design

It has been a positive whirlwind of end of school & family activities here lately: prom, graduation, a graduation party and prep to head off to a job at a summer camp for 5 weeks for E plus soccer, swim team, finals etc for M. I’m getting through focusing on one thing at a time. While that helps to keep me from feeling overwhelmed, it also means that I’m in a sort of constant panic as we jump from event to appointment to event to whatever.  And given the outrageous price of gas, I am spending way too much time in my car.

So, it’s appropriate that my one thing at a time focus has produced exactly one piece of finished jewelry.

I made this pendant to go with the outfit I wore to E’s graduation (a brown linen tank dress with a pale turquoise linen shirt). I like it, even though it reflects the speed with which I threw it together. The darker turquoise circle is off kilter, but the effect is less pronounced while wearing it than it is in the photo. This pendant has one weird aspect: the light turquoise circle was stamped with chalk ink, and then stamped again slightly off registration with an interference ink. When the interference ink catches the light properly, the piece has a subtle turquoise flash. But when you view the piece dead on with regular light, that layer just looks a bit dirty. Oh well.

I got a lot accomplished this weekend.  I moved the 3 bookcases from the back wall of my studio out into the hallway section.  This will free up some wall space in the studio and allow me to move my soldering station over closer to the fire extinguisher.  And I’ll have room for the rolling mill I got!  The far end of my studio will be all metalwork now.  I am hoping the new arrangements works.  I think you need to be able to rearrange your studio periodically as your needs (and tools) change.

Moving the bookcases forced me to weed through my many craft books and pull out a big pile that I can give away.  Kids craft books, home decorating books and simple quilting books are going to be donated to our local library spring book sale.  I also sorted through piles of sketches, notes and other paperwork.

In the course of sorting through the piles of paper, I happened upon my stash of magazine clippings.  So my creative reward for myself was making a few color collages like the one I made in the Lindly Haunani color class last November.  They’re addictive.  If I can find some time, I’d like to make a couple more.

Things are going to be pretty quiet here on the Libzoid blog for the next couple of weeks.  I’ve got a new Studio Snapshot set for tomorrow, but after that I need to turn my focus to getting ready for a family vacation next week.

I had a delightful weekend. I was at a Sherry Serafini workshop at my local bead shop, Beads East. I took a workshop with Sherry last year at Bead & Button, and I jumped on the opportunity to take a class with her in my neighborhood. Apart from the class (which was wonderful) and the treat of hanging out in one of my favorite bead stores for a couple of days, it was wonderful to spend a couple of days with a group of interesting women who appreciate the lure of beads.

All the beading classes I have taken up to now were at the Bead & Button. It’s a great event, but the classes are generally really large and you sit in rows at long skinny tables, so it isn’t usually the most sociable of class settings. The class this weekend was a much friendlier format. It was serious fun for me to spend a couple of days playing with sparkly beads. The bracelet project we worked on uses a combination of 24 karat gold hex delicas, flashy cabochons and various crystals in blues and AB finishes, in other words, WAY outside my typical comfort zone. It was refreshing to work in a style totally different from my usual.

An added benefit of this weekend, was the opportunity to show a bead artist I truly admire, some of my current work and ask her opinion on approaches I could take with a really “out there” project I have in mind. It’s a complex piece with a lot of possibilities. I’m not even sure how I am going to construct it or what materials I will use, but it was fantastic to get Sherry and Ann Benson’s feedback on the overall design, and how I might use beading techniques to make it happen.

It’s easy to get lost in Flickr, lost for a long time if you’re not careful. I particularly love exploring the many Flickr groups. They are wonderful sources of inspiration. It’s so much fun to search for groups based on words like texture, pattern, grid, macro, surface etc. Here are 5 random favorite Flickr groups I found this morning:

Squared Circle

Macro Fabric

Zentangles

Grid Patterns

Geometric Beauty

Have a great weekend. I’ll be posting my first Studio Snapshot on Monday.

Judy Dunn has a great post on artistic progression. I had a post contrasting something I really liked very early in my polymer clay work with something from my current work, but it “poofed” with that block of 4 months of posts. The publication of my PolymerCAFE article had me digging through my photo archives to see the progression of my work with “scribble” designs.

The earliest photos I could find of any kind of TLS designs are from Fall 2002:

Not very well defined designs. My goal at that time was to mimic lampwork beads.

