Day Two at Adorn Me Part B: Texas Art Asylum

Road trip! Wednesday after class Bren and I made a little road trip to Texas Art Asylum. I read about it about a week before Adorn Me and was excited about checking it out.

The Texas Art Asylum is a creative reuse center.  If you aren't familiar with what that is (I wasn't) it's basically a recycling center that recycles things for people to make art with.  Isn't that an awesome idea?

It's an incredible place.  There was a whole wall of cigar boxes, some of which I'm now wishing I had brought home with me.  There were lots of baby dolls and baby  doll parts, old jewelry, mysterious parts, tiles, etc., etc., etc.

I was so busy shopping I pretty much completely forgot to take any pictures until we were leaving.  I snapped this shot of some incredible artwork by David Pilgrim.



It lights up and the center cone shaped part rotates when you pull the chain. Pilgrim teaches some classes at the Texas Art Asylum.

Just to give you an idea of what's there here are our finds.



This is Bren's haul.  That's a  great crystal necklace and a pearl strand with a lot of vintage crystal roundels, among other things.



Here's my loot. I managed to leave my center punch at home so I used this antique one in classes.




These finds add to my vintage and antique photo collection.

We had a great time at the Asylum and I hope to get back there.  Check them out HERE on Facebook.

Day Two at Adorn Me Part A: Repousse without Pitch

Wednesday was Repousse Without Pitch, taught by Richard Salley.  I found that I really liked doing this. The tools that I made on Tuesday worked well, although I see that I need to make a few more. I did a bird in flight for my pendant.



Instead of pitch we used a non-hardening clay.  Above is the pendant piece taped to my bench block for some more work on the outlining. The black is from annealing the metal with a torch.



Basically the design is outlined on the front, then turned over and placed on the clay where punches and other tools are used to move the metal into a relief. The backside is shown above.




Here I've finished the repousse and have patinaed the piece.  I didn't have time to complete the pendant.  In the corners you can see where I messed up the first stamp I tried and stamped over it.  Probably I will cut all that off.  It's a little big as is anyway. I did use one commercially made stamp to do the stippling in the background, and a small liner that Bren made. All the rest of the work was done using the tools I made in the tool making class.





Here I am doing some lining.




Bren is doing some lining. Bren did two pieces and colored them with the torch.  She got some amazing color on them.  I wish I had a picture of her work.

Day One at Adorn Me

I'm in Houston for the week attending Adorn Me! Today was Tool Making with Richard Salley.  My roomie Bren and I were both in this class.  We're also taking the Repousse without Pitch class taught by Richard tomorrow.  The idea is that we use the tools we make today in the class tomorrow.  I had a little anxiety about whether I would get some tools made for the class tomorrow.  It turned out that making the tools was quicker and easier than I thought it would be.  At the same time some things I thought would be easy turned out to be a little tricky.  We got to play with power tools!  There were several bench grinders with various grind stones and polishing wheels, plus a couple of belt sanders. 

Bren and I both agreed that the line tools were easy.  I tried a teardrop tool and it was harder.  I used a file to cut straight lines across the face of one tool, and deepened the cuts with my saw.  This made a 4 line stamp. It was really hard to get the face of this tool squared so it would stamp correctly.  It's still not perfect, but it's usable. One clever student in class did a set of tools that make a dragonfly about 3/4 of an inch long when put together.

Bren's tools:



My tools:




L. to R.:  short line tool, long line tool, square punch, teardrop punch, round planishing, round punch, 4 line stamp.

I also did a curved line.  The middle of the line came out a little wider than the ends so it looks a little like a waning moon, or the curved end of a flower petal.  I decided I liked it that way so I left it.

Here is Bren with instructor Richard Salley:




We've both taken classes from Richard before.  He's an excellent instructor. The class also included hardening and tempering of the tools, and twisting the middle of the tools to give it a decorative spiral and a place to hold it. Bren and I haven't spiraled any of our tools yet.

Susan Lennart Kazmer set up a store right before lunch.  Here's a shot of the crowd around their booth.  Maybe I'll do a little shopping there this week.

The Buildzone by Deryn Mentock

Guess who was the lucky winner of Deryn Mentock's online jewelry class "The Buildzone?"  ME. Sometimes I do get lucky.  I also won an awesome goodie bag.

I hope to get some pictures posted later of what I'm working on.  The class is great.  And I think you can still sign up.  Check out Deryn's blog. And here's a link to her online classes.

