Whatcha doing May 16th?

Do you have plans next Thursday –May 16th — at 11 a.m. (MST)? I’d love for you to join me for my live webinar with Cloth, Paper, Scissors online editor Cate Prato. We’ll be talking about one of my most favorite subjects — found objects for collage, assemblage and mixed-media jewelry. I’ve been working hard on the powerpoint presentation for this online class. In addition to making a new collage that I’m teaching step-by-step how to create, I’ve been having a blast taking some crazy fun pictures of the all the odd bits and pieces I’ve collected throughout the years for mold making and casting. The webinar will give a small peek into my studio where I show the displays I have of my lovely vintage treasures.

I know I’ve said this before, but I adore casting found objects. My favorite medium for it is a two-part molding putty. Despite the fact that I’m not much into representational art, I really enjoy casting found objects in ICE Resin and then do all kinds of lovely surface designs to recreate the objects so convincingly that it takes a good eye to see the difference between the real object an its reproduction.

As much as I can go on and on about found object, making molds and casting, I must stop right now and save some information for next week. Here is the link to sign up for my webinar Found Objects; Searching For Texture, Style and Relief.

For those of you who work during the day, I’m pretty sure you can sign up for this webinar and get a link to listen to it  later. Also, Interweave is including a discount coupon for my new DVD Breaking Out of the Mold if you purchase the webinar.

Hope to see you there. Have an Artful Day!

CREATE workshops

It’s that time of year when I’m starting to gear up for the next round of teaching and workshops across the country. It’s been nice to be home working in my studio since March, but I find myself getting a little itchy as the days tick by and the retreats draw near. In just a few weeks, I will be in Orange County, California for the Cloth, Paper, Scissors CREATE art retreat. I do love this event, as my fellow instructors are so darn inspiring with their class offerings and the students are radiate with positive energy as they are learning and creating. Talk about being in the flow!

I’m teaching 4 workshops — 2 all day ones and then 2 evening classes. Like always, I’ve packed a lot of instruction into them. We always end the day with a completed project, but I structure my workshops so we begin with basic techniques and build on them as the minutes and hours progress. We work up to things logically, but so quickly, that my students will often say halfway through “Wow, I had no idea we’d be doing so much!” I love it when that happens.

So for all you West Coasters with a little bit of time on your hands and who want to make art, check out the CREATE website and all the incredible class offerings. Not just mine, but also my dear friends Kristen Robinson, Ruth Rae, Elena Lai Etcheverry, Pam Carriker, Kari McKnight Holbrook, and Joanne Sharpe. You can see all their bios here. Remember if you are looking for unique art supplies, handmade art from some of your favorite instructors and unique mixed-media jewelry to wear, the Artist Faire is free and open to the public. I’m working on some pieces from my book to sell, specifically metalwork bangles, rings and earrings.

Here are pics of my classes:

Resin clay, painting, texture, hand building, fiber jewelry, cold connection attachment, making clasps and findings

Cold enamels, texturizing, forging, dapping, doming, disc cutter, cold connection – lots of fundamental metalwork.

Heart’s Desire journal. Resin, resin paper, fabric flowers, doodling, stamping, surface texture, forged wirework. Lots of technique packed into one workshop!

Cold-Enameled Heart Necklace class. Learn all new enameling techniques for adding color to metal and also advanced resin techniques as well, plus metalworking of making forged neck collars and handmade findings.

Textured Circles and Creativity

Textured Circles is one of the workshops I’m teaching this year. I designed this workshop as I was writing my book, Making Metal Jewelry, because I’m wanting to teach some beginning metalworking classes that are fun and simple, but absolutely in line with the fundamentals one needs to learn when first starting to work with metal.

I’ve thought a lot about the silversmithing instruction I received at my community college. My instructor – a 4th generation goldsmith – developed his classes using the exact same learning methods that his father, grandfather and great-grandfather employed. Not that there is anything wrong being a purist, in my humble opinion, other than it sucks the life out of creativity. There is definitely something to be said for starting at the beginning and honing one’s skills. However, my overriding problem with this type of traditionalist instruction is that it’s boring. Plain and simple. BORING! The other problem is that traditional silversmithing instruction often has haughty air about it, which can be intimidating to beginners.

Again, it’s my humble belief art shouldn’t be intimidating. Creativity is spontaneous, joyful, free, introspective and unfettered. Even when writing about the visual arts a decade ago, I choose to interview artists whose work had something to say. The expression of art has always been more important to me than technical perfection. This viewpoint would often put me at odds with gallery owners and other art critics who continued to voice acclaim for the same artists; the ones whose technical skills were refined but who, again in my opinion, failed to reinvent, or even push, themselves. What good is a perfectly technical painting when it’s been done over and over? What exactly does it say? How does it inspire? What does anything that tightly controlled make me feel other than reminding me of my grandma’s girdles from the 1940s?

