Website Update

Happy 2013 to everybody!! I find December to be a hard month to work in the studio due to holiday distractions, so I focused this round on a website update. Very overdue, to be certain.

My first thought was to switch to a Wordpress website, so I dutifully spent hours looking at themes and finally plunked down my dollars to buy one. Of course, being an original, artistic type, I didn't want what everybody else had, so I purchased something less common. Almost immediately it caused me grief, when I couldn't get it to behave properly on mobile devices. Yes, my note to the theme author was answered fairly promptly, but the notion that I would have to abide indefinitely by such arbitrary choices as no capitals in my filenames sent me back to the drawing board.

Eventually, I decided to go back to writing my own HTML, and just learn what I need as I go. So I pared down the website to a minimum and started in again. Slowly, slowly, bits and pieces are getting ported over to the new look, although all the old glass and fiber work is present albeit hidden. HTML and CSS are getting less formidable.

But now that 2013 has arrived, it's time to move back into the studio and start working on the major goals of the new year. So, please, leave me feedback on the new site and stay tuned for more updates.

Blog Updates

You might have noticed that things are changing here on the blog. Links from the sidebar have been disappearing. Not to worry -- all the information, and more, is still here! It is being relocated into "static pages." These new pages, accessed by the bar of blue links under the banner at the top of the blog, take you to the information, organized in a cleaner, more accessible manner.

Photography Tutorial Link

So if you've come looking for my photography tutorial, just head to the Tutorial page to find a link to it and many more informative guides.

Metal Clay Jewelry Link

If you'd like to see an overview of my metal clay work, that's in the Metal Gallery.

The new pages provide a bridge between the blog and my website, which is still waiting its own much needed update.

Updates for a New Year

Happy New Year! I, like everyone else, have a lot of resolutions for the new year. Among them is a plan to get more organized and to catch up on some small details that niggle at the back of my mind, but don't get the attention, including website and blog facelifts.

New Header

One such item is my blog and website header. Because Facebook Timeline is coming and allows a large cover image, I decided to modify my existing header to fit. While I was at it, I thought it was high time that I updated some of the small images that make up my simple design. Not every single one changed, but there's clearly a different feel.

Old Header

Now I'm busily trying to remember how to insert the new images into the blog and website templates, along with updating copyright dates and other minor tweaks.

Top Blog Posts

I've been looking through a lot of blogs while researching my upcoming kitchen remodel. One of the things I found most helpful was a fixed list of most popular blog posts, which helped me quickly get a sense of a blogger's relevance to my project. So I thought I'd steal that idea.

According to Google Analytics (in the almost two years since I started tracking), the top nine posts are below:

1. Photopolymer plates for metal clay  

Details of how I make photopolymer plates from my own original drawings, using some simple gear and the Texas sun.

2. Ice Resin Blog Hop

My applications for Ice Resin, including tinting with alcohol inks.

3. Silver Clay Rings -- Strap Band and Wire

Ideas learned in a workshop with the innovative Kate McKinnon.

4. Favorite Jewelry

My favorite earrings by Ida Ida Studios (no website).

5. Photographing Metal Jewelry and Glass Beads, Part 1 (Basic Equipment)

Photographing Metal Jewelry and Glass Beads, Part 2 (Secret Weapons)

Photographing Metal Jewelry and Glass Beads, Part 3 (Getting the Image)

A three part tutorial directed toward photographing metal jewelry. Part 3 seems to be the most popular, but I've linked them all. You can also use the Photography Tutorial summary on my website, which is linked permanently in the sidebar. Part 3 also discusses basic Photoshop adjustments, so that probably explains its popularity.

6. Patina Tips and Tricks

A compendium of resources for patina on metal.

7. Understanding Electroforming

Another multi-part tutorial, now immortalized on my website and accessible through the sidebar link.

Even better, updated and full of photos and resource list in my Blurb book, Copper On, Copper Off.

8. Original Textures for Metal Clay

Original drawings for photopolymer plates, tear-away papers, or polymer clay texture plates.
I think the image itself is the draw, as there's not a lot of info.

9. Bronze Clay Rings at Bead and Button

A synopsis of making bronze rings in a workshop with Celie Fago at the Bead and Button Show. Only this ring is my own spin.

Now, I just need to think some about what those analytics mean.

The Internet as a Crazymaker

If you've read Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, you know the meaning of crazymaker. That's a person that sucks up your time and energy and keeps you from doing the things you intend to do. Cameron means people, but if I invoke personification, the internet qualifies. She characterizes them as "irresistible: so much to change, so many distractions..." Bingo.

