Button, button, who's got the ......?

Cindy Wimmer's Button Blog Hop a few weeks ago really got my button-related creative juices started. My partner in this button love-fest, Celeste Thurston, had sent me a package filled with more buttons than I could use in just one creation. Since I work a lot with the color red, I decided to finish up a piece that I started over two years ago.

Starting with a polymer clay mokume gane blend of red, green, white, black, pink and cream I covered a quantity of beads with slices from the mokume stack, placing them over a base of red and gold. I had a lot of the mokume blend left over so I amused myself with building a long cylinder bead (4”), intending at some point to wrap it in wire. The resulting beads were reminiscent of gypsy bandannas and I sold several sets on Etsy. Then the leftovers sat in a bag.

Gypsy beads

 About a year ago I found the Gypsy beads again and began building a necklace base, using some red flower-shaped Czech glass beads with Picasso finish-- my favorite!--older twisty gold polymer spacers, early faux coral polymer beads and some experiments with Maggie Maggio's watercolor technique for polymer which I adapted to my own eclectic style.

Watercolor bead

The long cylinder bead proved difficult to position in a design, since it needed to hang vertically in the piece. My idea for the wire wrap evolved into a beaded wire twist, which not only added color to the cylinder but also morphed its shape into something more interesting.

Gypsy cylinder bead

Again, the necklace sat, waiting for .....something.... to motivate me to finish it. Then inspiration struck.

For the Button Challenge I had made a complex polymer base for the Bakelite buckle from Celeste which had Mayan overtones (for me). I decided to made another base to support a red Bakelite bead from my stash and stage two more buttons from Celeste on top-- a Bakelite cream fluted and a red Czech one. But this time I decided to go with a round design to play up the shape of the buttons. I layered and sliced and built and then antiqued the focal in various colors before glueing on the buttons.

While all this was coming together, Douglas was viewing a program called “Ancient Aliens” about the recent discovery of a massive complex of buildings beneath the waters of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, near an amazing pre-Inca ancient temple site called Tiahuanaco. One of the images made him call me into the living room to look: it was the image of a god with a halo of shapes very similar to my focal!

Tiahuanaca image

Focal

I never turn my back on synchronicity so I looped two large jumprings from a chain purchased at Michael's through some convenient holes in the focal and my long process was completed. I named it “Stone in the Center” to honor the temple site, Tiahuanaca, and the deep and mysterious lake in the Andes Mountains. When modern meets ancient, the two can make some real design drama together.

"Stone in the Center"

All Buttoned Up!

What do Mayan stone carvings and red Bakelite have in common?

Not much, you would think but lately I've been perusing a book on Alexander Calder's jewelry, a fascinating look into the artistic mind of a genius whose iconic sculptures changed the artistic world of the 20th century. He made wire jewelry as gifts, each one a tiny masterpiece of form and design. So I've been steeping myself in mid-century styles and influences, mostly tribal and primitive.

I was lured away from my new avian buddies – 45 chicks which arrived peeping at my door courtesy of the USPS a few weeks ago --by the promise of new and unknown buttons chosen from a stranger's stash. And of a fun design challenge/Button Blog Hop hosted by my good friend Cindy Wimmer.

I found myself happily paired with Celeste Thurston, whom I met at ArtBliss last year. We chatted about our button collections—where we collect, what we like to collect and what are our favorites to collect--one of the best entertainments of a button swap. We both like to make molds from our buttons to use with polymer clay and neither one of us shies away from “large” so Celeste suggested she send a Bakelite belt buckle in red and amber that she had. I have a fabulous stash of red buttons of varying shapes that I scored at a flea market one summer-- one of the excellent finds of all times-- that I knew contained some red Bakelite I could combine with the buckle.

When the buckle arrived, it was magnificent – large, colorful, shiny-- and square! I'm not a 'square' person-- I don't like angles but I adore curves. How to incorporate this intriguing shape into my design sensibility? I decided to do a polymer clay background, using a technique I stumbled upon while messing around with unconditioned clay one rainy day.

