Birds in the Clouds

For whatever reason, I typically make focal beads. Whether it's the repetitive boredom or the technical challenge of reproducing the same shape and size, I avoid sets. Only rarely do I find myself wanting to try. Usually, I decide that I'm nuts to want them to match, so a coordinated set of different styles is the only way to go.


The barrel beads I've been focusing on would be really nice, but a free-form shape would be easier than perfecting the size issue. So I squashed and cut ivory glass into cloud shapes, then stringer sketched in birds in tree branches.


The nest bead has a flying bird on the reverse. These remind me of my bronze Flock bracelet. Maybe I'll have to string them up into a bracelet.

Bird Bead Obsession

My bird bead obsession continues, although today I did make a few lampwork beads with just leaves, no birds.


I seem to have issues with making any two alike though. Even when I think I have a matched pair, they turn out to have been made with different stringer, brown and black for example. I guess you can easily infer that my workbench is a mess! Cleanup might be in order.


My experiments with striking colors gave beautiful backgrounds, if a bit dark. I guess I prefer the high contrast of a light background.


My absolute favorite so far is this pillow shaped bead, plain on the back for electroforming. I can't wait to get the carving going. The hole goes through vertically, so it will make an incredible pendant. I even broke down and made some plain ivory spacer beads to go with it!

Bird Tree Beads Continue

I'm continuing on with the bird tree beads. After so many, they are beginning to feel much like sketching -- the marks have come under control. Now I've started to add nests to the branches.


Today the kiln is full of different colors and shapes. I built a few larger beads, with plain backs to do carved electroforming.

Art in the Face of Weather

Bad weather is keeping me home. I would typically be visiting family between Christmas and New Years, but the wild Midwest blizzard has shut down that option for at least a few days. Instead, I've fired up the torch again to try some new ideas for backgrounds for my bird beads.


Mixing a variety of blues and greens makes a better backdrop. Leaving out the silver glass for the birds and branches, switching to black, avoids the silver reaction issues.


My attempts at mixing other colors were a bit more unpredictable. That ugly orange bead was several lighter yellows mixed (I thought!). The plain pink is boring, and the leaf bead with greens has some potential.

Today, I will try to get out there and work some further ideas, including making some cabochons to thin with the flat lap I got for Christmas.

Squeezing Art into the Holidays

I escaped from the rigors of this season yesterday for a few hours in the glass studio. I am settled in on the imagery for these bird beads, just working on color. I have visions of these in my head, but how to get there is the issue, since so many of the colors I've been working on are reactive.


Even so, as I experiment the leaves are becoming more delicate and refined and the birds are getting more detailed and expressive. Soon, I can tell, this is going to all come together. I just need more hours in the studio. Frequency would help me avoid dumb errors, like using red copper green stringer for leaves, when I thought it was regular copper green. No wonder those leaves went brown! Nice, but not what I was expecting, and I was way slow to figure it out.


To all of you who visit my blog, I wish a joyous holiday season, filled with love, peace, fun, and beauty!

Metal Clay Today Rising Star

I'm extremely flattered to report that I've been honored as a "Rising Star" by Metal Clay Today Magazine (an online magazine dedicated to metal clay). Online for all to peruse, it includes a two-page spread on my work. I was recommended for this honor by the incomparable Holly Gage. It's so exhilarating for icons in the field to recognize my early contributions.


This second issue of the magazine includes articles on a range of fascinating topics: the hot new copper clay, an artist showcase of the work of Alexandra Daini who mixes porcelain with ACS Overlay Paste, designing silver additions to glass with Zentangles (a doodling paradigm that I've played with before), and using paper form metal clay to construct tubular beads. And my bronze bird rings are on the cover!


Go read it here on pages 8 and 9!

Beyond the feature article, this blog was also included as one of the three "Best of the Blogs" selections chosen by Lori Phillips in this issue. Lori evidently particularly resonated with my November 16 post on procrastination. ;-)

Guess that's a reminder to get the holiday preparations finished, so I can sneak a few hours for art...and sit down with a cup of tea to read every smidgen of the new issue of Metal Clay Today.

Revising Metal Clay Mistakes

So what do you do when you make something that doesn't quite turn out the way you wanted? Do you sell it off at a discount? Sell the metal back for scrap? Just bury it somewhere?

