11/25/2021

Oldies but Goodies - Geometric shapes

Wow, time is racing and another week has gone by already without me being creative, well, except for a custom pair of spike bauble earrings.
I'm just glad we have the Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge to remind me not only of my own creativity, but more so of that of others.
Our theme was geometric shapes and we really got to see some amazing beauties!

How many basic geometric shapes are there? Obviously people don't necessarily agree on the number, some say there are four - circle, triangle, square, and rectangle - others say six and add rhombus and trapezoid. As the math genius that I am not, I'll stay out of that.

I do remember, though, that we once had to make a piece of jewelry in school. The plan had been for us to learn how to use a simple tin-lead based solder. I made a pendant consisting of a triangle, circle, and a square if I remember right. It came out pretty lousy, but had a definite mod vibe which worked well as we were still barely in the 70s.
Anyhow, I guess geometric shapes in jewelry had already fascinated me then.

These following examples are so much better than my pendant was. Enjoy!


1 Cat's Wire
2 Jewelry Art by Dawn
3 My Bijou Life
4 RioRita Jewelry

11/18/2021

Oldies but Goodies - More bracelets

Do you like to wear bracelets? In that case, you will love what I have brought along from this week's Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge.
Once again there is such an amazing variety in techniques, materials, and style, and yet my selection isn't even showing everything that has been entered.
Which one is your favorite?
I am in love with the fantastic hand painted elephant bangle (whose design process and WIP pictures Dawn had shared with us while working on this years ago), but I would also gladly wear any of the other items!


1 and 2 Jewelry Art by Dawn
3 and 8 RioRita Jewelry
4 and 6 Cat's Wire
5 and 7 My Bijou Life


11/11/2021

Oldies but Goodies - Breaking out

Although I had taken a timeout from blogging, the Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge has been kept going over the last few months.
Now it's time for me to share my selections with you again.

Our topic in the last week was "Breaking out".
Artisans and artists are only human. Many of us like their comfort zone, and it's always tempting to stay inside it, especially if the result is something you have already had success with. It can never hurt to take a little step outside the box, though.
The challenge was to show something that was unusual to make, because it was different in color, shape or style we are used to, for example. So we got shown some first attempts at new designs or techniques, and now I'll be sharing some of them with you.

1 RioRita Jewelry
2 Jewelry Art by Dawn
3 beYOUteous
4 Cat's Wire
5 My Bijou Life

11/04/2021

Welcome back to me! ;-)

Yes, I'm still alive!
It has been 4 1/2 months, I know. A few things have happened during that time that had robbed me of my motivation to blog, even put together the Oldies but Goodies. One of them took up a lot of my time for a while and when I was done with that, well, once you have stopped doing something, it can be hard to get started again.
And then something has happened that has changed my daily routine and that needs a lot of my attention. That wasn't helpful, either.

That doesn't mean I have stopped making things, but lately I have not been able to make things as much and especially as spontaneously.
Enough with the vagueposting.

Number 1 was that I lost my online shop. Zibbet where I had my shop for more than ten years, suddenly announced that they had sold the marketplace to a mysterious buyer, one of the big ones in the business, and that we sellers had two weeks to download everything before Zibbet would be shut down "temporarily".
If I hate something, it is not having information or feeling ignored. If I sit on a train that has stopped in the middle of nowhere, don't just let me sit there, but at least tell me that you don't have any information yet, either. If you have information, let me know about it (seriously, as someone who has been commuting by train for 35 years, this is one of my big pet peeves). It's even worse here. On the train all I can do is wait, but how am I supposed to make a decision in this case if I'm not told what's going to happen?
To be on the safe side, I started listing all my items, including descriptions, a picture, tags, materials, in an own file, so I would still find things easily and have them available for transfer to another shop. While doing so, I decided on items to get ripped apart or given away.
As you can imagine, this took me so long that my anger had plenty of time to bloom.

I still haven't decided on a new platform to sell on and at the moment I have no idea how long that decision will take me. So for now, I'm selling in a few Facebook groups and of course you are always welcome to contact me if you see something on my Facebook page, on DeviantArt or here on my blog, for example on my new gallery page which I have set up to show at least some of my available items while I'm shopless.


Number 2, the attention seeker, has entered my life at the end of June and was quite small and very cute. His name is der Dekan (English: the Dean, after one of the wizards at the Unseen University from the Discworld books).
He's 6 1/2 months old now and still not suitable for a university job, I'm afraid. He's half angel, half demon like every good kitten, some days it's more like 75% demon - we are having one of those today why I'm hiding behind a closed door right now with him having the run of the other rooms. I can hear him. He loves the computer and this post would look very different with him helping ;-)
He's also quite the master thief already which means I can't leave anything out (I have already begun packing a lot of things into cupboards and drawers) that may be a toy to him - so, anything from a piece of felt to bead tubes, tools from crochet hooks to pliers, and of course loose beads or cabs.
Sometimes I even have to lock myself in to have a few undisturbed creative minutes. Only when he falls asleep and I have already everything on hand, I can work for a longer time.
Gundel can't believe I let such a brat into our lives, and honestly, I have never appreciated her more than now although I thought that wasn't possible. Gundel is an angel cat and she deserves wings ... if only to get away from the demon quickly! ;-) She will also keep you up-to-date on that once she starts blogging again, by the way, about his addiction to trash, for example ...



Ok, that's the long-winded explanation for my absence, and I will probably not be around that regularly for a while, but I'll be trying, promise!