Project Runway Jewelry Challenge 7.3:The Met

I just realized that I forgot to make this post! Challenge 7.3 (2 weeks ago) was to look through the collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and make something inspired by a piece in their permenant collection. Luckily they have photos online as I can't swing a trip to New York at present.

I chose Joan Miro's Constellation: Toward the Rainbow as my inspiration piece. I am a parent helper at my children's school for their Art Masters Program and they recently did an amazing project based on Miro's work and I thought I could apply the same techniques to metal as they did with paper and color. So the bangle is the main piece. I took some square wire and made the simple bangle and added some bits from Miro's painting to it. I like how it turned out.

The 2nd piece is a squiggle with a Miro-style star which slides on the lower part of the pendant. It's my favorite of the two.

Please look at the EtsyMetal blog to see what everyone did for their Met inspired pieces!

RAD Week #7

1. RAD #43/365 02122010, 2. RAD #44/365 02132010, 3. RAD #45 02142010, 4. RAD #46/365 02152010, 5. RAD #47/365 02162010, 6. RAD #48/365 02172010, 7. RAD #48/365 02172010, 8. RAD #49/365 02182010

This is week seven of the Ring a Day Project! From 2/12 -2/18 I made four metal rings. The 5th metal ring is just one of my bubble wands on my finger, which I did make, but technically isn't a ring. The red rick rack ring is great looking and I have plans to make a silver version soon as the fabric on is too floppy to wear. The candy ring was leftovers from Valentine's Day. I love the pink tulip ring! I have blue and green glass tulips that I can use for these too. I love the leaves at the sides. The turquoise ring is mine! The other two are leftover bits from other projects soldered onto a ring band, and both turned out nice. RAD has taken over. I feel like I must not fall behind and make/post a ring each and every day, lest I never pick it up. So far I'm still doing it! I just need the same attitude about blog posting. I'm caught up on RAD postings now! I'll catch up on other things soon and maybe even join the EM blog carnival for March - I hope!

EtsyMetal Jewelry Challenge 7.4 Design Your Heart Out!

I skipped blogging last week about the Project Runway Jewelry Challenge, so this post is to catch up. The theme for our challenge based on Episode 4, was "Design Your Heart Out"; to make something about hearts and a secondary challenge to make a complimentary piece to be donated to the American Heart Association. I wasn't super excited about this one as I had just completed my St. Valentine's Day orders that were all hearts and love, so I left it to the last moment and then finally decided to make a funky, untraditional looking heart bracelet. The hearts are squashy and fun and not syrupy sweet, so I started to get into the challenge. I stamped stripes, and spirals on two of the hearts (one side only) and then made dots in the third heart by drilling part way into the surface of the metal. I gave them a rough, scratchy oxidized finish and connected them with some square wire cable. I really like how it turned out.

I mirrored the shape of my squashy, funky heart in sterling silver wire for a pendant. 100% of the proceeds from the sale of the pendant will be donated to the AHA. If you are interested, please check it out in my shop!

Please check out the EtsyMetal blog for to see the other participants' work!

RAD Week #6

I'm still getting caught up on blogging about the RAD (Ring A Day) project. Here are seven more rings from week six of doing rings everyday! I love the car ring. The little mini van travels around the road ring. It's super fun to wear. I'm not sure about making some for the shop, but it might be something I'll do when time permits. The duct tape ring is fun. It's kind of floppy, so not so great to wear, but perfect for this project. I'm working through all the weird materials I have little by little. The orange sequins are cool, right? Someone custom ordered some sequin earrings in orange, and I found some great neon orange vintage sequins for them. I couldn't resist wrapping them around my finger. As promised, here are a few of my favorites from week 5 and 6:

1. RAD 20/365, 2. Ring a Day no. 28 (explored), 3. RAD 2/2 16/365, 4. ring a day 24 - january 24, 5. RAD 33/365 020210, 6. Mini Citybird, 7. RAD 33-red-resin-and-silver, 8.RAD ~ #7 ~ 4Feb2010 ~ Modern, 9. RAD 37-Pleat, 10. R A D #37 02-06-2010 "OUCH!!!!!!!!!", 11. Wild Wild West - ring a day 20/365, 12. ring 6

RAD Week #5

I'm very behind in posting to my blog, so this is me trying to catch up. These are my week 5 rings for the Ring a Day project. The green reflector ring was featured by flickr in their "explore" area of interesting shots, and has gotten more than 275 views and a lot of comments. I'm thrilled that the original size 6 ring sold from my etsy shop. I have a few more of these vintage glass stones, but not many, so I'm now trying to get my hands on some more. The two square wire rings are fun. The log cabin one is a little to snaggy to wear, but it looks great! I love the burlap ring. Just fun and a companion piece to the project runway burlap jewelry challenge which is blogged here! When reinforced with super glue, burlap is a nice, sturdy material. I'm not sure it'll catch on for jewelry, but it was a fun project anyway! I'll put some favorites of other participants in my next RAD post!

Project Runway Jewelry Challenge 7.2: Burlap

Burlap is a challenging material to work with. It unravels very easily without it's selvage. The natural fibers split and break and shed off the fabric. The burlap that was available in my local fabric shop was terrible, but one of my EtsyMetal friends offered to send me a bit of hers, and I accepted - hoping that it would be better than what I could get. It was. (Thanks, Victoria!). It was very tightly woven, however for the idea I had about playing with the warp and weft of the fabric, and replacing some of them with metal wire. I finally figured out that I could easily and selectively remove threads from the middle of the pieces of fabric with tweezers. In order to keep the remaining threads from coming unraveled, I applied a little super glue around the edges, just where the threads met. This worked great, and stiffened the burlap as well. I wove four flattened silver bits of wire into the warp and weft. The backing is a piece of copper sheet, which had roller print of metal screen on one side, which mirrored the weave of the burlap nicely for the back of my pendant. I oxidized the piece and made scratches in the front to also mirror fabric a little and riveted the burlap/silver to the front. A bit of silver tubing for the bale and a simple silver chain completes it. Also Check out the ring that got the burlap treatment for the RAD project.

Here are the other participants in the burlap challenge:

Shannon Conrad

Mike Stromberg

Sara Westermark

Beth Cyr

Norsola Johnson

Nina Dinoff

Victoria Takahashi

Rachelle Stromberg

Kira Ferrar

Stacey Hansen

Mark Kaplan

Jo Hollingsworth