Even though I don’t express these opinions outright in my book, those who know me understand that making art accessible is one of my main missions in my teaching and publishing. I certainly want to create work that is inspiring and joyful, but I also want to be the kind of instructor who stands up in front of the room and sets the tone by saying, “Let’s have fun! You will learn more than you think you will and you will walk out of this room today with some beautiful things to wear.”

A lot of thought and preparation went into my workshops this year. For example, although the sample pics of my Textured Circles class looks rather minimalist, students will learn punching, dapping, doming, texturing with hammers and also a new high pressure rolling press called the Artisan Xplorer, annealing, quenching, pickling, filing, shaping and patinas (including our brand new cold enameling). All of these metalworking fundamentals are tightly packed into this 3 hour workshop. It’s metalworking 101 in a fast-paced and totally fun learning environment.

I’m teaching this workshop three times this year (four actually, as I taught it in Tucson in February); CREATE Orange County, the Bead and Button Show in Milwaukee and Art Unraveled in Phoenix. If you happen to live close by any of these retreats, or if you feel like jumping on a plane and coming to meet me in person, it would be an honor to see you and have you in my classes. Also, be sure to check out all the other amazing instructors at these venues. Wowza…talk about creativity being unfettered!

Here’s wishing you a truly Artful weekend. Go have fun! Life is too short to be boring.

In the Studio

This weekend has been spent in the studio making jewelry to sell next week at Adorn Me, the mixed-media jewelry retreat in Houston, Texas. I finished new samples for my classes.  Proposals for workshops are usually due a year in advance, so try to go in right before I teach and freshen up my work a bit. Since I bought some really wonderful new beads, charms and fibers to work with at the To Bead True Blue show in Tucson, I was itching to get into my studio and play.

I really adore Green Girl Studios and all their whimsical charms. My dear friend, Carol LaValley, was shopping with me and fell in love with a flying pig charm. I spotted these new chubby little potato fairy charms with sweet wings resting above a little rump and just had to have them. I kept the necklace design simple here by focusing on the Cold Enameled Heart bezel, where I used our brand new Iced Enamels in ivory and filled it with ICE Resin, of course, and then made a charm dangle using the fairy. A tiny bit of this gorgeous pink velvet ribbon from Thailand that I discovered at a friend’s booth in Tucson adds the final pop of color. This little wee baby will be up for sale at the Adorn Me expo.

For all you Texans out there, my Bangle Angle class is nearly full, but there are still spots open in my other classes. If you are around next weekend and want to make some jewelry with me, I’d love to see you there!

Here’s wishing you a truly Artful week.

Seaside funnies and wrap up

Me and Elena the day before Seaside Soiree began.

If there is one thing I have learned over the years making mixed-media jewelry is that my style is definitely not everyone’s cup ‘o tea. While some people truly “get” me and my funky, artsy style there are others — like my very own mother-in-law — who respond to my work with descriptive words such as “interesting” or “nice” or “wow, different”. I admit it, at one time it used to bruise my ego just a tad when I heard these things because I knew it meant they didn’t like my work. I’ve so gotten over this as I continue to make work and grow as an artist. The bottom line is that I have to like my work. No one else. I’ve learned there are, indeed, other souls who view this world through the same quirky glasses I do and, somehow, we seem to find each other.

I bring this up because of Brooke. I met her this past weekend when I was teaching at Seaside Soiree in beautiful La Jolla, California right at the Scripps Institute with gorgeous ocean views. Brooke is a former Marine and a very dear friend of Elena’s. She worked her booty off as a volunteer at the art retreat, setting up decorations and picking up trash and doing her best to keep things running smoothly. Brooke is not a crafter. She doesn’t get the fascination of playing with inks, paints, resin, etc. She swears whatever she tries to do that’s crafty doesn’t work out.

I was so surprised when Brooke came up to me at the end of the night after the ladies had all poured their ICE Resin bezels and asked to make one. She swore up and down hers would be terrible and the resin would be sticky or not come out. I shrugged my shoulders and told her that it’s nearly impossible to mess up ICE Resin. Guess what? I was right. Brooke made a gorgeous collage and glitter bezel in ICE and it turned out perfectly.

Brooke’s face says it all…

I saw Brooke again Saturday night at the Seaside dinner and art auction. I was wearing a resin casting ring. I made a mold of a ceramic doll’s head and then painted it to finish it off. I then embedded the head in layers of resin paper and set it into one of our Art Mechanique prong rings. I happen to love my ring and wear it when I dress up. When Brooke saw the cast doll head, her expression said it all. She was so shell-shocked that she couldn’t even come up with the words “nice” or even “fine”. I burst out laughing at her reaction so loudly that Avila, one of the other ladies attending the retreat, snapped a photo.

