fanciful devices: Goings on about the shtujio.

A Stone Is Nobody's

A man ambushed a stone. Caught it.
Made it a prisoner.
Put it in a dark room and stood guard over it for the rest of his life.

His mother asked why.

He said, because it's held captive, because it is captured.

Look, the stone is asleep, she said, it does not know whether it's in a garden or not. Eternity and the stone
are mother and daughter; it is you who are getting old. The stone is only sleeping.

But I caught it, mother, it is mine by conquest, he said.

A stone is nobody's, not even its own. It is you who are conquered; you are minding the prisoner, which is yourself,
because you are afraid to go out, she said.

Yes yes, I am afraid, because you have never loved me, he said.

Which is true, because you have always been to me as the stone is to you, she said.

Russell Edson

FAQs

1. Are you a Southeast Asian dancing girl from the 1800s?

No, sorry to disappoint. My avatar and banner images are from an ancient book I found in the depths of my grandmother's cabinets. More on that here.

2. How do you make everything look so old?

First, you need a good oxidizer to brush on every bit of metal you can reach. I'll tell you all about it here.

Then there's this wax. I first mentioned it here. You'll have to scroll down a lot.

3. How can you be so productive?

I'm insanely obsessed and I have no offspring. I do nothing else- I don't have a day job, I don't clean my house or cook, I spend all day in pjs, often completely abandoning personal hygiene... I only interact with other humans when I walk my dog. And I like people! But I prefer dogs.

And I'm sloppy- but I make that sloppiness work for me.

4. Any tips you'd like to share?

No! Except for these 16 posts about techniques and this one about how to find your aesthetic.

5. Would you be offended if I took some inspiration from your designs?

Well, I'd be happier if you outright copied them.

No really, imitation is how we learn. I have enough ideas to go around. And even if I don't- please. No one's going to do this obsessively enough to threaten my business. (Probably.) I learned by copying others and I've seen others copy me as a step toward developing their own voice. So feel free. (I'd love if you tossed me a link in my comments, so I can feel like a proud momma.)

6. What do you look like?

Why, what have you heard? Really? Wow.

8/24/11

Goings on about the shtujio.

Here's some bracelets with gleaming cosmic brights.

Not sure what happened with my usual color restraint.

Here you see one thing I did with the eyes I got from TeapotsandTelephones.

I'm pretty sure the tiny dangle you see on the left and the gold piece on the right of the focal are real rubies. There's no way to know.

OK, I'm too lazy to find out if there's any way to know. Happy?

Here's a piece made by special request a version of this original, seen below. Lovers Disgrace. Cuff.

As you can see, it's not a strict interpretation. Hope that's Ok.

Like the closure button on the original was:

I had nothing remotely like it at the time so I sort of invented one. I took some clear no-hole microbeads with no iridescence or AB nothin', some E6000 and soma these:

And got:

Well, it's an experiment. I think it needs to be darker. Maybe.

You know, when I'm making stuff, I'm all enraptured by how amazingly everything's coming together. Then taking pictures is never fun, but editing them is when I start to really have doubts. Then comes listing, usually, which includes deciding how much they're worth in cold hard cash. By the time I'm blogging, I'm a mess and everything looks like crap. So.

Wow, that sounds like fishing for compliments. It's not. In fact, any compliments or mollifying, any reassuring comments and you're blacklisted! Yup. Put you right on a ... a black list. Oh, but any constructive criticism and you're goldlisted! With glittery stars.
What else?
Things in the making:

Here's a spoon and a whatchamacallit. A chandelier crystal. Soldered along the edges. Except the one right in front of my nose broke off and I never noticed til now, when I'm sharing with the world. Of course.

Here's a tooth in a soldered copper pipe between mica pieces. I'd so love to say it was real, but it's a vintage porcelain tooth from a dentist's estate.

Here's whatever the hell this is.

OMG, I'm still excited about this one. Proly cuz it's nowhere near done. The base is the reverse side of some kind of backplate for a small knob or handle. Then I glued in one of the eye cabs and over that I put in an eyepiece from some antique binoculars. As you move it around you get different glimpses and colors.

And my most recent bead binge should take care of the rest. I hope. When they arrive. Maybe.

Oh, I lowered all the prices on crap that's been sitting around the store too long, so... go buy something! And use FREESHIP for- you guessed it- free shipping. If you try typing FREESHIT, you're total actually goes up by 15%. I know, etsy's weird.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...: Loving the eyes and colour is great, plus I get unnaturally excited about buttons. According to pantone colour trends for autumn your greeny blue beads are deep teal and your pink beads are bamboo - anyone seen pink bamboo!; 8/24/11, 9:27 PM
Tina said...: I'm going to be keeping an eye out for that spoon/chandelier thing. Don't know where the piece will end up after its evolution but right now it's got that perfect shabby-Dickens vibe which I love.

You know what else I love? The fact that even those pieces that don't exactly fall into my style grab me, because of the details and combination of bits you put into all of them... though, lest this comment be all sunshine and roses, I often wish they were less expensive so I could afford more of them.; 8/24/11, 11:53 PM
Gardanne said...: Those colorful pieces are still you. At Beadfest a fellow lampworker told me about a bead technique that has been around for a while, I am going to try it out next week because it is so you.; 8/25/11, 10:41 AM
Anonymous said...: Pretty insightful. Thanks!

My blog:
dsl tarifvergleich und dsl anbieter; 8/27/11, 1:40 AM