Dreary, Cloudy Day

Here's a bracelet I made out of pewter beads, Chinese crystals, base metal wire, and beading wire. I wanted to make a bracelet that would have fringe hanging down from it. I did make the bracelet, but I haven't made the fringe yet. The bracelet doesn't fit properly and I'm not sure whether I want to take the time to put the extra work into it. I could modify the way it fits and then put fringe on it. Of course, I could put the fringe on it and if it works well, I could modify the fit.

There are so many decisions to make when it comes to artwork and crafts. If you design something yourself, you do have to figure out the design problems. I like doing that with jewelry though, because it does take a certain amount of engineering to get a piece just right, and it's small. I envision making huge big sculptures, but the design problems are magnified by the size. I think it's better to stick with jewelry, at least at this point.

I spent a great deal of time modifying the scans of my etching plates and pencil drawings. Then I formatted about five or six of them into a card format complete with my name, address, etc., so that it would print on the back of the card. I ordered envelopes and cellophane bags to put the cards in. Today I was going to try printing out a few, to see how they look. And would you believe, I can't find the files. Gosh. I'm usually very good about keeping my hard drive organized and tidy, but I cannot find those files. I've looked in every directory and folder. I know I'm getting older, but I didn't expect to lose things on my computer. I lose things in my house, my car, and my studio all the time. But not my computer. Oh, well. I'll do them again I guess.

We had an extra Board Meeting here at Spanish Village this morning, so I have to do the minutes for those. If I wait, I never get them done until the last minute. Then I'll work on my scans again. And the other thing I want to do is get out some of my older sketchbooks at home and do some more scanning. I don't like the idea of printing originals of my etchings and then selling them as greeting cards, but scans of plates and drawings that are modified is different.

Some of the artists in the Village have said that they don't find the greeting cards cost affective, and they may not be, but I don't think art is all about money. It can't be. It has to be about self-expression and then if money comes afterwards that's fine. Gosh, now I don't sound like a very good business woman.

Return Clients

Here are some more of Jon's plants that are blooming. And now we've had some rain, so we may see all kind of blooms soon. The purple plant has little pink flowers on it. I think it's a wandering jew. And the other one with green leaves has a white bud. I don't know what it is. A lotus? I sort of doubt it, but we'll see when it comes out.

I had a particularly nice day today. It was cold and cloudy, and I was cold. The nice thing about the day was that two of my former clients came by wearing necklaces I had made. The one is a women who comes periodically and I recognized her right away and also the necklace. But I had never met the other woman. She purchased my necklace at one of the Village Silent Auctions. It's a necklace that I had worn myself and was very fond of it, I looked at her, and said, "I like your necklace." When she told me she got it at a Silent Auction, I said, "Oh, I made that necklace." And she said one of the other jewelers said she thought I had made it. That made such a nice day for me. It was nice that they also each bought another necklace, but I would have been happy anyway.

Well, this is short this evening, because I couldn't get onto the internet earlier, and now it's late. We have a Board Meeting in the morning, so I want to be alert and rested.

It's Raining, It's Pouring

So once again, I tried to add an image and couldn't. So I went to the Help section of Blogger and there was a suggestion that I turn off my pop-up blocker. I did that and now here is the image I wanted. It's a wonderful, strange looking bloom on the little cactus plant right behind it. The bloom is larger than the stalks of the plant. It looked fuzzy, but I was hesitant to touch it, because I thought it might have spines on it. I took this photo several days ago. I'm sure it's gone now. I've never seen another bloom like it in the Village.

Today it rained in the morning, quite hard. The weather service has been predicting rain every Friday for I don't know how many weeks now. Several weeks ago, we had a few drops and that was it, but last night and this morning we had quite a bit, for us, that is. We get very little rain in San Diego, so really, it wasn't probably more than half an inch, but we desperately need it. We're having a terrible drought.

Because it was raining, I wound up spending the whole day in my studio. I suppose I could have come out in the early afternoon and remained outside, but I spent time trying to straighten up my stuff. I don't know that it looks much better, but I did try to stack all my plastic boxes of beads, enamels, and ceramics at one end of my display table so that there's a little bit of room for a display at one end.

Even though lots of people say an artist's studio should be messy and a jumble of stuff, I still feel embarrassed by mine at times. I'm certainly not the neatest person in the world, but I do like to have everything more or less organized. At this point, I think I can say I know where almost everything is in my studio. I'm not sure I could have said that this morning.

Tomorrow, I'll go on with my projects. I've been working on a black beaded bag. I'm probably more than half way finished with the body of the bag. I'll have to decide what kind of strap I want to put on it and how the fringe will look. And then I want to embellish it. I was going to use it as a Dia de los Murtos piece, but I may reconsider. The matte black beads I'm using would look really nice with some sparkly colored ones embroidered on it. That was my original intent.

Trial and Error

I'm trying to create a new post. First I couldn't upload the photo I had chosen, and now I've just lost the post that I had written. Such is life with a computer. Sometimes you just can't get the computer to do what you want it to.

I do spend time with the computer, looking up information on the internet. I must say, you certainly can find a whole world of amazing stuff if you look around on the web. I've spent several days now looking at photos of polymer clay beads. Some of them are rather pedestrian and some of them are amazing, beautiful and intricate.

Yes, I'm still looking at and thinking about polymer clay. But I'm determined that I'm not going to just plunge right in with it. I've been doing some reading. I find there are a number of websites that have information about polymer clay and directions for creating various projects. And of course, the thing about looking at polymer clay is that I see various color schemes. That's helpful to me now while I'm working with seed beads and the various colors they come in.

Well, I'm going to go ahead and post this before I lose it, too, and hope to have better luck tomorrow night.