Faux Bakelite Primitive

I liked the freeform way that the holes appeared when the slices were stacked so I did the same thing using ecru clay, building a flat background layer, then stamping and antiquing it. Reminded me of Mayan stonework when I was finished. So I kept the theme going and made some beads using the same technique to pull the whole thing together into the stringing. I raided my bead stash for some leopard skin jasper and found some older beads I had made with the same colorway, added some red crenellated Bakelite beads from the famous Red Button Stash, some bronze African cage rounds and rings from a Michael's chain to hook it all together.

I was planning to add some other red Bakelite shapes to the center front of the buckle and use E6000 to glue the whole thing together. I usually like to use wirework or rivets to join pieces but the smooth modern finish of the buckle seemed to need a minimal treatment. When Douglas got home from work, I proudly displayed my creation and he said “It almost looks like a face, with that center line as the nose”. A face! Perfect! Celeste had included an interesting long Bakelite bead with a gear around the center and that made the ideal nose for my 'little man'. An ochre Bakelite gear button was the base for one eye and coral rounds made up the rest. Very Picasso-like, I thought. “Pablo” was born. Thanks, Cindy for hosting such a fun challenge and thank you, Celeste, for the gift of my wonderful buckle and supporting buttons. Happy Mother's Day!

"Pablo"

Please visit all the other participants' blogs to see what they did with their buttons-- here's the link to Cindy's page (can't seem to load this list!) http://www.sweetbeadstudio.com/.

Stacked

I've made many polymer clay cuff bracelets since I first started working with the stuff. I'm teaching a class at this year's ArtBliss on them too. Lately I've been making bracelets with lots of dangles on multiple chains, very layered and complex. But not exactly stacking layers.

So when I found out from my good buddy Cindy Wimmer about the Wrapped, Stacked and Layered Challenge that Tracy Statler was organizing, I knew I was in. I didn't know that stacked bracelets were such a big trend, I could just imagine what an amazing opportunity for design it would be. Excess in jewelry-- what's not to love? My notebook doodling was fast and furious and of course, I could not complete every idea I had but I think the stack I completed displays some of the better ideas I had.

My dear Douglas brought home some heavy paper cores that were a perfect diameter for a bangle so I sawed one in half and wrapped ikat-dyed silk ribbon around it and attached a jasper rectangle to the front with copper Whim-Z Wire.

I love memory wire bracelets and have made myself several. I like substantial bracelets and I use these to showcase my favorite stones or very special OOAK treasures. This one incorporates mastodon bone beads, amber, copper beads of all sorts, several kinds of jasper, and some very old African pipe beads.

I used a blank metal cuff as the base for the deerskin suede-wrapped cuff. The rough edges were dyed with alcohol inks and then I wrapped the pieces around the cuff and added some fine copper wires and tiny copper beads.

This last bangle was the most fun to make of all the layers. I got the idea from Mary Hettmansperger's book "Mixed Metal Jewelry Workshop" and used polymer clay instead of copper metal clay to save time. I mixed up a bronze-color polymer snake, wrapped it around some 16 ga. wire, cured it and then used some gilders paste to add highlights.

Here's the completed stack. Makes me wish I had long, skinny arms so I could wear all of them at the same time but they mix and match nicely so I'll probably wear a couple together. Thanks, Tracy, for setting up such a super challenge! I definitely see more bracelet stacks in my artistic future.

Cave of Dreams stack

Check out the 80 other links too to see what they've designed by going to http://makebraceletsblog.com/
(Sorry-- couldn't get the list to work on my blog!)

Atlantis

I had a record album in college by the folk-rock artist Donovan that got played a lot. One of my favorite cuts was 'Atlantis'. It was a spoken narrative about the Lost Continent accompanied by a musical background and I think I've been fascinated by the concept of that sunken watery civilzation ever since.

"The continent of Atlantis was an island
Which lay before the great flood
In the area we now call the Atlantic Ocean.
So great an area of land, that from her western shores
Those beautiful sailors journeyed to the South
And the North Americas with ease
In their ships with painted sails.
To the east, Africa was a neighbor,
Across a short strait of sea miles."

"The great Egyptian age is but a remnant
Of the Atlantian culture.
The antediluvian kings colonized the world;
All the Gods who play in the mythological dramas
In all legends from all lands were from fair Atlantis."

