The Trials of Earrings

When I consider the items I have up for sale in my etsy shop, I realize that although necklaces take forever to make and use more materials I have approximately 5x more necklaces than earrings. I have a good reason for this.

I hate making earrings. 

Earrings can be as simple as leetle drops on a hook, but something within me rebels against this. “It’s too easy,” I think. “Anyone could do this,” I think. And yet, sometimes, I fold and make these kind. I feel cheap. But I do it. 

If I don’t make these simple drops, then things get even more complicated. Then the earrings require a design. This is hard enough. But when I think one up by trying dozens of trials on one earring and finally finish it to my satisfaction, I’m not finished. I have to make another one.

The problem with earrings is that you have to make two of them. That’s kinda the point. Furthermore, earrings are intrinsically meant to be two little matchy-matchy pieces. I have found that once I make one of them, I’m done with that design and want to do something new with the second one, which invariably makes finishing the pair a tedious process—or else an unfinished one—since I generally can’t find the parts that I want to finish the second earring to make it complement the first but not be a carbon copy. I have a very short attention span.

Why are earrings so hard?

The Creek Becomes a River

I am still alive. Just wanted to clarify that.

I spent the summer working at a veterinary clinic as a vet nurse. I've spent many hours in vet clinics before, but always as an observer or a "little helper." Never been paid before.

I worked hard. My standing muscles developed so that my back didn't ache after the 11 hours on my feet. I learned a lot. I got to do jugular blood draws, insert venous catheters, draw up and give injections, identify parasites under a microscope, and clean a lot of nasty dog/cat teeth.

School has started again, and just like that my need to blog has returned. I don't understand my neural connection between book-learning and the absolute necessity of creating new things and charting them online. My crafty drive is back - it is a river again instead of the trickling little creek it was this summer.

 

I'm trying something new with the photographs; instead of simply photoshopping, I'm trying this online editor called pixl. It's fun experimenting with it, and I enjoy the effect.This is an example of how I feel like it makes the colors pop more without making them untrue to the real colors of the piece.

You can do montages, too.

What do you think?

The Muse Has No Hands

The Muse, or Inspiration, has a thousand other names I call that feeling that grips me when I can feel a new idea tickling the back of my cerebellum. (Medically, I doubt that the Muse should be tickling at the cerebellum--it's probably somewhere in the cortex probably, but this is taking-the-metaphor-too-far.)

Sometimes the Muse seems to know exactly what it wants, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I don't think it knows how to put the feeling or picture into being. Sometimes I just second-guess it and refuse to let it do what it wants. Because, you know, the Muse has no hands.

The Muse wanted a copper bead to put into the above necklace - and these are things I made that the Muse rejected for this particular piece (mostly because the little buggers kept on taking on minds of their own and turning out quite different than I expected, but I was patient and let them do what they wanted. It's the same deal I made with my hair in high school - I let it do what it wanted, and it would in turn not look dreadful.)

This is, without question, the most frustrating part about being Intuitive (Myers-Briggs personality testing). I can only start with a vague idea of what I'm looking for (the Muse knows, but I don't), and I simply tinker and mix and discard until I end up with something that I like, regardless of how closely it resembles the foggy original picture misting through my imagination.

This is what I finally ended up with. It's very "out there," and when I finished I thought "Who's brave enough to wear this?" But the Muse insisted that I was finished, and so here it is.


And here, for no particular reason, are the posters I drew for the rooms at the CVF conference this weekend!

Natural and Rustic Show Display Ideas

I was invited to do my very first show this summer at the Columbus Avant-Garde Art & Craft Show. I’m uber excited about it, and have spent waaay too much time since then planning out my booth.

 I’m wanting to evoke a natural / rustic theme, with dark weathered wooden crates and boxes mixed with natural elements like a hulkin’ big grapewood branch, animal sculptures, and stones. 

I couldn’t resist making creatures a mini-theme, ‘cuz of the whole “vet student” thing.

I’ve been looking for day valises and small vintage suitcases to use to add height to the display, and I struck it big at a local consignment/antique shop. I found this adorable leather suitcase with two separate compartments AND this weathered white shutter that will be perfect for displaying earring cards. 

I already know that by the time the show rolls around, I will have had the opportunity to gather approximately 6 times the amount of stuff that I need to adequately display my pieces. I am steeling myself to say “NO” to the wondrous items that I know I will find, because I also know that I won’t be able to stop myself from searching, just in case the *ultimate* piece appears. 

Hee. Mebbe I could run a side business selling the extra display items that I find . . .

See? I can make things.

I've been playing with my polymer clay and leetle letter stamps. 

It started with a mammoth the Muse  demanded I make and went on from there.

 This one I drew on with a black Sharpie and then sealed with wax.

 Means, loosely translated, "Art lasts forever, life is short."

 Y'like that upside-down "e"? Yeah, I did that on purpose. Really.

 For some reason, this one is screaming, "Sexual tension." Or "Britney Spears." Yikes.

 I like this one. Looks vaguely like a continent.

Not too hokey?

After that, there were the letters.

 And the numbers.

 Alcohol inks with a sponge.

 Then reeeally fine copper wire found at a thrift store.

 And smash 'em a little with a hammer.

 That's good, clean fun for you. Actually, my fingernails are still sorta purply-red.

See? I can make stuff. Nice things! So creative. So crafty. So clever.

Rough Stuff

Rough green kyanite spikes wire wrapped in Vintaj brass wire.

 I'm at the crest of final exams, doggedly trying to prepare for next week's hellishness. And somehow, whenever I'm most set on studying and learning and "being good," that's when Inspiration turns up, smacks me on the back, and invites me to tag along. So then I feel compelled to run after Inspiration, stealing moments of frantic compiling and note-jotting, feeling vaguely guilty for every hour not spent with my nose pressed against the pages of my Musculo-Skeletal notes.

Coral, agate, opal, and rough lapis lazuli with a carved coconut flower.

I'm in a funny place, creatively. Inspiration is starting to get a foggy idea of what It likes in general, but I'm also fighting with the notion that anything I put together that isn't "unreplicatable" isn't really "art." If somebody else could waltz around, pick up all the elements that I've gathered and cobble together roughly the same creation I have--well--that makes me sort of second-rate. Doesn't it?

Brass seahorse dangle with rough apatite, horn, shell, and handmade lampwork glass.

Or is it enough that I assemble things and DESIGN them, not merely following a beading pattern and counting "One three one one five . . . " ?

Yee-ow

So this quarter of vet school has been cra-aazy so far. Every new quarter, I've heard that THIS one is the worst, and I look forward to it just so that I'll be done with it, finally. In my opinion, this one is really the hardest yet, and I've had to really scrape for time to do fun beady things.

  

I feel like I've made some sort of artistic breakthrough in the last week . . . I don't know exactly what it is, but it has to do with grabbing a bunch of reallyexcellentstuff and not being afraid to use too much goodness in one piece, and then letting the colors flitting behind my eyelids have their way with this piece and not THINKING too much. Maybe crafting more by intuition?

Also, I've been feeling a distinctive primitiveantiquedpostapocalypse vibe on and off the past couple of weeks. I have a buncha elements that I've been working with, but not much that I've been able to put together on a finished piece yet.

And, if everything works out, I'm gonna do a show or two this summer! Wheeee! I've already gotten way too excited about creating my table display. I want to create a mood, an atmosphere, not just sling a buncha pieces on a white tablecloth. There will be lots of unfinished wood and blue-green glass bottles, exotic animal sculptures and rough, natural elements.

 Preview of practice display!