playing

my RAW indulgence... 

playing with copper sheet

'at the center of your being you have the answer,

you know who you are

and you know what you want.'

~ lao tzu

copper sheet has been randomly stamped with om & lotus punches... hole at bottom is deliberately off center signifying the journey of working towards our center... faceted amethyst used for healing properties... a stone associated with calm, healing and peace... 

'all who wander are not lost.'

~ j.r.r. tolkien

a very favorite quote of mine... drifting, letting go, relaxing, going with the flow... the word 'drifting' has been stamped randomly along with leaves on the copper sheet to evoke the feeling of, well, drifting... like leaves being carried by a stream... lapis was chosen because of the properties it contains - balancing of yin-yang, bringing mental clarity... all things that occur when we let go and set our minds free...

'we all have our own life to pursue,

our own kind of dream to be weaving...

and we all have the power to make wishes come true,

as long as we keep believing.'

~ louisa may alcott

sheet metal here has been textured and punched in many places allowing for the weaving of fibers within it... a contrast in textures tied (no pun intended) together by the flowing line of each medium.. 

did you experiment today? 

transformations

'when we quit thinking primarily about ourselves

and our own self-preservation,

we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.'

~ joseph campbell 

change is in the air, confidence is growing and excitement is overwhelming at times... i decided it was time to stop wanting to try etching metal & to just do it after reading a blog the other day... these are small 18 ga. copper blanks... i used the book 'semi-precious salvage: creating found art jewelry' by stephanie lee as a guide... here i have used a rubber stamp & permanent ink to mark the blanks... they were allowed to completely dry... 

the book recommended leaving the metal in the etchant for a couple of hours... so i left them in for 2.5... i had a vintaj blank - that got eaten up, disintegrated... & a larger blank that didn't etch as much... but i didn't put it back in because i wasn't sure what it was supposed to look like... then i took the little guys out...  i really love the molten look they took on... very cool... but also very sharp in areas...

these are post oxidizing... i only had steel wool to work with and some small files... but i love the contrast... i do believe that i will need to get a dremel tool for brightening the raised areas and some sandpaper to help out with the smoothing...

when you want to grow, when you want to become 'more', it's a feeling that pulls at you... it can come into conflict with what you 'have' to do... but somehow it works out... and anytime you grow in one way, it seems to spill over into other ways... i thank lisa at lucid moon studio for so openly sharing her information and experimentation with this... it's always funny to me how the universe works... this was my next step, and as i was looking through the new posts this weekend, there it was! 

ooh - just remembered i have a buffing and sanding sponge... going to try that...

how and what are you transforming?

new things...

'all life is an experiment.

the more experiments you make the better.

~ ralph waldo emerson

i can work with that! 

while i do not usually work with crystals, when i do shows i have noticed that they can draw people to a table... the sun sparkles off of them and people come... 

but i wanted to go at it a bit differently... the book 'a charming exchange' by kelly snelling and ruth rae was recommended to me and i cannot put it down... i want to try everything at once, but am trying to be practical... i adapted this link into an earring... and started with copper so as not to waste sterling... the swarovski colors are copper, brandy and chili pepper... i thought they stood out nicely against the antiqued metals - vintaj and copper...

hopefully will be trying silver this afternoon ... with some lapis or turquoise maybe!

learning

'i am always doing that which i cannot do,
in order that i may learn how to do it.'
- pablo picasso

my experiments with polymer clay are continuing... the first night i decided to try darker clays & was thinking i was going to have something called pearl-ex to use as a highlighter... however, at the two craft stores i went to, they didn't have it... from the depths of my mind was something whispering 'alcohol based ink'... i figure that had to have come from reading a post by heather at humblebeads or lynn at llyynn ... because they really are the pros... so i went back to the craft store and got some of them along with some lighter colored clays... i applied some different colored inks to some of the darker clay beads to see what would happen... the blue bead in the upper left corner has slate on it, the one under it has the meadow green on it...

when i applied the inks to a lighter clay bead, it put the light color into relief... the inks have a watercolor type finish the way i did it using a felt pad... some of the beads are just testers to see how the ink colors come out after baking... and what they look like on different base colors... they got much more subtle... so i am wondering if i should be applying them afterward sometimes... i am not sure if i like the green... & the different effects you can get... i like the way they bleed... my favorites are from the top two rows... zoa art today had a post showing a current mag containing an article on polymer clay, so i think i will try to grab that...
these beads happened when i applied ink to the rubber stamp itself... then i added some extra color to the one on the right... i do like the kind of distressed look they have... the middle one was a thought for the abs challenge this month - then i realized it's the 29th already!

re: a cube - that was trickier than i had realized as you have to push into the stamp to get the imprint... as you turn sides, it got sloppier - i was ok with how it was by 3 sides, sometimes... am going to keep at this... just to see what happens...

did you do anything different today?