"Knowing her fate, Atlantis sent out ships to all corners of the Earth.
On board were the Twelve:
The poet, the physician, the farmer, the scientist, the magician,
And the other so-called Gods of our legends,
Though Gods they were.
And as the elders of our time choose to remain blind,
Let us rejoice and let us sing and dance and ring in the new . . .
Hail Atlantis!"

"Way down below the ocean, where I wanna be, she may be . . .
Way down below the ocean, where I wanna be, she may be . . ."

This is the time of year when all the clothing catalogs drag out their latest swimwear, probably catering to those who are lucky enough to fly to warmer climes and forget that Mud Season is about to arrive, melting the snow and coloring everything in boring hues of brown and dead foliage. So many artists are thinking beachy colors. I'm rather more a beachcomber than a beach-sitter. I love to explore the tidepools hidden in rocky shores and discover the strange, exotic life living there. I am also enamored of National Geographic specials featuring maritime archaeologists who dig up old ships and their long-lost cargoes. Our very own Lake Champlain is full of 17th and 18th century finds that have been preserved in the deep and icy waters of the lake.

So my artistic mind wandered to a space of “Atlantis meets archaeology” while I was experimenting with a cuff design. I had been playing with a new texture tool from my favorite store, the hardware variety – a threaded bolt. When you roll this over raw polymer clay it leaves parallel lines with depth. You can turn it 90 degrees and roll back across and get a checkered effect. But if you roll up the textured clay after one pass and into a spiral, voila! a faux ammonite appears.

So armed with my ammonites and some little textured pieces I had previously done in black clay and cured, I proceeded to cover a brass cuff from my stash that I had put a basic clay layer on but abandoned. My new idea was to line the inside of the cuff with a colored clay veneer and apply multiple organic elements to the top that would be painted to coordinate with it. I was going for an encrusted, elaborate piece that might have been excavated by Jacques Cousteau and the crew of the Calypso.

I was having fun attaching all the bits and pieces and then realized that I really didn't want to have the brass metal of the cuff showing, since my palette was all in silvers and blues. Yikes-- this was going to be a lot more work than I had planned for. But I was committed so I just kept at it. I had done a previous cuff with a tidepool theme and I dug out my favorite tools for the new cuff.

Layers of paint later-- Stewart Gill 'Byzantia', other metallic acrylics--silver gilders wax, faux ammonites, translucent clay pieces antiqued and patinated, the cuff was finished. It's kind of over-the-top and heavy but it really reminds me of something ancient and highly embellished with the kind of patina only time can achieve. It's really a small sculpture and every piece I do, whether or not I wear it, teaches me something. And having looked up the lyrics of Donovan's song, I remember how much I liked them and the ideas they evoked. Some stuff holds its value, even 40 years later.

'Encrusted' cuff - polymer clay and brass

I'll be teaching a class on polymer clay-embellished cuff blanks this year at ArtBliss in September in the DC area. Stay tuned to this blog for more information on classes.  It's a great event with some fabulous teachers and although we won't be doing anything nearly this elaborate, we will be having fun with color and texture and learning lots about using polymer clay.

March Madness - the Big Reveal

Once again we plunge into the creative soup of the Bead Soup Blog Party, brainchild of Lori Anderson, hostess extraordinaire, who patiently matches and then husbands the pairs of  participants -- a full 100 this time! from receipt of their beads to the final grand finale of the Big Reveal.

In case you're not familiar with the BSBP, partners are matched and trade sets of beads, to include a focal, a nice clasp and some extra beads that coordinate. The goal is to make a piece out of those components and hopefully, get outside your comfort zone by working with someone else's colors, style and bead choices.

This is my third Bead Soup Party and since I work in polymer clay for the most part, I can usually work easily with whatever I'm given. But the brilliance of the BSBP is that you can just throw your preconceptions out the window because you never know what will be in the little package that you receive from your partner.

I was partnered this time with Deb Brooks of From the Heart Creations who handcrafted the focal she sent me out of vintage mother-of-pearl buttons. Did I mention that I have a teensy obsession with MOP? Well, you don't want to see my eBay invoices. I have quite the collection. Deb made a button stack of several of her beauties and wrapped them in brass wire with a sinuous Deco feel to both the focal and the clasp. I also love old jet buttons and Deb included one of them in the focal as well.

