8/30/13

So tai-tai


 Ack, guys. I just took and edited ten million pictures which means I'm burnt and won't be able to think of anything interesting to say.
Check out what I did with my Kathystash bracelet. You knew I had to get fanci with it. 
 GET IT? I SAID "FANCI" WITH AN "I" CUZ THAT'S ME!

But yeah. powder things and ink things and wax things... and sealant things. And those headpins bobble cutely when in motion.
 Finally used these Basha beads from Patroness. Spoon bracelet.
These danglies with my utee pins which I feel is almost sacrilege, next to Basha's. But that's dumb. (But then, I did just now spell 'dumb' as 'dumn,' so what do I know?)
Finally got some pix of this green stack. One more green stack left to go. I think I try to jam too many bangles in a stack because I want them listed and out of my hair. This makes photos a real pain. But then having to take more photos for more listings is a pain. But yeah, then they'd be cheaper, etc. But but but.


There's some good goodies in this one.
Moving on to lobes. Made some rather insane earrings here. Felt like the Scorched Earth nails didn't stand up to the blown-glass and lampwork, so I embezzled some gold on to it. And if you're new here, embez... or was I calling it embozzling? It's embossing powder. Like with cardmakers. I'm cray cray! And also I have secret cheesy crafter roots.
Can't even lay them down. Lay? Lie? Lye? Lai? Lulu? But they're different, it's interesting to me. They have a very unique silhouette.

Here's a study in asymmetry. I don't know why but it works for me. I guess because the hand, while much smaller in volume, is larger in visual complexity, and that's what balances them to me. And plus shut up I like them. The beads, part of kathystash, are starting to reveal a strawberry color beneath the pearl finish. This wasn't visible before my oxidizing got on them as I was putting the finishing touches on these. I adore it! And its a good thing it was a coordinating color and not, like, apple green. Yeah, lucky.

 Basically, I've been realizing I need to stop, take a deep breath and slowly slowly start incorporating the new stash with what I already have. Mostly all of this stuff here is projects that were already in the works before mind-blowing haul fell from heaven. Like these. These are mostly her, with my rhinestone rondelles, my tiny rose quartzes and my kuchi coin posts. The posts balances the girly/victorian dangles I think. But look at that. Very plastic pearls, but they're on wired flowers! And some very ornate caps make the pearls less plastic-y.
I have to keep this in mind also for the shoe necklace I showed here last time. Way too much haul and not enough fanci. Gonna take out half the beads and use scraggly cording, etc.
Here for example, the only haul bit is the one square bead cap. All kinds of thinking about balance went into these, seeing as how they're asymmetrical. I dunno. I think they work. Do they work? Yeah they work. I dunno. Yeah. No. I'm just tired.
 Lemme show you what I did with those cabs from last time. Amazing carved beads were part of the haul. Iridescent daggers, needless to say, Numinosity Beads. Too tired for links, sorry gals.
 These are way colorful. If you can't tell, one's an angel and the other a bishop of some sort. All these from old art books found in Uruguay. Green drops from Pipn gift, gorgeous peach stones from kathyhaul. What are they? I know I'm gonna be bugging her forever after as I make my listings.  Or else I'll just be like "pretty sure these scroll stampings are fine silver, yeah. These beads are... rare opaque apricot diamonds." Ha! See how good I'm getting at the high-end wording?
 OK, the entire drop section here are haul-derived as well. On antique wired glass flowers. Great base for drops, I think I have two sets left. Squeee! And I was kicking myself for not giving the nun lady a wash of amber paint to make them match better, but with the dangles so matched, I think it works alright.
Here these are for the patroness I think, since the purple silver set stones and the gold findings with stones are hers. They were on a bracelet with tons of different ones, all different colors. I finally cut apart the piece, which was kind of painful, and realized these bits are totally useable for lots of stuff. And I kinda made all the colors work! The theme of this post is Made it work or Does it work. Or maybe Shut the fuck up it works.

These are for sub-patroness, made of all her bits except for one of the religious danglies. Almost all her stuff, though, I did good. Can't even remember which was mine. But it was a connector from fancylinda I cut the bottom loop off of. And the frames were originally buckle/sliders I cut the middle bar out of. I had to do a bunch of extra wiring because there is a rhinestone at the very apex of the ovals, so if I just put a jump ring there, it slips into the left or right nook and hangs wrong. Aren't you glad I went into that excruciating detail? Aren't I glad you guys just skim this for the eye candy?Blerg... what else? You have to admit that's a crap load of stuff though. And there's more in the works... Yay energy drinks! Though they only work when combined with lots of sleep. But they also keep you from getting said sleep. I should just try meth. Energy drinks are so a meth gateway. I just pulled that out my ass. Hey! That's where my camera was!
What?
Oh, this:
 Stopped being lazy and re-did this with thick-ass steel wire to avoid the wonk. And I had to make the focal fully free-moving and adjustable to keep it hanging nicely any way it's worn.

