This Past Week in Pictures...

Been busy in my studio. Here's a sneak peak at some new pieces!!!

Had a great visit with Celie, always inspiring to see what she's working on... 

So good to cuddle Kiwi pie!

Stopped by The Shoe Horn in Montpelier on my way home, awesome to see my work on display right on the front counter.

Amanda Young posted this gorgeous photo she took of herself wearing my Earrings, a ring by Molly and Henna by Rebecca. 

I made these 7 chickadee pendants for a custom order. Love how they came out.

We had 2 45º days! Big melt, lots of mud but the sun felt so good!

Got to enjoy some sunshine and the sunset on the deck at Citizen Cider. We were there celebrating Nicole's big news...

She's opening a shop in Winooski on the top block! Gonna be so great, lots of handmade goods and featuring the work of many Vermont artists, including me!

This week in pictures

The most beautiful time of the year in Vermont! Been taking a lot of photos...

View of Mansfield in all it's fall glory from Underhill

This tree in Underhill was fiery red!

Gorgeous yellow trees by the King St Ferry

Sunset view from the Ice House

Kayaking on Lake Champlain

Visiting Kiwi pup at Celie's

Patiently (not so patiently) waiting for a treat

At Celie's - like a painting!

Love the colors - at Celie's

Kithcari lunch with Celie

Pear and Root Chakra Wrap

Finished a BIG order for Ode boutique!

Necklaces for Ode! 

What glorious autumn things have you been up to?

Modern Relics in a Modern Era - One Way I'm Handling the Rise of Silver

For several years I've had 4 bronze pieces sitting on my desk. They have been waiting, patiently for me to set them in silver as I've done before with my Modern Relics series. They've waited while I've been consumed with making less expensive pieces, always getting pushed to the back corner. This year I was determined to make them into jewelry, into the pendants they were meant to become...and then the cost of silver began to rise...and rise...and RISE. And with it, my interest in creating settings for these pendants, diminished. I had already rolled out the textured backsheets in PMC but I didn't want to spend the silver - or the time to make them into settings. Then it hit me! These pieces are not fragile turquoise, or shell or other thing in need of protection. They're solid bronze and they're STRONG. They don't need sides! (I wouldn't want them to be pendants by themselves because I wouldn't want them to turn people's skin green.)

So I decided to rivet the silver backs onto the bronze. I LOVE riveting and it was easy to drill the bronze. I even drilled large holes for tube rivets so I could use sterling jumprings for bails. The riveting was easy cause you can smack that bronze with a hammer no problem!

I love the way they look and feel and I like having the sides exposed because they are cool and cracked and craggy.

Now they're actually reversible (although I still warn about wearing bronze against moist skin).

With the rise of silver I began to have a mid-jewelry-life crisis. But the first thing I did was cash in 10 years of saved scrap. This was a lot of scrap and it yielded a lot of credit at Rio Grande. Enough to get a kiln, a Flex shaft and drill press, a torch and some tools. Enough to start MY OWN STUDIO! Now it was a scary idea to start my own studio when I was worried if I could afford to keep working with silver but then I thought about my work and the materials I use. I work with copper, brass, bronze, found objects, fabric, shells, stones, leather and feathers. I use silver with most designs but as accents, as embellishments.

So I'm not about to stop making jewelry, just to start making jewelry a little differently, with a little more focus on the other stuff. In April, these pieces were the first ones I created with my new tools and it was very exciting stuff.

My mentor Celie wrote a great blog on her way of dealing with the price of silver, check it out HERE. Now that I have my own kiln and now that I love these new Modern Relics, I will be working with more BronzClay and I'm really looking forward to that. Silver has been down in recent weeks too, maybe it will keep going down, but it's good to know that you can let creativity overcome anxiety, that you can adapt.

"The Many Faces of the Modern Apprenticeship"

So happy to be featured in the March 2011 issue of Art Jewelry Magazine. The article is called "The Many Faces of the Modern Apprenticeship". Kristen Sutter did a great job profiling four types of apprenticeships and I was interviewed for the traditional perspective. Is an apprenticeship right for you? Check out the article!

The little things...

Sometime it's the little things that make a big difference...
When I display my earrings at my booth, I hang them on little iron wire racks. I've been selling my earrings at Trinket now for many months, where they were hanging them on little gray cards on the wall. I realized I could really make them pop if I made display cards for them. I always think about one of the most important lessons Celie taught me. Everything...EVERYTHING!...is an opportunity for creativity. So I had an idea to make re-usable display cards by recycling cardboard and paper. Economical, environmental with a raw, edgy look! They were so much fun to make and they do a great job of showing off the earrings.

And then it was Winter

Things seemed to have sped up and slowed down all at the same time.  The days are shorter (and colder) and things seem quiet and still, my crazy summer/fall pace has simmered way down.  BUT I can feel that Holiday train building up steam and heading right for me!  I'm busy getting ready for The Women's Festival of Crafts, which takes place the weekend after Thanksgiving at City Hall in Burlington, VT.  

Above is a photo of one of my new "Key Chains".  This time I made the key, I used BronzClay and carved it. 

In Etsy news, I've created a shop for Celie, check it out HERE.  

Photographing Jewelry

Recently members of my Etsy Metal Clay team asked me to write a tutorial on jewelry photography. I was honored to hear such a request because this is something I’m really proud of and that I’ve worked hard at during the past year.  The following is just what works for me and I'm excited to share it with you.

Posting work in my Etsy shop has made me a better photographer. There, the photo is everything. A good photo will make your jewelry look even better. A bad photo will make even good work look bad. On Etsy, there are 5 photos to show off your work, so the first one shouldn't be about showing the whole piece, it should be about enticing your audience. It should be an interesting and amazing photo on its own. The space they provide is a horizontal rectangle, so I always shoot horizontally to get the most out of the space.

I take the majority of my photos using an old, African wood tray as the background. It is a dark, almost black, aged wood and there's just something about it. It is matte but has a bit of a sheen to it, it looks professional yet it has character due to the subtle wood grain and scratches. It looks different in every photo due to the light but it ties them all together. A simple background is a good idea, you don’t want it to compete with your jewelry.I use a Canon PowerShot SD 1000 digital Elph. I bought this camera before a trip to England last year and my hopes were that I could use it for travel pics as well as for jewelry. It does a wonderful job with both. I place my wood tray on a desk by a South-facing window. I only use natural light. Early or late day works best. If it is really cloudy I'll take the photo outside. I adjust 4 settings, I set it to manual, cloudy, macro and no flash. I hold the camera low down, and try to find that magical angle, really close up, where the light is raking across it; where the texture pops and the piece comes alive. I see a lot of jewelry photos on Etsy that are taken just too far away.Rings and pendants are easy to take because they fill up that little rectangle so well. If a pendant is quite long, I'll take the photo so that is lies diagonally to fill up the frame.I found that if you try to show both earrings equally in a photo, you can't get close enough. So I stagger my earrings, and take the shot from bottom-right, often with the light coming from the upper left. The angle draws you in and the photo becomes more interesting. Being that close, offers a lot of information yet you can still see the pair.For necklaces, I'll often shape them into a spiral so that they fill up the whole frame. I'll take several photos so I can choose the best one.I'm even taking some photos of Celie's work and they are coming out great!  It is such a thrill for me to capture her magnificent work and that she's diggin' the pics.  

My second photo in every listing shows the full piece, it’s never a great shot but it shows the actual shape of the piece (since the angle of the first photo can distort what the piece really looks like).

So that’s it. Simple really, I don’t use any fancy equipment or lighting. If anyone has any questions I’d be happy to answer them.  Happy snapping!