Bracelet Made From A Vintage Dog Cookie Cutter

I remember my Mom making cookies every Christmas... tins and tins of them, which she would give away to friends and relatives. My favorites were always the sugar cookies and the gingerbread men, because she would roll out the dough and I would get to use the cookie cutters. Happy memories. I have a small collection of tiny vintage cookie cutters. I wanted to find a way to use them in a project.

I love giving myself a recycling challenge. One of my favorites is to see if I can make a piece of jewelry using a minimum number of new findings. That's how this little cookie cutter bracelet came to exist. 

To make this bracelet, I started with a tiny aluminum cookie cutter. The poor thing had been squished and was a little flat to begin with. No worries though, this made it the perfect surface to which to adhere a red "self starter" typewriter key. A couple of drops of E6000 and it was all set to go. I used a metal hole punch to punch a hole in each end, and attached a toggle from an old handbag and pieces from a thrift store chain. I made the bead dangles from reclaimed beads as well. In the end, I added 5 new jump rings and 4 new headpins.I found both at yadannabeads.etsy.com. Everything else was made from vintage or recycled components. 

I'm not sure how certain pieces become "keepers" for me, but this one has. It's fun and quirky and I really enjoy wearing it.

Until next time!

Leaving you with this quote:

"Nothing is more effective than sincere, accurate praise, and nothing is more lame than a cookie-cutter compliment." - Bill Walsh

(Actually, if I were wearing this bracelet, I would be thrilled to receive a cookie-cutter compliment.)

Concrete and Ice Resin

Who knew? I didn't. One of the ways to strengthen concrete is by mixing it with a two-part resin. Mr. Bees was doing an outdoor project and asked me if I wanted the leftover concrete. Of course I wanted it! After a little research on the subject, I discovered that concrete, by itself, tends to crack, and is unsuitable for jewelry-making, but when you add a little 2-part resin to the mixture, it becomes very strong. I happened to have a syringe of Ice Resin handy, so I used that, instead of water, to make my concrete.

I've been working on a series of fairy tale pieces, so the word "Spell" popped into the foreground for me.

Here's how I did it... I used my pipe cutter to cut a slice of copper pipe, punched holes into it, and used plumber's solder to solder the pipe onto a pre-cut round piece of copper sheet metal.There was lots and lots of filing, then I filled the bezel with a mixture of concrete and Ice Resin. 

You can purchase tubes of Ice Resin and Relique powders here: http://stampington.com/the-shoppe-at-somerset.

After it set up for a couple of hours, I dropped Relique powder and extra fine glitter onto the surface and heated it with a heat gun. The Relique powder melted and adhered the text, glass piece, and rhinestones to the surface of the concrete mixture. The concrete shows through, but the Relique powder makes it look like some sort of stone. By morning the whole thing had set up quite nicely. I added decorative bezel wire to the border, antiqued it, first with cream-colored Vintaj patina and then with Jax Pewter Black, used a little steel wool on it, and finished by sealing it with Dorland's Wax. 

The beads were very grungy silver plated copper, salvaged from an old necklace. A little steel wool coaxed them into having a much nicer finish. 

Whenever I use my fingers in a photograph, I notice that they are always full of tiny cuts and pokes and jabs from the file. It's all just part of getting lost in my work.

I really like this patterned copper bezel wire. I found it on eBay. It came from Israel, and I had to wait months for it to arrive, but it was worth the wait!

I saved a small coffee can of concrete for more experiments. Next I want to try making some more contemporary, backless forms with the mixture.

Until next time! 

Leaving you with this quote: 

"Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings." - Agnes Martin

(In this case, maybe concrete is the artistic representation of mine.)

Thinking Inside The Box

I love a good design challenge. Mostly I love to challenge myself with materials... how far can I push it... how many pieces of jewelry can I make from one pair of jeans, for example.  Most of the time I am thinking in terms of blowing the lid off the material, seeing how far I can stretch it or trying to do something that no one else has thought of doing with it.

