Free moving closures

This is one of those ideas that has taken me literally for ever to resolve.  It’s been in and out of drawers and pushed to the back of my table far too many times.  No more, I need this idea to finish some necklaces I have planned – especially since I personally prefer a shorter necklace length.  Can’t go over the head all the time…
I’m also planning to sell some of them (and others) in the shop so you’ll see in the photos that I have left the wire unfinished and sticking out of the mechanism (with some length) so that anyone who buys it to use in their work can make design choices about how it joins on.  This may be changed, we’ll see how it goes.


                   
                  




You might be wondering why these are at all novel and it’s this simple feature:  the wire stays stationary (attached to your necklace ) while you screw and unscrew the clasp.  No more tension on the screw buried in the decorative part of the closure that will cause it to undo...and the  closure itself looks more like a bead than anything else.



                                           
Undone…
                                                

There is a simple construction/mechanism that I designed ( I hesitate to use the word mechanism because it is very simple) that lets the wire move freely within the bead, but remain securely attached!  Very handy.  Great for bracelets as well and a bit of a change from a toggle!  


                                            




There are also some other types of clasps I’ve been working on – these for example.  Two arms are joined by a screw and a polymer covered nut joins and secures the two sides.

                               
                                                        




                                                     


I have plans for much smaller and more ‘fine-boned’ closures of this type, but I need to source out really good quality tiny machine screw and nuts.  Perhaps my optometrist could help me here?  Or perhaps you other maker types out there?
Then, there’s this:  enough said….



                                               



I’ve certainly had an interesting couple of months to start the year.  Best described as alternately exciting and frustrating.  I have 5 or 6 ideas that are all fascinating to me, but were going nowhere for the longest while.  This was one of them!  It feels good to have made some progress, because my  store has surely suffered for my inability to move forward: this state of mind often moves into other areas that have no reason to be stalled!


Back tomorrow with news of a shop update: it’ll be a big one….also some other big news!

Surfacing

It's March and I'm coming up for air. With a little luck (and some careful planning ) I should be able to keep my head above it all.

My apologies for the protracted absence. I know what it's like to like a blog and then you keep checking and there's...nothing.  And then you secretly worry if the blogger is ok.  Rest assured, there is really not a thing wrong except the process of life which has been full of both wonderful and unpleasant challenges.  As life is...

I'm at the end of a looong period of....what?  Paralysis of will might be the best way to describe it.  Lots of changes going on here and far too much to do had the unpleasant effect of making it impossible for me to decide how to start or finish anything.  The bright side in all this is that the ideas have kept coming so that the notebook is full...yeah, yeah, you've heard it all before.  Now I have to produce the goods, as it were....

A few new projects are in the works - more about those later.  This is just a hellllloooo out there, how are you sort of post, with the shamefaced announcement that I'll be updating my shop tommorow morning with 30 new listings ( I can hardly believe it myself.)  Included in those listings will be some of the beads you see in this post.  It's a very long overdue update, and I have 20 more listings to go up by the end of the week.  NOT included in tomorrow's update are Hollow Pod beads (singletons or pairs).  Pods will be listed on Thursday at noon!

I can at least deal with the work I've already finished, right?
What a maroon I am, sometimes....

Nastasha revisited and reworked

Have you ever looked back to see what first sparked your interest in the medium you work with now?  Recently, while cleaning out my clogged workroom, I unearthed some of the original products of my first obsession with polymer.  Natasha beads, ( aka inside-out beads) in all their perfect symmetrical cane-i-ness, represented for me at that time all the fabulous design potential of polymer.  And all this yuminess was available without actually having to be good at caning because of the accidental nature of each design.  For me, it was also a natural carryover from the making of millefiore in glass, something with which I was very familiar.

I've since lost my taste creating perfect symmetry (not least because I have no patience..) - primarily because I lack the skill to produce symmetrical canes/designs in polymer that really sing and have depth.  Those amazing canes that make use of skinner blends and colors that are finely tuned to work for maximum effect in miniature....I hold my breath when I see the work of artists in polymer who can really do this well.  But these Natasha beads in my hand?  Pedestrian, to say the least.  How could I breathe some life into something that I seemed to have loved so well?   Go back to what you know.....

In glassblowing, the movement inherent in the forming process naturally adds zest and life to the most overworked designs, especially when you have trained yourself to work 'hot', and always keep the glass as fluid as possible.  It is the land of 'the happy accident', particularly when you are learning.  (And when you are learning, you can't remember how you did it...)  It is these qualities precisely that make glass a magical, energetic and challenging medium.  The glass is a fluid, first and always, and that state adds a quality that is difficult for the hand to duplicate in any other material.

Seizing on this idea of movement, I felt that if the symmetrical planes in the bead could 'flow' to form differently shaped beads ( something other than a squared off brick...)  In doing this, it would be difficult and perhaps not entirely desirable to maintain  perfect symmetry, but the resulting mirror images would be more distortions or memories of each other...sisters, rather than twins!  Fanciful for a little bead, I know...

I contented myself by doing the obvious and making rounded ends to the rectangles - bullets - then bullets with a twist.  Then paint and surface texture entered the picture a little...
I called this set 'Smoke on Cherry Blossom'...

At this point, all of these experiments were made using my scrap pile - always, the perennial challenge of the scrap pile....

Then, the corners of the Natasha 'brick' began to move outwards, and the bead to shorten - they became propellers and pods and mostly maintained their symmetry.  It surprised me how a small change in  the shape entirely changed the character of the final piece.

  I started in earnest at this point to etch and scratch away at the emerging and disappearing lines, the remains of the original perfect mirror images.  I even investigated triangular forms (see diagram) which became pendant shapes (I think).