For the last week, I've been updating my website. Or at least, I thought I was improving it. Today, it has become apparent that I've taken one step forward and two backward.

Every time I changed a page, I carefully viewed it to see that it was the way I wanted it. That is, I checked with Firefox, the browser I use most of the time. Today I had a question on how to do something in HTML, so I asked Keenan for help. He opened the page on his computer, in Internet Explorer, and behold: the internet crazymaker had rearranged all my carefully designed layout into babel.

Ah, so now I've figured out the problem and I'm fixing every single page with checks in both Firefox and Explorer.

This is not how I meant to spend my Sunday afternoon. ;-(( If you happen to wander over to my website, please forgive the garble!

Blogging Anniversary

After several days of watching my 100th blog post anniversary approach, I blanked on it yesterday!!!

So here's the 101st post instead.

This morning I stumbled upon these photos of my earliest lampworked beads, made on a hot-head and annealed in a fiber blanket, created in the spring of 2004. Seems appropriate to mark progress...

Cyber Tag

Just home from Spring Break in San Francisco, I found a note in my inbox letting me know that I've been tagged. Karen Ponischil selected Fiber.Art.Glass as one of her seven favorite blogs. Thanks, Karen! What a compliment...

So, Rules of the Game:
1. Place the name of the person and URL on your blog.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write seven things about yourself.
4. Name seven of your favorite weblogs.
5. Send an email letting those bloggers know they have been tagged.

And, seven things about myself:

1. I speed read. Good thing, with all those blogs I try to stay up with, right?
2. I prefer tea to coffee; soy chai latte to be exact.
3. For the first time in my 50 years, I'm starting to be drawn to the color red.
4. Some of my favorite art-making music: Chris Spheris, Dancing with the Muse; Dar Williams, The Beauty of the Rain; and Anna Nalick, Wreck of the Day.
5. I LOVE earrings -- that's what I often buy when traveling; they're small, personal and memorable.
6. I can't sing a note on key, but I did finally give in to my childhood desire for piano lessons, only 30+ years too late.
7. I'm a sunshine girl. I wouldn't survive in the Pacific Northwest.

And seven more blogs that I regularly read:
1. Ruth Rae at let the beauty we love be what we do, who crosses media from fiber to jewelry like I do, and has the best quotes to get the gears whirring upstairs.
2. Andrea Guarino-Slemmons, a phenomenal glass beadmaker whose workshop I get to take next month, yahoo!
3. Judy Dunn at Artpreneur, whose writing about the Collision of Art and Business transcends polymer clay and applies just as well to all of us in other media.
4. Judy Coates Perez, a prolific fiber artist whose work has been blanketing Quilting Arts and Cloth Paper Scissors recently.
5. Joanie SanChirico, whose recent work has emphasized digitally manipulated paintings printed onto silk, with stitched details.
6. Lindly Haunani's fun blog about color.
7. Sarah Lechner, a very original fiber artist whose 3-D works fascinate me.

You Make My Day!

"Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them and pretty soon you have a dozen."

- John Steinbeck

Isn't it amazing how interconnected the blogging community is?? Since I've been blogging (not even a year now), I'm continuously amazed by the serendipitous connections that lead to my Bloglines list being rather embarrassingly long. Some days I have quite a backlog of blogs to check up on. It's especially exhilarating to find your name in print, and finding it attached to the word "award" is just the best.

Recently, Emmie gave me the "You Make My Day!" award. My pleasant duty is to pass on the honor by selecting ten (what, only ten?) other blogs that I can always count on to amuse, inform, inspire, or otherwise addict me.

I hereby bestow my own "You Make My Day" Awards to:

1. Judy at Painted Threads -- who always has some lovely new art endeavor underway to make my fingers itchy
   
2. Joanie at adventures of a mixed media & textile artist -- whose artistic creativity under adverse conditions is a true inspiration
3. Andrea Guarino-Slemmons -- who gets me out to the glass and metal clay studio regularly trying to learn "how did she do that!?"
   