I had a wonderful time at Seaside. It was my second year volunteering to teach to help Elena raise money for Charity Wings and I think it was even better than last year. About 40 very talented and very creative women participated and gave myself, Danita Art and Jennifer Priest an incredible outpouring of love and respect. I won’t be returning next year, as I have a pretty full teaching schedule for 2013 already, but I will definitely be there for Elena and Charity Wings when they open the doors to their new art center.

Here are a few more Seaside pics…

Carol LaValley, our social media curator for ICE Resin having fun painting her dress form

Pretty collaged and poured ICE Resin bezels and also resin paper for the journal class I taught the next day.

Photo tip for rings

One of the things I’m most proud of with my new book is that my wonderful editor and the kind folks at F&W (North Light Books) allowed me to do my own photography. If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, you might remember that while I was in the middle of shooting my beauty shots (what publishers call the main photos of your art pieces/projects), I was second guessing my ability to play professional photographer.

I’ve been fascinated with photography since collage when I took two semesters and learned how to do it from shooting manual pics (which one had to do with a 35mm camera back then) all the way to darkroom development of the images. I consider myself an amateur photographer, but since I did all of my pics for my first book, I thought it would be fun to do it all over again.

It was A LOT of work. I’m not sure at the moment if I will do it again for my third book, but for now, I’m happy when I see Making Metal Jewelry and look at the way I styled my pics and shot them.

I know many of you who follow my blog make your own beautiful jewelry. One of the hardest things to shoot well are rings. They never look as good laying on their sides, and it’s difficult to get them to stand up straight. I wanted to share a tip I learned during my process of shooting jewelry for publication. Use a small dot of modeling clay or a little bit of that sticky stuff by 3M that you use to hang pictures in your kids rooms or on the fridge.

Be sure to use natural light and a neutral background surface (I have a small set of white ceramic serving plates that I love to style with because they are neutral but shiny so they can catch the light, which allows the metal to sparkle in the photo). An example of this tip is seen here. I rolled up some modeling clay, stuck it to the bottom of my ring and then to the plate, set up the area in my studio that I use for photography and here are the results.   For this little tutorial, I didn’t pull out my lighting tent that I nearly always use when shooting for publication because well, frankly, I’m being a little lazy. Hopefully though there is enough here with these pics to give you the gist.

Here’s another tip, when you shoot your pictures you might see a little bit of the clay poking through. There is where it’s good if you know the basics of  Photoshop Elements or another photo editing program because you can zoom in close and erase those little protruding bits of clay. I left the clay in these photographs that I would normally whisk away in Photoshop so you can see how much I used and how I placed it on the plate for the rings to stand up correctly.

I made these ocean-themed rings using real shells and a sealer cost of resin for Seaside Soiree, which I’m teaching at Nov. 30-Dec. 1 in San Diego. If you are local and want to see me, please stop by the vendor fair Sunday afternoon. I will have ICE Resin products to sell along with some of my jewelry. The art fair is free and open to the public. Elena and the girls will even be putting out sprinkled cupcakes and lemonade for free refreshments too.

Also — just so you know. These prong rings are super simple to make even though they look like complicated metalwork. Why? Well because I used the cast white bronze Art Mechanique  rings available for purchase on our company website. Check them out!

 

2 Spots Left for Seaside Soiree

The last 10 days or so, I hung  do not disturb sign on my studio an let everyone at work know that was going into art making mode; overdrive. I have two major deadlines – one I can talk about and another I can’t yet. Between the two, I need to create 25 brand new pieces of work. Yikes! That’s how many I had to make for my book. My heart took a crazy roller coaster ride while I had a momentary freak out. Then, I did like I always do. I took a deep breath, sucked it up and went to work.

Tonight, I’m packing 10 of the new collages, assemblages and jewelry up for my DVD shoot Tuesday with Cloth, Paper, Scissors. I’m off to Colorado tomorrow morning and, although I feel stressed because I didn’t get a chance to practice at home from start to finish, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.

As for the other big thing in the works, I have made 13 pieces — all jewelry — and I have another two to go when I get home. I hope to make an additional two to throw in for good measure. I try really, really hard to keep editors happy. (grin)

My Seaside Soiree packet for guests and instructors arrived in the mail this past week. Love the altered sea glass necklace handmade for everyone by Miss Vicky. She rocks!

While I was working, I heard from Elena there are only 2 spots left in Seaside Soiree at the end of the month in gorgeous San Diego at the Scripps Institute. I will be teaching a fun journal using ICE Resin and some wirework and all kinds of painting, stamping and resist techniques. This event is a fundraiser for Charity Wings. It’s the only event Elena does each year to specifically raise administrative funds for her 501C3 organization in order to keep up the crazy event schedule she does the rest of the year raising money for all kinds of amazing charities.