This Garden Window Pendant fell into that last category for a while. There were multiple issues with the piece. I had a notion about flowers cascading that sounded good but looked off balance. Then the enamel reacted badly with the silver, making the red and yellow flowers muddy. This was the last Garden Window that I reverse painted; all the newer ones have the enamel on the top surface of the glass to protect it from the silver. Also, a large bubble formed under the glass on one side that was rather distracting. As well, this was rather plain, with a commercial clip-art tear-away texture and no further decoration. That little cluster of balls at the bottom, added to balance the offset flowers, looked like the after thought it was. The whole thing just left me cold.


When I was playing with resin and sketching recently, it occurred to me that I didn't have to live with things the way they were. So I popped the piece into the kiln for a fast ramp up to 1500 degrees. The glass started to draw up due to surface tension, the enamels burned to unattractive black, the metal took on interesting colors from the liver of sulfur burning off. Plunged hot into a container of water, the glass crackled all over. I thought the glass would just crack right out of the recess, but that didn't happen. After a couple of iterations, including hitting the glass strongly with my Little Torch, I took a tool to the glass, and dug out all the frit.


Then I did a quick watercolor sketch of a hummingbird with fuchsias on a scrap of heavy paper, cut it to fit, and sealed it with gel medium. Of course, there were other issues. Since the box is bigger than the opening, I could see the edges of the paper. Ah, I was wondering why the muses insisted that I buy two vials of aqua and turquoise micro beads this week! They're for masking the edges, of course, as I set the original painting into resin. Voila! Saved from obscurity!

Guess I shouldn't mention the recess that wasn't resin-tight, so resin leaked through to the back, nor the bubble that crept out after I wandered off during the long set up. More solutions are in order. ;-) Still, it's an improvement.

Now I'm thinking about how to resurrect some other pieces that didn't quite meet my expectations. Don't you have some needed revisions?

In case you were wondering, I've been missing in action for a week because my mother has been very ill. She is finally on the uphill, so I've returned home to catch up.

Art and Inspiration for the Holidays

Looking for a special gift for an artist on your holiday shopping list? How about a gorgeous book? Several of my friends have published their own books recently on Blurb, as did I. Blurb has a holiday special offer for $10 off an order of $29.95 or more through December 31, using the following special codes, so you can find a creative collection and save.

Orders from the US (using US $): GREATGIFT
Orders from UK (using UK £): GREATGIFT2
Orders from EU (using EU €): GREATGIFT3
Orders from AU (using AUD $): GREATGIFT4

Perhaps your gift recipient would enjoy a creative book selected from the following:


Painted Threads Mixed Media Textile Art, a portfolio of whole cloth painted art quilts and mixed media textile art by the super-talented Judy Coates Perez.


Wild at the Edges: Inspiration from a Creative Life by Virginia A. Spiegel. "Wild at the Edges" is woven from the intertwined threads of writing, photography, adventuring, and making art. "I share my inspiration and influences as well as what’s beautiful and significant in my creative life."


art. stitch. life. works 2006-2009 by Kelli Nina Perkins. "I decided that it would be nice to have a compendium of the last few years' worth of artwork at a glance, so I knocked together a 194 page book filled with art. This represents at least my favorite, if certainly not all my work."

Of course, my two books are also available. See the links in the sidebar to the right. And a huge thank you to all those who have purchased it! What's better than a nice book of your own artistic out-porings, packaged beautifully, and for which people humble you by actually buying?

Clearing Space, Reloading Etsy Shop

I've been quite remiss with listing on Etsy. Today I'm starting a campaign to clear out some of the treasures that are piled high around my studio, so that I can find the things I'm looking for!


This is the first item to make it through the photography process and get listed. It's a Retro Lovebird Pendant, similar to the one in the photo that appeared in Art Jewelry Magazine and The Glass Bead.



Check my shop as I'll be adding more items as quickly as I can get them photographed and written up.

Silver Flock Bracelet

I'm finally getting around to making some more bird bracelets. I've had links cut out for some time now, but this weekend I was finally able to fire and tumble and work on assembly.


The first bracelet like this was a series of trials that had a happy ending. I didn't plan the ovals alternating; that happened because shrinkage made the pillow links not long enough. Rather than cut more the same, I added another shape. I put the bracelet together without the extra oval at the toggle end, so that it didn't alternate when the clasp was closed. The second version, with glass insets, had its own issues associated with adding the glass and the different shrinkage of silver vs. bronze. This bracelet was the first where I really knew what I was doing and could try to refine the process and minimize time and effort.

