The Process

I made these polys which I really like in real life but photos I'm like, meh. But I still wanna tell you about all the crap I went through to make them. 

I started with the idea of faux turquoise which you make by getting little balls of blue, mixing in a black acrylic paint between them as a matrix, clumping together, baking then sanding off the outside black paint layer, followed by tons of buffing. My plan was to mix translucent polymer with different shades/amounts of alcohol ink to get a nice variation of ambers, then use a lightish brown paint for the matrix and instead of leaving it lumpy, I'd shape them into traditional amber wheels. Except I didn't let the paint dry nor did I refrigerate my polymer before rolling it together and shaping it so it turned into mush. Plus I had to roll it extra to get the rock salt embedded for the crevices so it turned into extra mush. Nevertheless I baked it and ended up with such huge crevices that my beads threatened to fall apart. So after painting it brown to fill in the cracks and crevices and sanding that off, I mixed alcohol ink with translucent liquid clay and used that to fill in a lot of the holes. But I forgot to mix my inks right so those bits ended up all yellow. I decided that was okay.
Then I thought I'd be clever and instead of sanding and buffing for my finish, I'd smooth on a thin coat of liquid poly. That turned into a sort of chapped look with little white nubs sticking out everywhere. Had to do a lot more sanding and buffing to get rid of those. But by then I had my new flex shaft, so that was okay. My liquid poly had filled up all the stinging holes so I had to drill new ones. Somehow those ended up all skewed and tilted. But this worked when I made these little crescent row focals  here. Phew. Oh almost forgot, after I drilled all the holes, they looked sawdusty, so I colored in the outer edge of those holes with sharpie marker, then rubbed with my fingers. And promptly hid all of that work by stringing! I dunno man. It's an education. All frustrations are.
Point being, as you know, it's always more work than you think.

In other news, Mr. Devices just called out, "Bingo looks like he's contemplating his existence."
I'm feeling way inspired all the sudden. I was avoiding the studio for a while. Here is one of the geodes I lapidary-ed in an all black piece.
For the closure, I channeled my inner Lorelei Eurto. Except that her stuff is always immaculate and mine, well...

I'm actually really excited about this piece. It suddenly occurred to me that I could treat my own unsold polys as very high-end sort of art beads. Like it's all about how you present them, if that makes sense.
Now, when I first strung them I realized they were way too green. So I toned them down with some quinacridone red dry brush, red being green's opposite color and quinacridone being high in pigment but also translucent so as not to loose detail.
 Close up there still very colorful, but the overall effect is almost gray. Which I really like. Anyway I presented it in a very special way with other special bits that don't compete with the polys- leather and wire ring, big nail toggle, really cool chain from Uruguay, box chain drape, even some little gray Indonesian glass that I added the same red to using dry brush. The whole thing is sealed with Verathane.
 I don't know I feel like it's sort of a breakthrough for me. Maybe it's just the feeling of inspiration.

After a week of being sick, returning to the gym was an ecstatic experience. You guys! I haven't been this happy or physically felt this well since I don't know when. Maybe ever. And I only just started! I thought I'd have to work so much harder to get results, but I'm already feeling it. Just feeling good. I freaking love dancing. I missed it. I'm so stiff after a full decade of not dancing. Since I met Mr. Devices and stopped having the unconscious urge to do musical mating rituals?
Still going to sleep at four or five am though. What's that about.

I gotta tell you about my girl Kim's amazing shop she's developed. It is quiet and contemplative like her, and every damn detail is so on-point: from the photo layouts to the silversmithing, the descriptions to the banner, it's breathtaking. So much so, I had a stress dream about it last night- she was killing it so hard I was being left behind somehow? and I had to like go beg her to teach me how to open an non-etsy shop and just be better...
Like I was the white dog and she was the brown one: