Inspirations

I feel somewhat scattered these days and I am finding inspirations for future works in a variety of places and things.


The flowers in my various gardens are starting to provide some wonderful displays and yes, inspirations! In my class with Lexi, she told me that I would start to see jewelry designs in almost everything I looked at. Well, my flowers are providing that for me, so I wanted to share a couple that have grabbed my attention. I see earring & pendant shapes in many of these. All keeping with how nature inspires my work.


And then, the flowers are lending themselves to designs for stained glass windows.


I have reached that point where I need to create another stained glass window....or two....or three.


I've had several requests to create some basset hound windows for some dog show art and Newton has provided plenty of inspiration for that so I need to include him in this post. He has a wonderfully expressive face and a great head. I know I'm partial, but I just find him absolutely handsome!


Over the weekend, we were finally able to mow and edge our back yard since the rains let up to the point where things were dry enough to do the necessary work. As luck or maybe misfortune would have it, we think a piece of pea gravel was thrown by the string trimmer or the mower and fractured the tempered glass in one of our living room windows. As a glass artist, I am truly fascinated by the splintering effect of tempered glass when something causes a break. I took a couple of pictures and thought this would be something cool for a design too....maybe stained glass...maybe jewelry...yet to be decided.

My journey with the combination of metal and glass has just begun. Lexi set up my torch today. I'm very close to starting work on more art jewelry. I need a few more pieces of equipment and Lexi's tutelage. The demands for her work and instruction are many; I know I am truly blessed as she has accepted me as her only student at this time. I will live up to her expectations.

Thanks to all of you too for your support and encouragement. It means more to me than words can express.

Happy Creativity All! :D

Project #4 - Overlay

Project #4 from Lexi Erickson's Art Jewelry Workshop

After Saturday's class we had homework. Come up with designs for our next two projects that we would do on Sunday. We also had some reading assignments. It was a nice way to relax and let some of what I had learned sink in.

That evening I came up with several designs, but none of them really 'spoke' to me. When I got up on Sunday, I had time for a nice breakfast at The Hand Hotel and I decided to walk around the hotel and explore a little bit. It is a very quaint Bed & Breakfast and had lots of nooks and crannies. Some quiet little sitting areas and I decided to relax, get out my sketch book and see what else came to mind. I had some nice subject materials around me and found this great shot of a Puffin with a mouth full of shrimp to feed her young. The design literally jumped out at me. This beautiful Puffin beak would make a great design for a pendant. And as I looked more closely, I loved the shape of her eyes. They became my design for these overlay earrings. With my trusty digital camera, I snapped this picture of a picture so I could have it to refer back to in the future for my pendant design. If anyone had seen me doing this, I'm sure they would have questioned my sanity...taking a photo of a picture in a magazine when there is so much beauty in the scenery surrounding Fairplay! However, this was important for my art. :)

As my first attempt at this technique, I made a number of mistakes. One of the eyes has some fire scale, which I can and will sand to remove. The other one moved on me in the soldering process so I have some solder on the copper and need to work on that too. I did run these through the rolling mill with some textured paper to create a very soft texture...it's hard to see in this photo. And the shapes aren't completely perfect either. However, the important thing was learning the various techniques and I'm looking forward to creating my next overlay project.

Today's Fusing Project

I just put this piece in the kiln for fusing. I don't know what I'm going to call this series. I have plate molds for this shape in three different sizes. This is the first one, the smallest....about 9".

I'm using a Bullseye Streaky glass, with some colored flakes. This is the first time I've fired this particular Bullseye and I'm very curious to see what color changes, if any, I will see once the piece is fused. I find this glass gorgeous and tried to find nice pieces of accent glass for the design I placed in the left side of this. If all turns out well, then I'll use this same design and color scheme for the two larger plates.

A footnote on the Peace Angel, I'm almost done with the copper foil. My plan is to finish that phase today. I also want to work on another design for fusing so that will be ready for firing tomorrow.

It's the first of November (can you believe it?!?) and I'm multi-tasking.....