Throughout 2003 into 2004, I played around with the technique. I learned how to keep the lines from spreading. But, I had persistent problems with base beads cracking. It was so frustrating. I switched brands of clay, conditioning methods and ovens, and I still got cracks in about a third to half of my base beads. I also started playing around with a couple of different variations:

By 2004, I came up with the idea of glazing the base beads with tinted pearl liquid sculpey to seal up small cracks, mainly because I was tired of throwing away base beads. I loved the look. Tinted pearl liquid sculpey has become a staple in my studio. It gives the surface a soft shimmer a bit like a pottery glaze and highlights texture beautifully.

Beads from the Scribbles In Sand necklace:

I entered that necklace in Bead & Button’s 2004 Bead Dreams competition and came in second in the polymer clay category. Altogether I spent 2 - 3 years refining my technique. During that time, I had a few pieces featured in books. I thought about submitting an article to one of the magazines, but I never got around to it. I’m glad I finally did. Although I still use tinted glazes a lot, I don’t do much with scribble designs anymore. It was fun looking back through the photos and seeing my learning curve and variations. The photos don’t convey the frustrations along the way though. I was obsessed with this for a couple of years, but the process was very worthwhile. It was the first polymer clay work I had done that felt moderately distinctive. You can see a few more photos at Flickr.

I’m pretty excited. My first magazine article, “Framed Scribble Earrings” is out in the April issue of PolymerCAFE. It was an interesting process and a definite learning opportunity. What surprised me most was how difficult it was to define my process and describe it in a concise and clear way. I am not a production artist, so I don’t spend too much time making multiples of a similar design. There’s little incentive for me to streamline my process and I have the luxury of starting over if something doesn’t work. To write this article, I had to pin down my easiest and most successful methods. It was an interesting process to say the least.

I have a new and deep appreciation for all the artists who regularly write articles. It’s harder than it looks, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat if I had something unusual to share. Connie Donaldson, the new editor of PolymerCAFE is a great person to work with. Really great. I’ve been playing around with raised designs in liquid clay, what I call “Scribble” designs, since late 2002. I’ve had a lot of requests to write up the process over the years, but I wasn’t entirely ready to let it go. I don’t use this technique very often any more so it was pretty easy to let it go.

I hope you enjoy the article. Frankly, you should go out and buy the issue just for the amazing Kathleen Dustin images. After you’ve finished drooling, check out my article.

Life is a bit hectic. I’m chuckling as I write that because, let’s face it, if you’ve got kids, life is always hectic. We’ve only got 2 kids, so really it could much crazier. It’s all in the degrees of chaos. E’s caught up in the last 2 weeks of a high school theater production, long rehearsals 6 days a week. M’s not too busy as swim season has ended and soccer hasn’t started yet, but she’s chomping at the bit to do something, anything. The dogs have a bit of spring fever and want to be let out constantly. My husband is part way through our taxes. (the hold up is me, I’ve got info to gather and summarize) And I am teaching a class Saturday. Being Last Minute Libby, I’m still working on the handouts and need to sort the beads into kits.

So, why is it that some of the most intriguing design ideas occur to me when I really don’t have the time to explore them? And similarly, why is it that some of these ideas come to the surface of my mind just as I am falling asleep? It’s probably something to do with the battle between the right and left brain. But you know what, it’s frustrating! I suppose the alternative, which is not having any ideas, would be much much worse.

Still, I cling to the idyllic image of peaceful creative time filled with fantastic ideas. Sitting at my worktable in a clean and organized studio. Lovely thought, isn’t it? Meanwhile the reality is that I am scribbling down design notes on scraps of paper at the same time that I am making grocery lists, to do lists and lists of things that I need to gather for my class. (some day I am going to make a necklace that’s partly comprised of lists) I still haven’t picked up the studio from the pre-Synergy whirlwind, and I’ll be adding another layer of clutter as I pull supplies for the weekend.

One thing I have learned from all this: the busier I get, the more I need to keep a sketchbook handy.

One of my all time favorite color blogs is kris’s color stripes. I found the link on Polymer Clay Daily and I look forward to each day’s post. The color schemes she pulls from photographs are a great color nudge if you’re like me and you have trouble getting out of the lime green and purple zone. In the spirit of complete honesty, I’d probably need color shock therapy to get me out of that zone.

I am especially enjoying the colors as it is another gray day here. Spring cannot come to New England fast enough for me. Is it any wonder that I am wallowing in black and white?

beads for Saturday’s bracelet class

A quick post to say that thanks to the hard work of my tech guru Jenn Dorion, I have a photo gallery on my website again. We used a new software program for the gallery, Zenphoto, and I really love the clean look. The gallery has a new URL, so if by chance you had my old gallery bookmarked, please update the link to http://www.libzoid.net/zenphoto/ I’ve still got a few old & new photos to upload, but it’s fairly complete right now.