9 days left until Winterfair! These are some copper wire-wrapped bracelets I've been working on. They are made from heavy copper wire that was milled, hammered, then wire-wrapped with Chinese turquoise. The bangles were soldered closed before shaping. The original plan was to make these with a variety of gemstone choices, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. The Chinese turquoise just plain belongs on these bracelets. Confession time... tomorrow's post will be something I've already made. My family would skewer me if I worked on Thanksgiving. Everyone have a wonderful holiday! Columbus Winterfair 2011 Dec 2-4, 2011 [Fri/Sat 10-8, Sun 12-5] Ohio Expo Center, Ohio State Fairgrounds 717 E. 17th Ave. Holiday Giveaway: Don't forget to enter my holiday giveaway by Dec 11th. The winner will choose from three pairs of earrings. It's easy as pie -- click here for instructions.
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I'll be posting a new piece of jewelry every day until Winterfair. Ten days left! Another fold form cuff for today. Tomorrow I'm planning something different. And another thing... Here's something I didn't mention. I've got another countdown going on -- waiting for my first grandchild to arrive!!! GrandSON actually. I'm not sure how many days are left but the baby is now expected before the show. Exciting times ahead <grin> ! Columbus Winterfair 2011 Dec 2-4, 2011 [Fri/Sat 10-8, Sun 12-5] Ohio Expo Center, Ohio State Fairgrounds 717 E. 17th Ave. Holiday Giveaway: Don't forget to enter my holiday giveaway by Dec 11th. The winner will choose from three pairs of earrings. It's easy as pie -- click here for instructions. Welcome to a mini One-a-day challenge. I will post a new piece every day until Winterfair... Here we are in the home stretch. Columbus Winterfair 2011 is just ELEVEN days away. It's Columbus's largest annual fine art and craft show, and by far the biggest event I've ever done. The folks who organize this show have given me the chance of a lifetime -- their Columbus Winterfair Emerging Artist Scholarship. I look at the other artists represented at the show and can hardly catch my breath. "Fine art and craft made in American studios" -- by artists all over America -- and the work is beautiful. There will be over 400 exhibitors and about 18,000 shoppers. To put it mildly, I'm more than a little bit nervous. I decided to start a mini One-a-day challenge to count down the days to Winterfair. Some of you might remember my March One-a-day challenge (3-min video here), and that really helped me stay focused. And focus is what I need right now. So every day until the show, please stop by to see a piece of jewelry I made that day for the show. Feedback and suggestions welcome, of course! Today's piece is a copper fold form cuff. The top is made with a technique called "chasing on air." Fold forming is my favorite metalsmithing technique because of its organic looking results. I hope you'll stop by each day until the show! Columbus Winterfair 2011 Dec 2-4, 2011 [Fri/Sat 10-8, Sun 12-5] Ohio Expo Center, Ohio State Fairgrounds 717 E. 7th Ave. Holiday Giveaway: Don't forget to enter my holiday giveaway by Dec 11th. The winner will choose from three pairs of earrings. It's easy as pie -- click here for instructions. The Pickerington Antique and Craft Show this past Saturday was fun and successful. It filled two very large rooms that were crowded most of the day. My friend and booth partner Robyn Skowronski of Taylor Baskin Design had the most beautiful photos for sale. She has a special talent for photographing animals; click to see this gorgeous cat. And my personal fav is this wintery tree. We mixed my jewelry with Robyn's photos, sold a lot of both, and met some really nice people. Now I'm thinking uh oh, the Winterfair show is coming fast -- Dec 2-4 -- and now my inventory is low. No cuffs left, no trees-of-life, running low on pendants. Yikes, a lot of work ahead in the next couple weeks! This is something I worked on during the past week-- my ad for the Winterfair directory. Kathy Dlabick, Ohio Designer Craftsmen's graphic designer, was nice enough to give me a crash course in ad design. My first draft was not great, but with her tips, I think it turned out quite nicely! (Note that I'll have booth #1005. Come see me!) So now I've started on some new pieces to get ready for Winterfair. These are a couple of new cuffs. I'll also be working on penny jewelry and I have a few ideas for some new pendant designs. It's time to really focus in the studio. Have a great week and stop back again next Wednesdsay to see what I've come up with.