Exchanging Ideas

Here's a plant that grows right near my table. I love the way some succulents have slightly pink edges, as though they're blushing, maybe at all the attention they get. But I don't begrudge them the attention. Although the plants in Spanish Village belong to and are maintained by the artists, with a few exceptions, the whole of Balboa Park is known for its botanical specimens. At one time the San Diego Zoo, part of the Park, advertised itself as having the largest collection of plants in the world, as well as the largest collection of animals. I don't know if that's still true about the plants or the animals, but certainly it gives us the opportunity of observing a great variety of interesting plants.

I'm continuing to work on beadweaving although today I did spend some time on a bracelet of a slightly different style. I made a prototype out of inexpensive beads and wire to see how the design would work. As I make different kinds of bracelets, I see what some of the design issues are. Over the weekend, I made a bracelet that I thought would be just the right length, but without adding an extra ring, the clasp wasn't right. When I added another ring, the bracelet was too long. At this point, I've got several bracelets that are too long. Because the beadweaving consists of "weaving" the beads altogether, it's much harder to undo them than it is with wire components which can be cut off individually. I'm still learning.

If I make a bracelet with a single strand of wire and beads, or strung or knotted beads, there's no problem with the clasp. However, if I make a wide bracelet, I have a choice of putting one clasp in the middle of the end or two clasps, one at the top and one at the bottom. But the wrist is narrower near the hand and wider as it progresses towards the elbow. Or at least mine is. Most of the examples of bracelets in books and magazines have one or two buttons or beads with loops to fasten the bracelet, but I don't like that solution. I want something more professional looking. And, of course, ideally I'd like to make my own clasps. I'm working on it and my unconscious mind is working on it, too, I hope.

Today a friend came to sit next to me at my table and work on some jewelry. I enjoy having her company. I like my work, and I don't mind working alone, but it's nice to have company at times. And it's nice to discuss ideas and projects. That's one of the most valuable things about being where we are: having interaction with other artists. I know that when I worked in the computer field, I always spent time talking to other people who were knowledgeable about computers. I still do that. Thank goodness I can talk to Philip about computers, and there are lots of artists to talk to as well.

There weren't many visitors in the Village today, but one woman spent time watching us work and commented that she found it so interesting to see how each artist organizes their space and their materials as well as doing their work. She asked me about whether all beads were strung with a thread and needle. So I explained that it is only for some types of jewelry making, specifically beadwork or beadweaving. Those are the kinds of things we take for granted, but visitors frequently have questions. I enjoy explaining my work to visitors.

Patterns and Their Variations

Here's a photo of a succulent that grows in front of Jon's studio. I love the pattern of the leaves. Of course, there are lots of patterns in nature. They have a nice, comfortable feel about them. I think we try to find patterns in events that occur around us and that involve us.

Patterns are nice in art. I favor them myself. But it's also nice to get away from them, too, or to show variations that are not so obvious. Variations are one of the interesting aspects of classical music, the mind playing with an idea. I find myself doing that when I'm thinking about a project. I start with one idea and then carry it through to a variation or a new twist until I'm in a completely different spot than when I started. But of course, that means I now have five, seven, ten ideas for projects and I can never do them all. Well, I suppose I could if I turned off my thinking, if I took off my thinking cap for awhile.

A good place to use a thinking cap is doing cardio at the gym or driving in the car, anywhere where you don't have to pay too much attention to what you're actually doing. I can also think when I'm working on my jewelry because lots of that is repetitious for the most part. I can't do that though if I'm working on variations in a necklace, for example.

When I'm feeling kind of lazy, I make a necklace with a set pattern. When I'm pushing myself, I do variations on a pattern, something asymetrical. The asymetrical is much more interesting but it takes a whole lot more work, a whole lot of thought. The seed beads are really good for patterns and lack of patterns because there are lots of colors to choose from.

When I have a nice strand of green garnets or tourmaline or pearls, I don't really want to do much with them besides show them off in a plain necklace. But if the stones are not so high quality, it is nice to combine them and even make them asymetrical. I like using small pearls with various stones such as garnets or lapis lazulia. That gives the piece a classic look which I don't think you can beat very easily.

Deciding Not To Start A New Medium

Here's a photo I took several days ago. It shows the golden rain tree outside my studio. You can see there are some yellow blossoms, but I don't think there are very many. It's been a very dry year and so there may not be many. And some of the ones that have appeared have already changed into the orange seed pods.

We had some cold weather last weekend, but now it seems to be back to the normal fall weather. When it seemed we were going to have a strong storm, I put both my umbrellas away, but we never got much rain. I thought since the sun is dropping in the sky to the south that I could get away with leaving my umbrellas inside until spring, but I'm not sure now. I've spent several afternoons feeling extremely warm.

In the last week or so, I've been spending time working on modifying my scanned etching plates and drawings with PaintShop Pro. I'm getting better at working with the program. I use to use it about 10 years ago and it's nice I can still remember. I need to refresh my memory when it comes to layers, though. I was just learning about that before.

I've mostly finished my amulet purse, except for the fringe and the closure. I'll have to work on it some more. I'm a little bit unsure about the fringe. I don't want it to be too overpowering which seems to be a common failing with many of the examples I've looked at. And the other problem is that the bottom row of beads is not quite straight, so the fringe may be hard to apply just right. I may have to kind of "eyeball" the whole thing.

Today was my day off, but I spent time working with PaintShop Pro and then later investigating polymer clay. It's a medium I've been curious about for quite awhile. But it would be a whole new skill, of course, and I'm not sure I want to go in that direction right now. Later, maybe, but not now. I'm still engrossed in the beadwork.