Here are some tin horn light fixtures I made for my studio. They will be featured in the winter issue of GreenCraft magazine!

A woman who owns a vintage lighting store told me that if I made jewelry, I could make lighting fixtures. She said it was just like making jewelry, but bigger. She was right! I pulled the mouthpieces off of these vintage tin party horns and added some washers and large-hole beads to the tops. Mr. Bees showed me how to do the wiring. It was easier than I thought it would be.

These necklaces, made from ruined bed sheets, will be in there too:

I also had these earrings in the boutique section of Belle Armoire Jewelry:

I have two technique articles and one boutique piece coming out in the next issue.

I also have four pieces in the winter issue of  Jewelry Affaire, including these crocheted pieces:

I've been making multi-strand assemblage bracelets:

...and I've been just generally thinking outside the box.

 I made these earrings:

...and this necklace. I decided to use a pyrite sun for the focal. It's set in a modified staple bezel.

I also made this over-the-top multi-strand turquoise necklace:

Well, that's it for this post. Leaving you with this quote:

"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."

- John Cage

Before-The-End- Of-The-Year Resolutions

Do you have something that you KNOW you should be doing, but are dragging your feet about it? My big areas of procrastination have been getting inventory back into my etsy store, and reorganizing my studio, to make it more efficient. Lately it seems like I've been stretched so thin, and for some reason keeping my etsy shop full and my studio organized have both completely fallen by the wayside. Here are my before-the-end-of-the-year resolutions: I will start filling my etsy shop with the pieces that come back from being published, and I will start organizing my studio. There. I've put it on my blog, so I have some sort of accountability now. Right?

Today I listed this bracelet:

It came back from Jewelry Affaire, along with a few other pieces, and I'll be listing them over the course of the next few days, as time allows. 

I also had three articles published in GreenCraft Magazine and one in Somerset Studio, which was a happy surprise!

Above: My Christmas ornaments, made from repurposed bullet shell cashings, salvaged tin, and chandelier crystals made the cover of GreenCraft this month! I am very excited about that.

They also published my article about broken key jewelry:

... and another article featuring these pieces, made from recycled egg cartons:

Eventually I'll get all of these into my shop!

In the mean time, I am beginning that daunting task of re-organizing my studio yet again.  Here are some progress shots:

BEADS IN LAZY SUSANS, ORGANIZED BY COLOR

SOME OF MY FINISHED INVENTORY

I'm determined to get my studio back in order. Tidiness is such a huge struggle for me. Sigh. Mr. Bees is a saint for putting up with it!

Leaving you with this (very appropriate) quote:

"Clutter is not just the stuff on your floor - it's anything that stands between you and the life you want to be living."

-Peter Walsh

Components

This has been a fabulous week! First of all, I got my copy of Jewelry Affaire, and I had two articles in there! Yay! My bee bracelet was in the article:

and also this one:

and this initial necklace:

When I sent the necklace article in to Stampington, I had just finished two custom initial necklaces for different women whose names were Marge and M'Liss, so I had some extra m's lying around. I could wear this one myself, when it comes back!




Other than that bit of good news, it has been a quiet week, but very productive, as far as components are concerned. Sometimes I have weeks at a time where I feel like just buying and making components. This has been one of those weeks.


 First I ordered these really cool vintage tin butterflies from Venezuela, and they showed up almost instantly.

Then my husband's sister gave me this fabulous lace! My husband's grandmother and great aunt made it. I can't wait to figure out how to use it.

I found these wooden beads at a junk store for $2

I painted these faux Anasazi pottery shards:

...and these faux sea pottery shards:

... and I have been making hundreds and hundreds of ceramic clay components. 

Here's the first batch. I fired them to cone 6, without glaze, and then painted them with acrylic paints and finished them with metallic Gilders Paste.

I have at least 600 more beads fired and ready to paint and wax, and I ordered some new wax colors. Like I said, it's been a productive week for making components. 

For now, I'll leave you with this quote, by Aristotle:

The whole is more than the sum on the parts.

- Aristotle 

Next time I'll have things made from those parts!