount a butterfly. I've been too terribly busy to make it but this week I was inspired to finally see how this might turn out and I just love it!

I am in the process of making more. Wouldn't a display of two or three of these be just amazing? I hope you love this as much as I do and I would love to hear your thoughts on it :)
 

Hush Now and Listen To The Birds



Hush Now And Listen To The Birds

Assembled from much loved antique pieces. The focal piece feature an enameled bird in beautiful colors. Amazingly, I had some Swarovzki crystals that matched the blue enamel of the flowers perfectly. The rest of the necklace is assembled from old glass beaded chain and brass chain. The lobster clasp and the crystals are the only pieces that weren't salvaged from old jewelry. In the shop now.




Wash Me Ashore Ring

Another wash me ashore ring. Size 9. I made this for a customer but the sizing wasn't right so it is now in the shop. 




Traditional "You Are Here" Heart Necklace

A new twist on my "You Are Here" hearts done in a traditional heart sahpe insted of the anatomical heart shape. I think this one is more feminine in nature and love how it turned out. I have been meaning to make this one for quite a while now and am so glad I finally did. In the shop now.

Hope everyone is having a great summer so far! I am longing for the cooler days of fall and winter. Summer is not my season at all although I do love going to the local flea markets. It was sweltering hot here today until we received the mercy of a cooling storm.
                                         

Can't stop listening to this

Digging Deep

I've been doing a bit of digging. Deep. Soul searching you may call it. I call it excavating. Unearthing who I think I am and what is important in my life. During this process I have been in a bit of a creative hiatus. Looking at the work that I currently do and wondering if it is really a part of who I am anymore. I love the darkness, the lost and forgotten, the decadence of decay. Peeling, cracked paint and rusty nails. Old torn silk and lace. History forgotten. Mysteries of memories buried within a piece of something old and broken. I want to unearth these memories hiding beneath the rust, the worn finish, the darkened sparkle of a an old rhinestone.



I opened a new shop a month ago selling some of these old pieces I have collected for others to find the treasure these types of pieces hide inside  but some things I have collected I can't let go as they are. I feel the need to make them into something. And I will be doing so once I dig myself out of this rut.

These were tough to photograph!

I finally finished the butterfly wing post earrings and they turned out lovely! They glow and flash when the light hits them the right way. I am really pleased with them!

They were extremely difficult to photograph as are all of my butterfly wings but I hope the photos show how jewel-like these wings become when magnified with the resin.

They are not tiny post earrings either. They are around 9mm in diameter so they are small enough to wear daily but not too small to be noticed. I only have three pairs of these in the shop so far but will probably be offering these indefinitely in my shop along with other resin items I may work on in the future if I can find enough time!

Butterflies and Resin

I just wanted to take a moment and show what I have been slowly developing over the past few months. These are real blue morpho wings that I have set in handmade ( by me) bezels that are going to hopefully become stud earrings. I originally wanted to do stacker rings but it seemed like so much work to make the ring and then pour the resin only to mess it up at some point. Also I would be using more sterling in a ring as opposed to an earring.

The first picture here shows the bezels with the wings in it without the resin. I have sealed the wing circles so that the wings don't change into a weird color from the resin. Oh and do you  know how hard it is to cut tiny circles out of a butterfly wing? Very tough but I figured out how to do it without ripping them to smithereens.

Here I've poured the resin and it magnifies the color of the butterfly beautifully! I'm using Ice Resin here which is a dream to work with compared to the Envirotex lite which is what I started with.



So since I had to mix up a full ounce of this resin and I barely used any for the earrings  I decided to make up a ring real quick and use a piece of an embossed binding from an antique leather bound book as the focal of the ring.

I love how this looks and hopefully it turns out well because I made this in my size. :)

Painting With Fire ( Learning how to torch fire enamel)

I received my Painting With Fire torch enameling kit in the mail yesterday and had so much fun learning the immersion technique to add color to my metals. Here are a few pics of the results. I am still getting the hang of it so most of these are mess-ups in one way or another.

Group shot of some of the beads that the kit came with. I think they are lovely despite the flaws!

I had these bead caps already and they were so tough to get the enamel to adhere. They were an antique brass finish and it took forever to get them to this point.  Maybe it was the fake antique brass finish that made them so hard to enamel.

This is a simple copper disc that I stamped with a bird and then enameled with the transparent enamel that the kit came with. I love the sheen of blue that combines with the deep red of the copper. When you tilt the disc at certain angles it looks iridescent. What a totally unique color surprise! I hope I can do it again. I stamped the bird to see if i could see it well enough through the transparent enamel. It shows up nicely here but is not quite as noticeable in real life. I am very happy with the evenness of the enamel on this one.

And then I made a pair of enameled copper earrings in the robin's egg blue opaque enamel. I love the coloring of these. It is unfortunate that the one on the left had the enamel burned a bit by putting it too far down in the flame. I did this while re-heating the piece trying to get the disc off the mandrel. It is not as noticeable as the pictures shows so I will keep these for myself and start on a new pair for the shop.