The most painful part of the entire project was the beaded linkages, because they are angled. I struggled and undid and redid these on the first two bracelets. I left wires too long or too short and had to cut them off and replace. This time, I did it assembly line style, cutting all the wires to length, beading one end, forming them with pliers (all the same size!) and then assembling and torching pair by pair. It still takes a while -- there's 45 of them, after all -- but it's finally straightforward. I've learned what to do and what not to do.

Experience -- there's nothing like it.

Photographing Metal Jewelry and Glass Beads, Part 3

So you wondered what happened to the finale of my tutorial on photographing metal jewelry and glass beads? Truly, I hadn't forgotten, just gotten distracted. Need a refresher on what I covered before?

• Part 1 : Basic Equipment
  
• Part 2: Secret Weapons

And here we are, finally, at Part 3: Getting the Image

First, I run my camera in full manual mode, not using one of the preprogrammed modes that are so easy. I need to be able to control both aperture and exposure simultaneously.


Aperture size controls the depth of field, which for jewelry is really critical. Depth of field means the physical depth of the target that is all in focus at the same time. I don't want the front of my ring to be sharp, but the back to be a total blur; I want to see the entire thing! Physically, the aperture is an iris diaphragm that closes down to restrict the light entering the camera and improve the focus. It is a function of both the camera and the lens being used and is marked in "f-stops" or "f-numbers", beginning at perhaps f/1.8 and increasing to f/16 or so for a standard lens. For jewelry, I recommend AT LEAST an aperture of f/16. One of the advantages of my nice macro lens is that it has higher f-stops, from f/2.8 to f/32 which give it higher depth of field to get more foreground and background simultaneously in focus.

Of course, when that aperture is closed down to make a better focus, less light gets into the camera, affecting the necessary exposure time. The times may get longer than a human can easily hand hold (I can't hold beyond 1/8 sec, for example), so that's why the camera is supported by a tripod or a copy stand. The way to measure the determine the necessary exposure time is to use a light meter, either the one on the camera or a separate instrument. I typically use my camera meter as a first approximation. Another factor affecting exposure time is the ISO equivalent. In the days of film, this number related to the size of particles in the film you purchased, and it determined how fine the detail on the negative was. A higher ISO allowed you to take photos in low light. The ISO has no real meaning for digital cameras. The equivalent measure is really where noise issues in the electronics inside the camera come into play. My camera has no real noise issues up to equivalent ISO 1250 or so, so I use an arbitrary ISO of 640 just to make the exposure times relatively low. It seems better to not need to take really low exposures -- less possibility that I bump the table, etc.

Here's the procedure I use to take standard photos:

1. Use the largest photo format.
   I can always down size the photo in Photoshop later, but I can't ever make it bigger. I use a normal JPG format, but RAW would actually be even better. I just avoid another conversion in Photoshop, which I might be willing to make if a publisher required it. I set the ISO to 640.
   
2. Place the background on the copystand, then arrange the jewelry so the view through the right angle finder and camera is to taste.
   I may need to raise or lower the camera to get everything to fill the frame nicely.
   
3. Set the aperature to f/32 (or f/16).
   
4. Turn on the two photoflood lamps.
   See the photo in Part 2). I only have these on when I'm truly using them, since they burn out fast.
   
5. Focus on the desired area of the target.
   This may be easier to do in manual mode rather than automatically.
   
6. Use the camera meter to set the first exposure.
   
   
   Preferably use a spot meter option, so that you can choose exactly where you want to meter. Looking through the viewfinder, I see a meter at the bottom, with 0 in the middle, and numbers to either side. I adjust the exposure time on my camera until the meter reads zero. Note that when I'm viewing through the right-angle prism, I can't see that meter. I have to contort myself inside the tent or use a mirror to see the LCD display. Fortunately, this setting really doesn't change a huge amount among different shots since it depends on the lighting setup which won't change. Once I get it close, I'll only be changing it slightly as needed.
   
7. Take a photo and check it.
   Since my photos upload automatically with the Eye-Fi card, I open them in Photoshop and check the focus and exposure. The focus will be obvious. The exposure will too, to some extent, but you can also look at Levels under Adjust Lighting to get a more quantitative feel. Ideally, the levels will range from 0 to 255. If the Levels are all low, the photo is too dark and the exposure needs to be longer. If the Levels are all high, the photo is washed out and the exposure needs to be shorter.
   
8. Adjust the exposure slightly and shoot again; repeat until you're satisfied.
   

That's it! Sounds simple, right!? Of course, there are always issues. Perhaps I want to shoot that ring from a side angle instead of straight down. In that case, I set up a tripod at an angle. Reflections are always big issues for metal and glass. Watch for those in the viewfinder. The tent will help a lot with this, but even so, sometimes I need to use white cardstock to block off reflections, from the copy stand post usually.

