Strathmore visit- Creative Crafts Council Show

Today we visited the Strathmore Mansion in Rockville, Maryland to see the Creative Crafts Council Show. Our own Sherry Terao has a piece in the show and won 1st prize for Metals!!! Congratulations, Sherry!!!!!

Here we are congregating, waiting for everyone to arrive... 

A cool pic by Karen of the interior of the mansion....

Another cool pic by Karen- a marble frieze.

Inside the mansion- there were jewelry, quilts, glass, stained glass, fiber, art, and more... (Jowita, Brenda, Bodil & Karen)

Another view in the mansion...

Upstairs taking a breather- Bodil, Mimi, Sherry and Jowita. Pic by Karen.

Pic of the interior by Karen.

A badly taken pic (on my part!) of Sherry's winning piece!

Our group for lunch: Bodil, Dana, Odaybea, Jowita, Brenda, Mimi, Karen and Caroline. Sherry and Ej couldn't stay for lunch...

Look here for more information:

http://creativecraftscouncil.org/

Wax Meeting

Today's meeting was at Odaybea's house and we talked about all things wax!

Odaybea showed us her Matt Wax Gun (from Rio Grande and Metaliferous about $150). It looks like a glue gun and gets plugged in; will heat to 3 different temperature settings. It comes with 2 different-sized tips.

Also are available are these wax pellets- 3 different hardnesses are available. And yes, you load it like a glue gun...

Here she used the gun to wrap around a mandrel. It's ready to send off to the caster!

It can also be used in a tray of water- so the piece remains round ALL THE WAY AROUND. One can 'draw' with it, even making monogrammed names, for example, for custom name necklaces, etc... Of course, you can also 'draw' with it on your kitchen counter.. but the back will not stay round!

Here is Odaybea's famous 'Hand Ring'. Yes, it's famous. Sorry I forgot to shoot the silver version with it holding a pearl in the palm and seed beads creating a bracelet around the wrist...

Here are some pieces Karina is working on- very very cool! She's thinking she may want to hollow out the shapes lest they be too heavy and cost-prohibitive.

This is a kistka, or an electric wax pen. Pysanky is the art of polish egg decorating and this is the tool that's been used for generations- electrified. The old version would be held over a candle in order to melt the wax. I've been using it to create wax granulation. It has a smaller, finer tip than the Matt Wax Pen. I use the medium #2 tip.  It's about $32. Here's a link:

http://www.bestpysanky.com/Medium-Tip-2-110-Volt-Electric-Kistka-p/ekmed.htm

You also need to buy wax to fill it with. I bought wax 'wire' strips and cut them 1/4" at a time and feed the tip that way.

I made this ring above by using a rod of pre-formed wax and attaching the ends with hot wax, then used the kistka to attach granules. Fun!!

You can also use it to create a nice surface texture without having large granules- these are more like bumps. You could also 'draw' with it to get a low-relief detail.

And here we all are- it was a lovely day so we sat outside- Nina, Lucia, Bodil, Karina, Caroline....

...Odaybea, Mimi, Brenda (who looks BEAUTIFUL by the way!), Sharon, Karen, and me (Dana) not pictured.

See you all next time!

Winners of the Ladysmiths Raffle

A big THANK YOU to all the lovely customers who attended our show at the Ratner Museum last weekend. Here are the lucky winners who won a piece of jewelry in the raffle:

Debbie Oakley

Cheryl Alfred

Sally Dorsey

Jan Solomon

Vicky Guindi

Mary Prettyman

Mary Ellis

Emily Glazer

Kathy Sommerkamp

Trish Brooks

Dawn Sinsel

A big thanks from all of us to all of you! See you next year!!

More Beautiful Items to be Raffled at The Ratner Museum

In case you missed this, we're saying Thank You with an amazing Raffle at our our Ladysmith Show at The Ratner Museum, April 27-28.

Raffle Items for The Ladysmiths Art Jewelry Show at the Ratner Museum

Hello Lovelies,

The weekend of our show is just around the corner. We are gathering some of our favorite items for you in a raffle we will be holding at the Ratner Museum.

(The details of the raffle will be defined for you soon...and there will be more items added the closer we get to the show)

The purpose is to give a huge ~Thank You~ sweet customers for supporting our second show!

Here are a few of the items to be raffled-
(please click on photo to view in separate window)

Fleur-de-lis Earrings by Dana Evans

Today I finished a pair of new earrings and I thought I'd give you all a sneak peak....

They include a pair of Australian opals I got in Tucson last month- I knew just how I wanted to use them!