Pendant Frenzy

My friend Martha has been making some new pendants that I really love.  I visited her at her studio a few days ago and purchased a batch. 

These are just a selection from the beautiful pendants I bought.




These are two of her large fleur de lis charms.  That's the back of the right hand charm that I've shown.  I love the way both sides of her charms are gorgeous.




Aren't these great?  I can't wait to use these and the others I got from her.  Check out her blog here, and her Etsy store here.

Possum Came A-Knockin'

Except he didn't knock.


I opened the front door one dark evening last week to check on Scrappy cat. The front porch light wasn't working and I caught a suggestion of movement in the blackness. I decided whatever it was had hid in the hedge.  I had just turned back toward the living room when the commotion started.


"Oh my God, what is that thing?" my teen aged son yelled. And there, in my living room, was an adolescent opossum. He was slowly but steadily crossing through the room, moving very stiffly and rotating his head from side to side. He looked terrified. If possums could talk I'm pretty sure this one would be saying "Oh my God! Where am I?" Meanwhile, my son helpfully pulls his legs up into the rocker he's sitting in.


I called my husband, grabbed a handy cat carrier, and began running after Possum.


"Relax, they're harmless." My husband offers up from the next room. "They don't bite and they don't carry rabies or disease."


Harmless or not the possum was going to reach my floor loom if he continued on his present course. I was pretty sure that even non-biting disease-free possums are hard to extricate from beneath the treadles, harnesses, and beam of a loom. They do climb. And what's with that tail?


Possum crept steadily on through the living room, dining room, and into the weaving room, right up to the loom. Then he turned left and conveniently cornered himself by the door going out to the garage. I thought briefly about letting Possum go into the garage--there is a cat door to the outside--but I was afraid he would want to move in.  We already have one teenager.


Hubby, who was still repeating "they're harmless; I saw it on TV," helped me gently sweep the possum into the cat carrier. Possum used all four feet and his tail to try and keep out of the cage, but eventually he saw the dark. (I covered the cage with a towel.) Did you know possums emit a foul I've-been-dead-for-three-days odor when frightened? Thank goodness removing the possum removed the stench. We left the cage, door open, in the yard.

Thirty minutes later he was still there, motionless and playing dead. This probably works well with animals, who don't seem to notice things that aren't moving. It doesn't work so well on humans.  His big black unblinking eyes looking up at me through the vents on the cage kind of gave him away. I felt sorry for him, but not so much that I wanted to invite him back in.



( This picture is from several years ago when I opened the front door and a different possum panicked and ran into the dog house.)

PS: "Possum Come A-Knockin'" is a very good read-aloud book by Nancy Van Laan.  Back in the day I used to read it to my son. I love this book.

Great Stamp Set Giveaway

Lori over at Pretty Things has a fantastic giveaway going.  She's giving away this great set of metal stamps:

Head on over and check it out.  Also take a look at the great jewelry she made using these stamps.

Discipline and Warm-Ups

I've been mulling over various focus Words for the Year and have chosen discipline as my word for 2011.  I have several goals but the main ones are getting the studio area ready to work in, and applying new techniques that I'm learning to a body of work. 

 I do have a tendency to over plan and over engineer when I really need to just do it.

The Jan/Feb 2011 issue of Somerset Studio magazine has a regular column entitled The Business of Art by Quinn McDonald.  This month's subject is "The Undervalued Art Tool: Discipline."  McDonald has several good suggestions, especially when it comes to managing the time spent on email and other media. 

One of his suggestions is to start the day with a ritual.  This is a good idea.  My usual ritual is to feed the cats as soon as I get up, because I have one cat who pesters me to death if he doesn't get his food promptly.  I've decided on a studio time ritual.

I loved this tiny little bird cage the minute I saw it and bought it for my studio with no clue what I would do with it. 



I wrote down some small projects which should all take under 30 minutes to do, even when I'm at my most disorganized.  Each day I'm going to draw one and do it.  The projects include making ear wires, coils, jump rings, "S" hooks, and other things.  Some--balled headpins--I prefer to do outdoors.  I'll put that one back in the cage and draw another if the weather is too bad.  Do you see how the strips are curled?  I thought it would be fun if they resembled fortune cookie fortunes.



And here I go: "silk or fiber neckcord."




And yes, Neko, I will feed you first.