Now, I'll bet you want a Part 4 on using Photoshop to deal with the images, hmm?

BTW, I just did an online search for bead photography and found the following good links:
beadphotography.com
Jewelry Photography
a tutorial on Wet Canvas

The Ultimate Publication: My Own Books!

For several years now, I've been saying I wanted to use the new on-line technologies to produce a book of my work. I remember the old days, when I printed out glossy photos of my quilts on my home printer, fussing and fuming, and then took the results off to be bound at a local print shop. Have things ever changed!! Now we can all have professionally printed books that look like they were mass produced, but we can order just a few...or even only one.

When my friend, Judy Perez, who is a graphic artist by original profession, announced her book of art quilts, I thought "I have to get this done!" Knowing that she was a pro and had probably really researched the technologies available and selected the best, I decided to follow her lead and use blurb. blurb makes it very easy to design your own book. Your download their software, then either use their provided layouts or make your own with text and photo boxes. The most time required was to search back through stored photo files to find originals, so I could have nice high resolution graphics.


The first book I designed is Birdwatching: a metal clay adventure, which details my series of bird-themed jewelry made of silver or bronze combined with gemstones, painted glass, enamel, resin and faux bone. I decided to intersperse some selections from my collection of quotations, those that were related to birds. Then I got carried away using my bird drawings to illustrate the pages. I'm quite happy with this impromptu book and thinking perhaps I should actually PLAN a book and see where that goes.


That first book was so fun and easy that I quickly started a second book titled Copper On, Copper Off: an electroforming adventure, which refines and expands upon my online electroforming tutorial, which has been extremely popular. This book has more text, as it details the background, theory, equipment, design, operation and finishing of electroformed glass beads. Extras in the book are a page of sources and a troubleshooting guide, as well as dozens of photos of my electroformed beads. I also describe my carved copper electroforming technique.

Both books can be previewed at the blurb site, where you can also order them in softback or hardback editions. I still need to do some tweaking to the cover image to be able to off the image wrap edition in the future. I purchased one copy each of the soft and hard covers to compare and proof, then made a few corrections/additions before releasing them both to the world at large.

I've ordered a stack of books for Christmas gifts this year, and I plan to offer them for sale in my classes and at the Bead & Button Show next year. And even more book ideas are percolating in my head. Can you believe that blurb offers a service to easily convert your blog archives to a book??? BlogSlurper will take your Blogger, TypePad or WordPress blog and convert it for you. Imagine the possibilities!

Another Publication!

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I send photos out seeking publication and then forget all about them. It's been months since I sent out this photo of Retro Lovebird, but here it is in the ISGB's Quarterly Glass Bead Eye Candy gallery:

Classes at Bead and Button 2010

In case you're thinking about attending the Bead and Button Show next June and want to start plotting your class choices, the schedule is due out soon. If you've attended before, the hard copy will be arriving in your mailbox; otherwise the complete listing will be available online December 15. Registration begins January 12, so it's not too soon to get organized.

I'll be teaching there for the first time, two different classes, tentatively on Wednesday and Friday.


The first is my Garden Windows Pendant class, which covers combining metal clay with glass. We'll make a set of hand-painted glass tiles using vitreous enamels, and then embed one of those into a two-part metal clay pendant. The class is so packed with information that it moves really quickly. I probably should add even more and expand to a two-day class, but it's hard enough to get a one-day class as a new instructor, so I'm squeezing a lot into one day. Topics covered include planning for shrinkage and reactions, drawing and painting on glass, using molds, combining prefired elements, using syringe and hand-formed decorations. Whew!


The second class is an electroforming class titled Copper On, Copper Off. Lots of great instructors teach the basics of electroforming, so I want to offer something different. We'll go beyond caging beads or copper plating pods as I introduce my carved electroforming technique. Yes, I'll cover the fundamentals of electroforming, including WHY things happen the way they do and how to exploit that understanding, but the focus is on carving a design, as fancy as you like, into the copper covering the glass bead. Simple bicone or lentil beads will be provided, so there's no glass work in this class. While it's possible to prepare more than one bead, only one bead should make it through the complete copper growth process due to time and equipment limitations. Also included are my ideas on adding controlled textures and finishing.

I do hope some of you will care to join me -- it will be a lot of fun! Or at least visit me at Meet the Teachers, where I'll have some exciting new treasures to share with you. Shhh, secrets!