These are a couple of the new fold form cuffs I made this week. They are light and adjustable. I also made some leaf earrings and played with my new torch quite a bit. There is one thing I don't like about the new torch. I can't seem to learn how to spell acetylene. I look it up every time. Do you have any words like that? Honestly spelling isn't rocket science but a couple letter combinations drop into a big black hole in my brain. The other words I always have to look up are guarantee and omelette. Seriously. I just copy / pasted those words into this paragraph. The pendant below is a fold formed penny with a sterling silver heart. It's the first piece I made with the new torch and I was sooooo happy when it came together easily. One of my biggest problems using the old propane plumber's torch was soldering silver to copper. The solder just wouldn't flow. That was a major problem because I love the look of silver with copper; they just belong together. The acetylene torch gets much hotter, has a variety of tips (small to large), and is easy to manipulate around the piece. Those qualities make all the difference. A new tool takes new skills. I have used this particular torch before, and a couple others like it, but only occasionally in classroom situations. I found an absolutely awesome resource for soldering techniques -- Lexi Erickson's Metalsmith Essentials: How to Solder Jewelry . It was the best $14.95 I've spent in a long time. Show alert! Pickerington Antique and Craft Show- Nov 5 If you're local, come on out to the Pickerington Antique and Craft Show on Saturday. I'll be sharing a booth with my good friend and talented photographer Robyn Skowronski. This is my first year doing the show but I hear it's always jam packed with cool stuff. And I can't wait to hang out with Robyn! Gifts of the Craftsmen- Nov 13- Dec 23 Yesterday I also took a new batch of fresh-baked jewelry over to the Ohio Craft Museum for their upcoming holiday show, Gifts of the Craftsmen. The two cuffs pictured above were part of the delivery. More on this one later. Well, I'd better get to work now. So much to do for Saturday! Repeating the same design can be a little bit tedious, but it's fun to see the pieces come together at the end. This is a link bracelet, earrings, and pendant made from fold formed copper disks and fine silver jump rings. The bracelet clasp is shaped to look like a jump ring to maintain the pattern. Stop by my booth and say hi this Saturday in Yellow Springs! If you haven't visited Yellow Springs before, you should. It's a college town with a hippie undercurrent; you can take a look here. There are lots of artsy shops and the street fair is BIG and FUN. The weather will be beautiful this weekend, too. Who knows, you might even see comedian Dave Chappelle (a Yellow Springs resident) in his favorite coffee shop, Dinos Cappuccinos. I saw him there myself once, I kid you not :)
I'm sharing the booth with three other artists. You'll really enjoy their work. Vicki sent me info to share with you: Vicki Oster makes chipboard mini-scrapbooks and other paper goods. She often creates custom books for special occasions (e.g., weddings, birthdays, babies,etc.) Vicki can be found on Etsy at www.etsy.com/shop/paperpiecesbyvicki , or at her website at www.paperiecesbyvicki.vpweb.com Yellow Springs Street Fair Oct 8, 2011 9am - 5pm I'm pretty excited about my line-up through the end of 2011. The events are all so different from each other, making them extra fun to plan. This is the schedule:
Yellow Springs Street Fair Oct 8, 2011 Yellow Springs is a college town with a little hippie undercurrent. I'm having fun picking out the pieces to take there; definitely some cool pendants, adjustable sterling silver squiggle rings, and a lot of gemstone, wire-wrapped hair combs / clips. Fun stuff. Pickerington Antique & Craft Show Nov 5. 2011 This one will be fantastic because I can mix two of my interests, art and antiques. I used to decorate my home with antiques, and have some very cool pieces to offer along with my jewelry. These include a stereoscope and stereo cards from the mid 1800's, glassware, and some paper collectibles. Can't wait! Columbus Winterfair Dec 2-4, 2011 This is an intimidating event. Attendance is 18,000+ and artists compete from all over the U.S. for acceptance to the show. I'll be working really hard on new jewelry for this one-- hoping to deserve this chance to join so many wonderful artists at Winterfair. I'll include different styles / techniques of metal work, but will focus most on my fold form jewelry. I'll post my booth number on the blog when I have it. I'd love to see some friends in the crowd and will really appreciate your support if you stop by and say hi! I've spent this last week planning my booth, working on displays, and making things like clasps and earring wires. Nothing quite photo worthy but I promise to have something next week. Thanks for stopping by! I have some news! I've been chosen as a recipient of the 2011 Columbus Winterfair Scholarship for Emerging Artists! I. Am. So. Excited. Winterfair is Columbus, Ohio's largest juried fine arts and craft fair. Over 400 artists from 32 states participated in 2010. Each year, emerging artists are awarded a scholarship to participate -- a complimentary booth for the 3-day show, along with an amazing support system (from the wonderful folks at Ohio Designer Craftsmen) to help new artists enter the large fair market. I'm so honored to be chosen as a scholarship recipient for Winterfair, and charged up about what I'll be learning this year! I hope you'll visit me at the show December 2-4, 2011. Now if I can just pull my head out of the clouds, I'll share what I've been working on this week in fold forming. The first piece on the slideshow is just a practice piece, not jewelry, but I was absolutely thrilled to have accomplished a good scored fold. This one is 3" long but I'll work on a smaller piece soon, for a pendant or pin. I also took my friend Shirley's advice and trapped some turquoise in a pendant, similar to last week's trapped pearls. I do like the look of turquoise with copper. Thanks for the idea, Shirls (more ideas welcome!) The next two pieces are "chased on air," fold forming combined with chasing techniques. It's a lot of fun. I suppose it's a step toward sculpting, which I wouldn't mind trying out. I've also continued working on wire wrapped hair combs and a couple new tree of life orders this week. Of course we found time for a couple of zoo trips in between, and pulled out some monster weeds in my yard that were starting to look hungrily at us... also made it to the pool, the Latino Festival, and a Sweetcorn festival... because you can't let these pretty summer days waste away to nothing, can you?