I wanted to pick up the subtle colors of the MOP in both the white buttons and the darker purple one so I chose ochre yellow, salmon pink and purple as a working palette. Black was my neutral and I tried to incorporate as many of the faceted black beads into my stringing that Deb included in the coordinating 'soup'. There were lovely salmon tracings in the long agate beads she sent so I decided to combine both copper and bronze metals in the piece.

I usually work with rather large elements in my designs and always incorporate polymer into them so my first issue was how to use polymer as well as enlarge the focal area of my piece. Making a molded copy of one of my vintage beads allowed me to emphasize my color palette by hand-coloring the polymer element and enlarge my design area. Then I decided to take a page from the book of the talented Cynthia Deis, owner of Ornamentea--who was my partner on the last BSBP-- and add a lush tassel to the bottom of the MOP focal. It gave me a chance to play with lots of tiny rare elements that I tend to collect, mixing and blending favorite components together-- vintage buttons, quartz beads, pre-war Japanese celluloid leaves, Czech glass, pearls and hand-dyed rayon cord.

To round out the necklace strands, I dug into my stash of old polymer beads and found some from a tutorial on making polymer clay ammonite beads by Heather Powers. Both the design and color of these were perfect for my purpose. I added some gilders paste to the edges in black and copper and then just because I love them, I added some vintage Japanese black beaded ball beads to the chains for bling.

 

'Opulence' necklace - Updated photo 3/5/2012

I've tweaked this a bit since the original Reveal day, since I had some other elements that I had thought about adding. I like to make a piece and then consider it for days or even weeks, until inspiration strikes. I sometimes like to add an extra freestanding chain and so I connected a vintage twisted link bracelet length to a box chain and colored the links some with gilders wax to make the colors blend better with the other elements. Another vintage chain and some Czech glass rondelles were added as well. Now it has the color and flow and a balance I wanted. This project definitely pushed me in directions I hadn't taken before. Just like a good Bead Soup selection should! Thanks, Deb! Thanks, Lori! Thanks everyone for playing along. Enjoy the Hop!

You can follow the action by going to Lori's site at http://www.prettythingsblog.com/ for a full list of participants.

Bead Soup - It's What's For Winter

As I was mixing up a batch of homemade chicken soup this morning, I looked into the pot of roiling, fragrant broth and envisioned a decadent kaleidescope of beads, all tossed and tumbled in a waterfall of colors and textures. Maybe the fact that I had just been watching SyFy's “Face-Off”-- a competition between make-up artists tasked with creating fanciful monsters and creatures-- had something to do with it. Watching artists turned loose to bring their most fantastical imaginings into reality stimulates my creative urges in a powerful way.

Being deep in the doldrums of a mildly cold yet almost snow-less winter in Vermont begs for some artistic flame-fanning to get the old imagination going and what better to do that than a pot of soup-- Bead Soup Blog Party 5, that is!

For those of you new to the Bead Soup Blog Party, our inventive originator of the idea and perennial hostess, Lori Anderson , invites participants to collect one beautiful focal, one beautiful clasp and an assortment of beads that they would choose for themselves to design a necklace or bracelet and send that to a partner that is handpicked by Lori. This works because she tries to pair people who haven't worked together before so that each person is pushed to create something outside their design comfort zone.

I was partnered with Deb Brooks of From the Heart Creations this time. Neither one of us had met before so I filled her in about my found object passion and polymer clay habit and she responded enthusiastically by sending me an amazing focal consisting of several vintage mother-of-pearl beads cleverly stacked and artistically wired into one, including a vintage jet shoe button.

Vintage mother-of-pearl buttons, jet high-button shoe button

In addition, she worked a small MOP button into a sinuous handmade bronze clasp.

Nice symmetry between the two!

Supporting cast members included tiny faceted jet beads, several lengths of vintage chain (one of my overwhelming addictions!) some large faceted jasper barrels, bone spacers, ivory jasper and a big bag of assorted vintage buttons, including one stunning naturally patinated one. What a stash!