Imna just bombast you with a zillion pictures since it's so big and it was so exhausting to photograph. But since the links make it longer, that gave me enough for two huge overthotoppers. So expect another one of these some time.    I was also able to sneak in the big wooden guys that I hadn't realized were ginormous when I bought them. I guess after all this time buying on line I still have no sense of what 30mm is. 
And I'm worried that when doubled, these circled elements all interfere with each other. So now it's y'alls job to reassure me. Or just say no, you gotta re-do again.
I dunno. After I rest up and list some things I'll be able to face it. A bit of re-arranging. Why not.
Imna get a new camera guys, which one should I get? Someone do my research for me, Ok? Ok.
What I need to get me is somma this action:

Hopefully with something more appetizing.
What I should get me:

But I'll proly end up all:

Cuz righ now I'm like:


8/27/13

We can't disappoint the pups

So even though I haven't been able to get a thing completed in the last few days, I can't have the wails of defenseless fur babies on my conscious. So here's what I'm working on.
I have to start trying to incorporate my birthday haul into my other stuff, which isn't easy. I made this out of all birthday haul stuff and a ton of steel wire. Still needs oxidizing and a clasp.
 It's a bracelet, duh. But yeah maybe I should add some tribal dangles. The oxing will make it look more me. More Me! That's gotta be the name of my new garage rock/Neil Diamond cover band.
 In the haul there were a shit ton of huge beautiful stone beads. But again, nothing like the things I usually get.
 So here, still in desperate need of oxing, is something using those beads.
 Had the little shoe forever. Though a long think necklace might pair well with it, I dunno. I arranged the one side for the stones to graduate from darkest to most transparent, which is fun...
As for my attempt to physically incorporate the trays into my studio, well...
Among the haul were also tons of broken rhinestone chain links. I got out some random empty bezels and used them with resin.
Here with some microbeads up top.  Yup, I happened to have a buncha heart-shaped bezels, so what? I'm secure in my manhood, damnit.
Plus I used a lot of blues and stayed away from too much pinky-reds. You can see some scratches where I attempted to remove the resin that cured on the outer surfaces.
Resined posts onto some kuchi coin parts.
Experimented with several open-back bezels. The mailing tape I have isn't good enough to keep the resin from leaking out though. This is why I tried to let the resin set before pouring. That at least got me some  pretty decent doming. So yeah I put gold leaf directly on to the tape, then some cut up fusible film, poured resin, added more film, mixed in gold perfect pearl powder, added microbeads.

 And you can see I did one just rhinestone bits. I have a ton and I have to use them for something. Plus, there isn't always great stuff to put into resin, you know? These work.
You can see a lot of dimension in the experimental ones when you move them in the light. I shoulda included more gold foil in the higher layers... Hm. Need to fold down those tabs, need to de-shine all surfaces.
 While I had the resin out I used it on these guys. Knowing these would be for earrings I of course couldn't let myself use the same exact color rhinestone.
Look how different these look just because the top one wasn't fully oxed beforehand. I need to wipe off the excess pearl powder on both these pairs. The top set I used the teeny seeds pipnmolly sent me.
While I was at it I resined this cool bit I had left of Hieronymous Bosch on to one of the crystals etsybud Claudia sent a while ago. Looks good!
As I mentioned, I wanted thick, partially cured resin for my bezel experiments. However, this is NOT what you want for just resining paper on to glass cabs. So these looked like a mess.

However, once I cut them out and scraped off the top with an exacto knife, they came out fine.

Small miracles.
This is to show all the art that gets wasted as you look for the bits that can make good (as well as maching-ish) bezels. I mean, generally girls don't want just a bunch of bearded dudes dangling off their ears. But I think I  can do something with all those hands, so this isn't trash yet.
What else? Managed to snap some more bangle pix:
Did a re-make for someone just because I thought it might not be too painful in this one case, and it wasn't.
And another remake below, just because I happened to have the parts readily available. Don't expect more of this. Rare cases!
Oh, which gives me a good opportunity to answer a question by JLou that slipped by me several posts ago
"For the life of me, I can't figure out what / how / which part was soldered/ filed....? Shed a little light, could ya?" Maybe the image above helps. It's... all soldered. Except for the earwires and jumpring connecting to the ladies. Here's a doodle of what it originally looked like. The wobbly mustard-colored lines are the original, unsoldered wires. Do you see my mastery of line and color? THIS is why I am an arteeeeest!  
Oh and Jorji of the crying canines asked where I got the ladies- etsy of course! Here. See the difference some ox makes?
Oh another fun bit- I recently reached a mind-boggling 2800 sales! Hooooray!

Happy birdie is happy. Look at that spaz. That's for you fadeandremain.
But no special giveaways in celebration. I just fucking packed twelve big ass boxes of giveaways. I'm tired.
(via grotle)
Sad kanga looks into the distance pensively.

Now lets look at some more redonk.
(via dpaf:video)
How much better is this when you realize that's a potato?

Muzzles. 
 Spazbun.

Das all.