Wedding Wednesdays were lots of fun for me. I hope you enjoyed the sparkle. It's all about true love though, isn't it? So with true love in mind, I'm ready to switch up my blog theme and re-focus on MY true (jewelry) love -- metalsmithing. There is nothing more fascinating for me right now than a technique called fold forming. It was developed by master goldsmith Charles Lewton-Brain in the 1980's and -- this is the most amazing part -- it was officially certified as a NEW and history-making metal technique. In the gazillion years that mankind has been working metal, fold forming was never done until this Lewton-Brain character came up with it. This was partially due to the ready availability of sheet metal, which was also unprecedented. But, the guy is a true genius and a recognized leader in the field to this day. If you're a fellow metalsmith, you're probably already familiar with his Ganoksin Project, the largest free educational site for jewelers in the world with 7 million+ visitors each year -- if not, run don't walk here to join. In late July, I will travel to the Center for Metal Arts in New York to study fold forming with the man himself... Charles Lewton-Brain! I'm a little star struck, and SO excited. Fold forming begins with a flat sheet of metal, and is transformed by folding then hammering and/or running it through a rolling mill. Metalsmiths generally shape their metal using techniques designed to overcome the natural properties of metal. Fold forming, on the other hand, seeks to understand and then use/exploit those natural properties. The results are organic and 3-dimensional, with a startling resemblance to organic living things. These are some samples I've made recently. Just one item from the photo above did not come from a flat piece of sheet metal... it began with plumbing pipe. I'm new at this but will be working hard on the technique over the summer. My first piece was just a few months ago during my March 2011 One-a-day Jewelry Challenge. If you're interested in seeing the fold forming pieces I made during March, they are here: Item#1, Item#2, Item#3, Item#4, Item#5, Item#6, Item#7, Item#8 .
So my plan is to keep my Wednesday blog date but switch up the topic to include some of my adventures in fold forming. Come along with me and see how things progress! It will be fun. By the way, I've also made a video of the 3rd Annual Columbus "Eco-chic Craftacular," last weekend's show. Such a fun time. It's just 3 minutes long so take a look and plan to visit again next year. Photos were snapped by fellow Etsy Team Columbus team members Jan Dennison, Kathryn Gorney, Patricia Wooten-Jones, and Jamie Hevener. Suddenly we're having warm, pretty days. I think they are a Mother's Day gift because that's when they started. We've planted some day lillies, pulled some weeds, and grilled outside a few times. Went to the park and walked along a creek that looks like a mighty river right now after all the rain we've had lately-- but so beautiful. Finally broke out the shorts and t-shirts. All very nice! I've got a sweet hair comb to show you today, designed for a flower girl. The flowers and swarovsky crystals matched the wedding colors and the little girl's dress sash; the rest of her dress was white like the bride's. I hope you'll come visit the Columbus Craftacular here in Columbus this weekend. You'll find my booth inside the Whetstone Rec Center with quite a few others. There will be tons going on both inside and outside -- bunches of green-friendly art and demos. Great food and entertainment. If it rains, come anyway; there will be plenty to see and do.
3rd Annual Eco-Chic Craftacular! Saturday May 14th 10am - 6pm Sunday May 15th 12pm - 5pm Outdoor & Indoor Eco-focused Arts & Crafts Show Whetstone Recreation Center Clintonville, Ohio Please stop by! |
Sue Lacy WiredThis began as a hobbyist's blog. Over time it became a quest to support & connect metalsmiths around the globe who use foldforming techniques in their work. See how it all turned out: www.foldforming.org Archives
July 2016
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