The sketch on the left is of a pair of earrings I've been wanting to make for a while- this sketch is probably over a year old. Just didn't have the stones yet to make them. Here they are- I'm assembling the parts. The wire at the top is 16 ga. square Argentium silver that will have some balls fused to it. I already made the bezels for the stones, and took a while creating the paper template for the bottom fleur-de-lis shape. I fuss a lot on templates because I want to get it right. This was my 3rd or 4th one, and I still fussed to get it just right.

Here I fused the balls onto the square wire and traced/cut out the silver fleur de lis shapes at the bottom. I'm trying the stones out, but of course I remove them when I solder things together...

After this step, I needed to solder the bezels to a back plate.....

Which I did here.... I also cut out most of the backs of the stones (because they're transparent) but left a seat. Additionally I left little tabs on the tops and bottoms of each bezel so the fused wire and fleur-de-lis pieces could be soldered onto them and join all pieces together. Before I did this, however, I soldered an earwire to the back of each fused wire segment to be folded later on...

Here they are above ready for keum-boo. I cut a pattern of what shape I wanted, used that to transfer to the gold foil, and cut them out. I put them on my electric burner and burnished the foil so it 'stuck' to the silver. (see my earlier post on keum boo for more info!)

And here are the oxidized finished pair. I discovered that it was challenging to hammer/punch close these bezels because they had some of the elements soldered to them, which stiffened them quite a bit. In the future I will use thinner-walled bezels if I have elements soldered to them.

I'm not putting these in my Etsy store just yet- I'm keeping these for the Ratner show next month!!

You can see more at my website: DanaEvansStudio.com.

A series I'm working on: leaf earrings- inspired by a cluster of leaves my daughter found in the parking lot at the new Denver Ikea. She held up the leaves and said, "Mommy! You should make earrings like this!" She's a great idea girl! She's since made me a list of 24 other inspiring things I can use to make earrings.  7 year-olds have some of the best ideas! (Be on the lookout for Candy Corn earrings soon!!)

Odaybea's most recent work: 925 silver ring with South Sea Pearl

Ratner Museum Show

The Ladysmiths will be showing and selling their work at The Ratner Museum this April 27-28. Please see the postcard below. Click it for a larger image, it will open in a new window. Last year was such a huge success we are expecting this year to be even better. There are 12 of us this year.  We are lucky gals to have this opportunity! If you live in the DC Metro Area please come by! If you are planning a visit to DC this would be a fantastic show for you! It's never too late to start holiday shopping. (and you won't find these items mass produced because they are all hand made)

Carolyn's latest work in progress

(these will be rings and pendants when finished)

We recently met to discuss marketing. Most of the focus was on Etsy, everyone had some great tips to offer, Evie brought an array of very forward-looking jewelry business cards from a recent show. Karen showed us some creative marketing books, Bodil shared what it's like to sell from B&Ms (brick and mortar stores). Sharon was very up on all the Etsy changes for sellers and buyers. Let's just say we all couldn't stop talking!

 (Carolyn hosted this time around)

Also, some of the ladies have been taking a wax carving class at The Art League in Alexandria, VA. I'm sure there will be some great results to post here.

Enameling Workshop

Well this month's meeting was actually an enameling workshop. We had to unfortunately put a limit on attendees because we had so much interest, and not enough room in Mimi's basement!! It was a snug fit but we had a great time... had some successes and failures, but not the epic fail we ALL had at our last enameling workshop!

This was our kick-off meeting before getting to work- over coffee and treats: (l to r) Ellen, Bodil, Sharon, Karen, Sandra, Mimi. Evie also came and I was taking pics (Dana).

 Karen's pieces turned out nicely- counterenamel on the back (blue color) with the fronts a nice autumn-y orange. My bad, I put the transparent enamels in the area Karen was working, and she didn't realize that, so she used them for copper, which is not a good idea- everything comes out  muddy. Transparents are for silver and gold. Or for copper, if you layer a piece of silver foil on top of the copper first.

These are Dana's... they are hydraulic-formed and cut-out, then sprinkled with different colors on them. You can't really blend colors of enamel- it just looks dotty. But these were my successes of the day! I didn't counterenamel them, so we'll see if they last without cracking (currently in the possession of fellow-Ladysmith Carolyn, who's wearing them! Hopefully!)

These are Dana's copper beads. It was a disaster to initially sift and fire, but then I did Barbara Lewis' trick of heating and dipping in enamel, and it worked well! I did melt the plastic containers of enamel accidently, but next time I'll know to use glass containers if I do this technique again...

One thing I was disappointed about was the lack of vibrancy in the enameling colors once fired. But one of the experienced Ladysmiths reminded me later that the act of torch-firing can add carbon and some unexpected and hence dimmer results. Thanks, Brenda!!

Lesson: heat the metal to melt the enamel, don't heat the enamel!! So, when we fired from below, then switched to above once fusing began, we had success! Item on left was fired from above- ouch!

Hope we remember all this for next time!!