If you happen to be local and you don’t necessarily want to attend the long weekend, you can still support the organization by coming to the amazing dinner and art auction Saturday night, Dec. 1st. Tickets are $50, a great tax write off and also a chance to bid and win some incredible original art.

Check out Charity Wings website for more info.

Wish me luck this week. I’m praying for grace and ease in front of the camera, as well as not too many “ummms” and “sooooooos” – my go-to nervous words.

Bon Voyage…

The time has finally come for me to get on an airplane early tomorrow morning for our workshop in France. It is going to be soooo amazing. Not much time to write, as I have to finish packing and a zillion other little details, but I thought I would share the promo video I made last year when we had only 2 spots left in our workshop. We filled those fast and had a wait list as well. We’ll be booking for next year, so take a peek and let me know if you want to join us next Fall. For now though, Au revoir mes amies!

SLK France Workshop

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How to Get Your Artwork Published

I just put the finishing touches on my last .pdf document for my upcoming workshop called The Pitch, The Project, The Paycheck that I’m teaching this coming Tuesday evening at Art Unraveled in Phoenix, Arizona. I’ve put a lot of thought and time into this lecture-style workshop because I truly wish to teach people the ins and outs of publishing and how to get their artwork featured in magazines. There is nothing quite as thrilling at that first time you pick up one of your favorite art magazines and see your work and words there in all its glory. 

As many of you know, I began my career as a newspaper reporter and, later, an editor. I really enjoyed my decade-long career doing it, but don’t regret for one moment leaving the daily grind to be a mom. When I left The Arizona Republic, I thought I was going to be an at-home mom who only occasionally did freelance. The Universe had other plans for me, as I was fortunate to take the first six months of my son’s life off work and return to a healthy freelance writing career. I was trying to add up how many articles I’ve written in 22 years and, well, I had to stop and leave it at “bunches”. All this really means is that I realize I have some good information to give and I hope to help others with my class on Tuesday, and hopefully more workshops to come.

Here’s a little preview of what I’m talking about: How to approach editors; how to write a good query email; how to find the “hook” of your story that makes editors, and ultimately readers, respond to your work; how to handle photography and how to take the right kind of photo to sell your story; editor pet peeves and how to avoid them; handling deadlines; writing a press release for important events/awards in your life; marketing your articles when their published and a lots, lots more.

There are still spots left in my class. I’m secretly hoping some of my fellow instructors sign up for it Tuesday evening. I know I’ve had more than my fair share of these types of questions and conversations at past retreats. So many of these amazing creative people have shared so much with me over the years, I would love that chance to give back a little to them.

Count Down to Art Unraveled

With the move and the changes, I have a lighter schedule this year at Art Unraveled with 2 evening classes. This is the first time I’m teaching both of these workshops though, so I’m pretty jazzed.

I seem to get lot of questions from folks wondering about the publishing process. They want to know how to submit ideas, who to submit to, how to write the letter, should they send a letter or an email? Also what to say, how to get their idea to stand out from the crowd, etc. And that’s just the very beginning. I’m teaching a workshop called The Pitch, The Project, The Paycheck to teach how to approach the publishing process — mostly magazine articles — from A to Z. I’m cramming more than 20 years of working in the newspaper and magazine industry into an evening workshop. I know it’s going to be valuable for some folks who really want to get their work out into the world, but just don’t know how to begin or what the process is.

I’m also teaching 1 Mold 3 Mediums is an introduction to mold making. I developed this class because I have so many unique found object treasures in my studio that are hard to part with. When I learned how to make molds and recreate these objects in various mediums, I became a much happier artist. Over the years, I’ve made texture molds  and molds using just interesting parts of my found objects, etc. In addition to learning to make the mold, how to get a good impression and undercuts and other tips, we’ll also be doing all kinds of lovely surface treatments to our cast pieces. The addition of color and carving, mark making and other embellishing is what helps these casts to come alive!

So if you happen to be in Phoenix on Wednesday, August 1 from 6-9 p.m. and want to learn about mold making and casting with resin, resin clay and paper clay, come on down. There are spots available.

I’m also going to be having a table at the Saturday Artist’s Fair with my art work. I have a lot of really great earrings for sale right now, along with necklaces and other pieces. I’m planning to work on a few more house encaustics to sell, but we’ll see how quickly I can get my new studio up and running.

I always adore Art Unraveled every year. I plan to pop in at least every day to see my friends and breathe all that creative air that comes from such a happy community. If you happen to read my blog and see me there, please be sure to grab me and say hi. I’d love to hear from you.