All the Soup ingredients

 As an extra goodie, she included one of her signature pieces, a silverplate fork with ingeniously twisted tines, with its handle curved so it can function as a pendant. I have some interesting plans for this, but not in this piece. You'll just have to visit again in the future to see the final version.

What can we make out of this?

So I'm definitely out of my comfort zone here. I don't use neutrals all that often so I'm contemplating how to use the subtle cream tones of the MOP to advantage. And we can't make this too pretty-- so some steampunk influence will probably show itself, especially since Deb has included some gears and watch faces in the mix. Did I mention that I just purchased some fossilized mammoth bone beads from Happy Mango Beads? I'll let you, gentle reader, ponder that for a bit. And some Baltic amber and a silver repousse Chinese horse bead. Guess you'll just have to be here for the Big Reveal on March 3.

Resinate

I'm all for the newest and coolest in mixed media and craft supplies. But I'm a great advocate of thinking outside the box and expanding the realm of what's possible in the techniques and processes that already exist.

So I resisted the lure of resin for quite some time. Why coat a perfectly good surface in polymer clay-- one that you have sanded and buffed so carefully to achieve a subtle, glowing sheen-- in plastic? I have never loved the use of the shiny coatings that some polymer people adore to the point of making the Holy Grail of Polymer the ability to achieve a lampwork glass-like mimicry. Yes, I'm going to get flak about this but really, why not embrace the characteristic of the medium itself in its 'natural' state? OK, polymer is plastic but it has a unique ability to cure to the texture of kraft paper or really, to any other texture you want to apply. Its truly unique  ability is to take texture -- why cover it over? For instance, I give my clay pieces that will receive colored pencilling a subtle texture, some 'tooth' so the pigment will adhere better. “Exploit those Nooks and Crannies” should be a needlepoint wall motto in my studio!

So why turn to the Dark Side at all? Well, first I had to discover what resin could do for my designs that I couldn't do with polymer. After all, polymer clay has its own liquid form that cures to near-translucency. But it's very sticky and messy, so pouring it into a small space would be difficult. You can paint it on as a coating-- I've done this as a patina on metal with the addition of alcohol inks for color -- but it's a real bear to sand. And it drips.

Since I had an ICE Resin kit sitting here in my studio for ages, when my sister came to visit this past fall I figured, let's see what this baby can do! I dug out ALL my bezels, lots of tiny metal beads, my vintage books, many clay pieces with attractive holes that could be filled and then made several pairs of earrings that had holes straight through their forms. Of course, I have dozens of handmade silicone molds that I've made of anything that would hold still and I knew that resin could be used to fill molds and make objects.

I had very little specific information to work with-- I have just recently bought Sherri Haab's book "The Art of Resin Jewelry" but I didn't have it at the time. But I really like to work this way-- just puttering and playing and seeing what I can do with something I've never used before. I had no preconceptions and no expectations-- anything was fair game. I didn't edit myself at all. Playing off the things my sis was doing was very helpful as well. She is a very creative person and also had no prior experience with resin either so we both had no “can't be done” admonitions to overcome.

"Eye of the Dragon"

Polymer using the mokume gane technique, oil paint, pencil, gilders paste, coiled and patinated bronze wire, resin

"Ginko"

Previously-made polymer clay pendant, applied resin, Objects & Elements bezel

"Imaginarium" earrings

Polymer clay, gilders wax, resin

"Rockport Sunday" bracelet

Picture jasper, African bronze beads, clasp by Objects & Elements, copper chain, resin bezel filled with collected sumac leaves, Fall 2009 and African brass spacers

"Song of Amergin" ring

Bezel ring from Objects & Elements, filled with bronze polymer

clay, bronze headpins and resin

"Emerging"

Polymer clay with resin

"Theodora" pendant

Polymer clay with resin, metallic powders, gilders wax

"Tidepool"

Polymer clay with resin

"Geode"

Polymer clay with resin and acrylic paint

"Entropy"

Polymer clay, resin

Resin experiments

In the few months since my initial experiments, I have made finished jewelry with some of the pieces I made and have done a few more pours. I've learned a few tricks and made many sketches of what I want to do in the future. All in all-- a successful encounter with a new material. What more can you ask?