4. Catherine at HappyDayArt! -- a source of great connections for me lately, and an incredible metal clay artist
   
5. dj pettitt -- whose sheer productivity, not to mention creativity, is always a kick in the pants to get into the studio and work
   
6. Nina at Ornamental -- who inspires a huge following and has made me think more about jewelry, photography, poetry and the simple beauty around us everywhere
7. Loriola at the accidental jeweler -- whose way of combining media I admire
8. Jen, aka Glassgirl -- whose work I love, who makes me laugh out loud, & who is a GREAT teacher
   
9. Ruth at let the beauty we love be what we do -- one of those universe connections, who crosses almost as a many media as I do, beautifully, and collects quotes, as do I (ah, reminder, I'm supposed to start adding them here!)
10. Melody at Fibermania -- for a shot of color energy, be it fiber, food, or yarn
    

Well, there are many more, but I had to limit myself, and I had the handicap of spreading my awards across fiber, glass and mixed media, but then I do tend to spread my interests...

Thanks, Emmie!

Heart Blog Carnival

Silver-Lining Heart

Winged Hugs and Kisses

Spiral Heart

Love Birds

Yahoo! Fay Katherine featured my heart beads in the latest issue of Blog Carnival of Art Beads and Jewelry. What, you may ask (as did I), is a blog carnival? It's essentially a blog magazine, with articles linking to blog entries about a particular topic. This one, started by Lori Greenburg, features art beads and jewelry with a different theme each month, and, of course, this month the theme is hearts.

As usual, I can't say that I'm particularly timely in my production. These heart beads were all made late last summer before my trip to the ISGB Gathering. All are made with the painted enamel tile technique, where a flat glass tile is painted first with a black outline and then with color and fired in the kiln each time before being wrapped around a lampworked base bead and shaped. The beauty of this technique, which I learned from Bronwen Heilman, is that anything that I can draw or paint can go on a bead. One day I drew this series of heart beads because they were simple designs that I could do in just a minute without thinking. They offered small canvases for experimenting with Hanovia 22K gold accents, dichroic swirls in the background and silver leaf lining.

The Silver-Lining Heart is one of the handful of beads that I've made into finished jewelry. I made a small silver-lined glass slider bead bail to attach the bead pendant and strung it on a string of violet freshwater pearls with a hand-forged sterling clasp.

I really liked that bail and have meant to make more, especially since that necklace sold at the Bead Bazaar. Also, I should try that silver lining again -- it gave a really nice metallic background to my hand-painted heart. I guess I've learned that I should be planning six months ahead and that I should check back through photos of what sold to remember what I wanted to try again!

Website Active!

It's official!

www.vickiehallmark.com is live; at least the front page is!
Wish me luck on the html learning curve...

Latest on the glass front is more painted fish, since those got so many comments online and in person at the last meeting of the Austin Fireflies.

And I'm working on turning some of the beads and vessels into finished jewelry so I can wear my work at the Gathering, the annual meeting of the International Society of Glass Beadmakers, coming up in just a few weeks. It's being held this year in Minneapolis, MN from July 26-29. I will try selling beads, vessels and a tiny bit of jewelry at the Bead Bazaar on Saturday from 10-5. Please come say "hi!" and let me know if you've visited this blog!

Tag

I've been tagged by Judy Perez to tell seven random things about myself. I have no idea what this blog game is intended to reveal, but here goes.

1. I'm an Okie from Muskogee. Well, I spent four years there anyway, roughly fourth through eighth grade. Honestly, I am an Okie by birth, but I escaped as soon as feasible.

2. I read everything EVERYWHERE, including shampoo bottles in the bathroom and cereal labels at the table. I often have half a dozen books in progress at once. I love science fiction or fantasy, murder mysteries, education, history and, of course, art. Right now, I'm reading "A Short History of Everything," "The Blue Djinn of Babylon," "How to Read a Book," "Why Gender Matters," "The Art of Painting on Glass," "Prince of Dogs," and "Great Expectations."

3. Ice cream is my favorite food. Even in the snow. Or even made of snow.

4. Either full soaking wet or completely dry is fine, but I hate to be damp. I LOATHE water rides!

5. My suburban neighbors call upon me to identify scary critters and talk them out of wielding weapons. I've fished snakes out of pools, relocated tarantulas, and recognized the wild turkey in the front yard. Last week we had a four foot rat snake. I have no sympathy whatsoever for scorpions.

6. I have vivid memories of my grandparents' farm: a wood stove for cooking outside in the summer, a wringer washing machine, an acre garden plot, catching chickens for mom and the aunts to fry for dinner, eating legs from frogs my cousin shot with his BB gun at the pond, and watching a tornado approach while hoping to avoid ducking into the snake infested cellar.

7. Sewing was a necessity for me. I was 5'11" tall long before the days of internet shopping. The only pants that were ever long enough when I was young were the ones I made for myself. I haven't made a stitch of clothing in twenty years.