Taking inspiration from the lovely Kate Holly-Clark, including her beautiful trees; and from various other sources, I searched for and found some online instructions on how to create a four-strand braid. Most of them were really verbose and devoid of any visual aids; but I found this great hair braiding site that had the simplest instructions: twist and cross. Awesome. So I made this: 
…which came out shockingly well for a first try. Oh, and look, copper! Then I decided to try it with double strands: 
…which I suppose I should have taken a photo of the sides so you can see the weave. But the exciting part is that if I hadn’t done any of that fooferah around the outsides, this piece is entirely reversible (as is the first). So then, I thought, why not wrap the weave across the front of something? It came out OK but I distorted it a bit at the top: 
And finally, I took two pieces of beach rock that a local artist collected and created cabs out of, and made a single pendant. This one is so totally mine: 
Archive for January, 2007
My friend the lovely Elinor got me a great deal on some wholesale beads a few times; in return I promised her a couple of pieces with her materials. You’ve seen The Earth in the Night Sky already; here’s the second piece, with her gorgeous labradorite cabs.
A shot of the piece as a whole:
And tilted a bit to see some of the flash:
And finally, with my hand, for both scale (it’s huuuge) and to see some of the orange flash in the third piece:
I’m VERY pleased. I hope she is too!
I’m putting on two wire-wrapping classes in the next month or so. First, with the Cape Breton Centre for Craft and Design, fourth one down the page. Second, with Richmond County Municipal Services, front page of their newsletter, baby! Fun!
I think I screwed up my camera settings; pictures keep coming out all grainy and I have to resize and de-noise and brighten and colour correct, and it’s no fun whatsoever. But! Look! A necklace that could be worn as a crown: 
And a commission for my friend Elinor, called “The Earth in the Night Sky”: 
I’m struggling with my light box - I burnt out a bulb yesterday and got a replacement today, plus a side lamp, but it still doesn’t seem to be bright enough. Or angled properly. Or something.
Anyway. I needed to take some photos to be featured on Arts North, so some of these are old designs, and some new. Enjoy!
I followed (vaguely) some instructions for creating your own light box today. Basically, I cut out the sides of a box, covered them in tissue paper, and inserted a piece of white cardboard for a backdrop. I still need to play with it, but I’m very pleased.
At first, I didn’t have the top hole cut large enough and I couldn’t get enough light in the front:
So I cut the hole bigger:
Which is a fantastic improvement. But when I brought the photos into Photoshop, there’s still a huge gap in the white balance. I definitely need a second light, but I couldn’t find one anywhere in the house that I was willing to unplug. I guess it’s off to Zellers today!
I also took some photos of the Labradorite pendant I made in the same style. One in the light box, looking very bland:
And one in my hand under a direct light to show the brilliance of the labradorescence (the top flash actually gets redder in certain light:
I don’t think I could love these two pendants more. Also new on the worktable recently: Crowns! Ok, just one for now, but the second one is already better than the first. This one isn’t really great, but I learned a lot from it and it’s pretty cute.
