Changing Creative Gears

I made a . . . hmmm, I don't know what to call it. It's a display made out of ribbon, hopefully to catch peoples' attention. You can see it there next to the tree, but it's not very noticeable, certainly not from very far away. But I did see people looking at it when they went by. And I am getting traffic in my studio. When people walk toward the glassblowing platform to the left of the trees, they see the light in my studio and come in.

I spent the day making earrings. I hadn't made more than a few pairs in the past, mostly just ones for myself. But recently I got a display stand to put them on. I think it will hold about 50 pairs when I'm finally finished making that many pairs. I made five pairs on Thursday and eleven pairs today. It took me awhile to get started and to start thinking about how to make the earrings. But once I got into the swing of it, I made better progress. The actual assembly time is very short, compared to a bracelet or necklace of course. But earrings take time to create. It's so much easier to make a necklace out of a single strand of beads or even a number of strands of beads in a pattern. Once you get going, you don't have to think anymore. But with earrings, you have to keep thinking up combination after combination of beads.

Tomorrow I intend to sit outside. It's hard to do when I'm working on earrings, because I kept looking through all my boxes of beads. But tomorrow I'll figure out something I can make, a necklace that doesn't require so much inventory all at one time. The June gloom is definitely gone, and it would be nice to sit outside under the umbrella.

One thing I did do was go over to the Enamel Guild which occupies one of the studios in Spanish Village. They have a jump shear that cuts metal. I took some copper pieces over and cut them in preparation for creating some etching plates. Now I just need to figure out what I did with the asphaltum that I have. The asphaltum is used to cover the copper plate as a resist to the acid. In order to create the etching itself, I will take an etching needle and draw into the asphaltum to expose the metal. Everywhere the metal is exposed, the acit will bite into it and create a groove. The groove is then filled with ink and when the plate is covered with a piece of damp paper and rolled through the printing press, the etching is printed on the paper. If I can find some asphaltum, either liquid or cake, I can start the etching process. I've already got out my sketchbook.