Introducing the Globbers!

Just a quick note to announce a new section of the shop:

The Globbers!!

That little purple guy I previewed before now has some friends, and they're all live in the shop. I enjoyed making them, and I have ideas for more. We'll see how it goes, though. Right now everything's still running up the flagpole to see who salutes, if you know what I mean.

I also got my silver mica powder and have been trying out a recipe for faux balinese silver. It doesn't really look like silver, but I'm told it definitely resembles metal. Maybe pewter. So I'm on the right track. Still looks good, anyway, and I'll be doing a few quick silver-ish things for the shop. Little silver pots for things.

Have to go finish the marble ice pendant now.

Marble Ice update

I remember saying yesterday that I'd have a preview of the new pendant today.

Our boiler stopped working sometime last night, so I've been home all day waiting for the tech to get here. While the situation is not the best, I did manage to be productive, and I have five globbers getting ready to go live on the site. I like doing the globbers. Maybe this will become my signature "thing." It's certainly easier to market than magnet faces and random jewelry.

Speaking of random jewelry, here's a pic of the new pendant:
As you can see, it's going to be bluish, hence Marble Ice. I thought it would be a nice companion to the other one. Those beads in the middle are the only beads in the piece, and I think they look rather nice. This one's going to be pretty, and I'm really getting the hang of wire weaving. The next pendant or two will be net bezels for my malachite attempt.

A friend of mine suggested I do up a bunch of these kinds of pendants for renaissance faires. This is the sort of thing that appeals to the fantasy/medieval people. I should know, being one of them. I already had the idea of marketing to the live action roleplaying crowd, but for some reason ren faires never occured to me. Naturally, the ren faire stuff wouldn't use colored wire. Beads, yes, but no color wire. You can get away with crystal or glass beads like that, but that sort of colored wire could not have been made back then. But that's in the future, when I'm a little better at this. Right now I'm still experimenting, but I like the results.

Hopefully this piece will go live in less than a week. As I get the practice, I'm getting faster with the weaving, so if I really sit down to do it, it shouldn't take me more than an hour or two to finish.

New items and a preview!

Alexi (that yellow alien I previewed earlier) is finally live in the store, along with the Marble Fire pendant. The companion piece, Marble Ice, is coming along well. I'll preview that one tomorrow.

Today is clay figurines!

The first guy is a failed attempt, but only in that it wasn't what I was trying to make. My brother asked me to do one of the Raving Rabbids (from the Rayman Raving Rabbid series of video games.. if you haven't played it, try it out - they're hysterical) as a keychain. Well, the actual conversation was a suggestion that I do a magnet, and the keychain idea sprang from there. Unfortunately, I got the head all wrong, and he's not Rabbid material. But he IS a pretty funny-looking rabbit, so I'm going to finish him up as an Easter figurine.

The other figurine I managed to finish last night introduces a new section to the store: Globbers! Globbers are blobbish guys made of goo. They can change their shapes a bit, but since they're only mostly solid, they can't hold a definite form for long. I got the idea yesterday, and I like how the first guy came out. This is something I'll be playing with for a while - my "Smurfs," if you will. They also have pets called blobbles, but I haven't made one of those yet. Maybe tonight.

I heart St. Patty's Day!

Okay, so this has nothing to do with St. Patrick's Day, really. I had wanted to make a few things for the day, but didn't think ahead enough.

I am, however, trying to make some Easter stuff, and discovered a very humbling thing: I can't make eggs. For the life of me, I can't seem to make a decent egg shape out of polymer clay. I was trying last night to make egg beads for some earrings, and they all came out looking pretty not good. I used the last of my faux marble mixture and made a couple of egg-esque beads, and those look kinda nice, but they're not quite what I wanted. But after sanding and buffing, they'll do. I'll take some pictures when they're baked. I'm going to keep trying, though. When my mica powder gets here, I'm going to go crazy with the balinese silver, and I want to do some nice silver eggs. Not to mention traditional decorated easter eggs.

So instead of showing you what I'm not doing very well, I'm posting a picture of something that came out very nice. There is a wonderful tutorial by Eni Oken that teaches how to make these delightful woven double heart pendants. I wanted to try it out since I first saw it on her web site, and Valentine's Day was the perfect excuse.

Since I didn't have any fine wire at the time, I decided to go with colored art wire. I like colored art wire, and my girlfriend likes pink, so it works out. The bead in the bail was originally going to be the focal bead, but it's too thick. You need a flat bead to fit between the hearts - although with a little creative design you can use any shape bead. I just hadn't thought that far ahead since I was following a tutorial. It was given to me (along with the two silver beads) by her aunt and I thought she would really like that I put it in the pendant. The actual focal bead I made myself out of clay to match the bead in the pendant.

I want to make more like this for the store, although various other shapes. Not necessarily hearts, and not necessarily pink hearts at that. I have a lot of nice flat beads now that have no project to attach to. I have a lot of other nice beads I'd like to do something with, for that matter. When I get done with the second marble pendant, I'm going to try another double shape pendant. I enjoy weaving and I like the look of woven wire.

I also took the plunge and ordered some sterling silver wire. We'll see what comes out of that.

Marble Fire Preview

I was in New Orleans last week, and came back with a lot of ideas. We'll see if any of them make it to physical form.

I finished the first pendant using those faux marble stones I made.

This became insanely difficult toward the end. First, I made the stone way bigger than the tutorial cabochon, so my wires were all the wrong sizes. Improvising is actually one of my strengths, so it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. However, you can see in a lot of places this meant that I had little room to work with, and weaving in tight spaces is... not fun. But boy did it give me practice!




As I completed the cage, I realized that the top and bottom portions were not connected - which meant that it could pry open very easily and bend all out of shape. So I had to close the huge gap in the middle. I was already planning on incorporating beads into the next pendant, and I didn't really want to do any more beads on this one, not wanting to draw away from the black beads at the bottom. But I needed to do something simple. I already had my frame done, and connecting another piece of guide wire would have been more work than it was worth. So I figured out a small bead pattern and thankfully, it turned out all right.

As you can see, the pictures are not so good. I have to retake them before I put this up in the store. But they're good enough for preview pics, so here they are.

Once again, I find myself wondering about pricing. I'll be cruising etsy today trying to find comparable items to see what other people are asking for. My girlfriend said it should be $35, but she just tossed that number off. I'm not sure, but she insists it should be in that range.

Any thoughts?