 Applying paint to the surface of course pulled the etching forward and also removed the very plastic quality of the polymer (of which I am not fond), and emphasized the now (to me, at least) more dynamic quality of the symmetrical lines.  Reading this pompous paragraph back to myself, I have to laugh - as a glass artist I was forever sandblasting my glass pieces because I disliked the 'glassy' quality of glass.  I guess I haven't changed, because I don't like the 'plasticky' quality of plastic, either!

Sorry about this long and rather wordy post about work in progress, it's really a result of thinking about where things come from in my experiments.  I'm not usually so analytical, but it's sometimes interesting (and perhaps a little alarming) to trace an evolution and realize with some regret, and some relief, that I really haven't changed over the years.

Working hollow

I said on my last post that I'd be back to talk about bracelets...

It seems like a timely post if you are a follower of Polymer Clay Daily, as Cynthia Tinapple is showing the new work of Ford and Forlano.  Based on using hollow tubes with multiple layers of colours (shown by slicing) which are then sliced into beads and assembled, this new work is exciting to me personally because working hollow is my preferred way to use polymer!  There are so many ways to use it, although, like every technique in polymer, it is not without its difficulties.  I just can't seem to do solid stuff and this must be a result of working with inflated forms in glass for 18 years..(I couldn't work sculpting solid glass either but if you're interested look here at the work of Pino Signoretto!)

I also want to thank Maggie Maggio for most generously sharing her 'split ring' tutorial with the polymer community.  It planted a seed in my mind about how to make hollow bracelets smaller, by enabling them to stretch over even my ham hands (18 years of  working glass has some fallout - oh the scars!) without breaking!  Being smaller, they look better on and don't clunk annoyingly round on your wrist.  Being hollow, they have a lot more flex than solid polymer, although there is a limit and you have to choose your polymer carefully.  I wonder what clay Ford and Forlano use?

My interest with these bracelets is to make this natural, tendrilly form present a canvas for decoration - colour and more particularly - texture.  It is easy enough to make a stretched smooth hollow form, because as you stretch and elongate polymer, the textures blur, so I've found the initial lump that forms the bracelet is quite (hideously) different to the final piece. It is not like reducing a cane, where, if you are good at it, you confidently expect everything to be the same but in miniature!  The thought process is more, 'How will this 4 inch piece of polymer look when it is elongated to 1 and a half feet?'  You have to be prepared to go with the flow on this....Of course, you can then fire the piece and add things to it, but those marks and additions can be really out of sync with the form unless you are careful.  I'm getting better at adding things that don't jar the final feeling.

I think of this one as driftwood for your arm, I like the minimal colour (a little odd for me).

Altogether now!

 

I'm still testing the durability of these - I'll be wearing some white blanks that I've made over the holidays and taking them on and off a lot so, we'll see.  Meanwhile, think hollow!  I've got a lot of new ideas for thinning out the wall thickness as well.

I suspect I won't be back to blog until the new year, so I'm sending out a very big thank you to all of the people who've taken the time to read my blog and follow it.  I have over 100 followers now (105 to be pedantically precise..) and I enjoy reading your comments and suggestions so much!  Ah, idea!  I'm going to have a giveaway in January for one these bracelets and one of you lovelies can road test it for me. ( Let's hope it doesn't end up as roadkill...)  And on that note - happy holidays and a huge rest to all of you - particularly jibby and juna, whose fingers are sore!
                     

Giving in

Sometimes you just have to give in to the urge to work something through - even if the timing couldn't be worse!  In the last few days I've been struggling with the ongoing paint job at the house (enough said), listing on Etsy, making some custom orders and helping the kids finish their Halloween costumes (required for school tomorrow).  I swore I would not help them this year, but somehow last night I helped my son make a matador hat and today I have to finish the edges of a bird costume that my daughter has almost finished.  She is actually becoming quite handy with a sewing machine - an essential life skill in my little world...

When those serendipitous things happen in your work, it is such a gift that you should just accept it and work with it instead of struggling.  Sometime ago I bought a set of metallic paints to use with polymer, but every time I tried them the result was so disappointingly garish that I would throw all the results away and curse my inability to resist temptation in art supply stores.

These new beads came about as a result of using up scrap bits of transfers and putting them onto the surface of my hollow beads.  It occurred to me that this might be a good way to use metallic, because there is some movement in the action of applying the metallic tile to the bead which removes the static quality of painted metallic.  It's this quality that I think I've identified as being the one I dislike.

It started late one night (after cleanup) with this set of beads -

You can see the tile and the random texture I used to fill the intervening spaces - nature abhors a vacuum and so, apparently, do I!

Then a couple of days later I dragged out the metallic paints...do you ever have an idea you think is great and might work but you are almost afraid to try it because  you will be so disappointed when it doesn't work?  That mindset, that's how it was...this little fellow popped  up because stripes are on my mind.

I liked the fact that the metallic paint was visible, starting to break up, and married well with the texture.  So then these followed, all  taking little tiny steps towards other ideas.

I do like the painterly landscape quality of this particular set.  What's fun is learning to control the degree of spread of the tiles, and you do have a LOT of control - which I like.

This is the last one so far -

It has a quietness about it because the metallic is buried under translucent. Just one of the literally hundreds of possible variations for this technique.  I'm wondering if anyone would be interested in a tutorial on this technique, or if it is just my current enthusiasm that is making me a little blind here?  Do let me know!

Sorry for the long post - if I could discover how to put photos side by side on Blogger I would be a happy woman!  I think I must be missing something very obvious...