Randoms, more rafflage

Look at all this mess I listed.

        Paralian.                                       Papa y Mama.                                  Dirty Snow.

           Dwale.                                        Wayward Lover.                             Aubade.

             Sabaism.                                 Order and Harmony.                    The Silent Figure.

Have I mentioned I'm nuts for lariats lately? Can you tell?
Now look at these babies:

The next prize, this ring, goes to: Darlene Fortier! Please etsy convo me to send me your address.

I want to share random things from Tumblr now.
(via)
brokendildo: "my friends cat had surgery and now he has no pants"

No, but really, I'm obsessed with this cat and his naked belly and drumstick haunch.

(via)

Don't know if you can tell by the randomness but I got my period, got back to Zumba and feel ten billion times better. Also I've discovered chia seed pudding, the easiest to make healthiest thing ever. I might live on just chia seed pudding from now on.

(OK, it's not the most beautiful stuff. Photo.)

Two more raffle winners.

I was bumming about the fact that after the initial rush of donations, my fundraiser for Wildthorne stalled at about $274. But then I decided that:
1) This money is still super helpful to her.

2)This means the amazing people that contributed have a huge chance of winning something cool.

3)All the prizes were things I was considering giving away anyways.

So I've decided to be OK with it. But really what it means is that my period came and I'm regaining my sanity. So in celebration of my sanity, I'm drawing two winners today. First this guy:

Will be going to my good friend Emmannuelle!

And this pair will be going to Claire Fabian. Etsy convo me with your address so I can mail them to you and thank you so much for donating!

Menstrual Rants.

This month my period decided to pummel my soul and have its way with my sanity. So I've just been binge reading The Blogess and laying around feeling miserable.

I got stuck reading comments on one of her posts where she asks people for the best and worst gifts they ever received. She gets three to six hundred comments per post so so it's basically a great time management on my part.

 Being as menstrual as I am, I just skipped over the bests to focus on the worsts, getting angrier and angrier as I went. 

Soon an image formed in my mind of a sort of senile grandma/malicious mother-in-law/cheap great-aunt hybrid who buys you a broken dollar store scale and clothing several sizes too small, and probably for the wrong gender, with a note attached about your diet. 

 I'm so mad at all these imaginary people! 

Then I started remembering how my mom used to buy me clothes well into my 20s from the store I loved when I was 13. Oh and once when I was little we went Christmas shopping and the only thing I pointed out to her was how God awful the imitation Opium perfume smelled. Sure enough, that Christmas my two sisters and I each got a bottle of the stuff. 

Oh God I really hope she doesn't read this, now I feel shitty about being such a bitch. But I already felt shitty so... I'll point out that my mom did all the cleaning and cooking for our five person family while working full-time as a doctor and none of us helped with anything. Especially not my dad. Just saying. 

Which leads me to another menstrual rant. In all my childhood, there was about only three maybe four times that my mom left for some kind of conference or something, as opposed to tons of scientific conferences Dad used to go on. So the couple times Mom was gone, Dad would give us a big lecture on how Mom shouldn't have to do XY and Z all by herself, it was unfair. So, for the sake of fairness, he'd make us do all the chores and then promptly forget about them all the moment she returned.

On the other hand, when Dad left we got to go to McDonald's and it was awesome. If we suggested McDonald's while he was around we would get a huge lecture on how this evil corporation brainwashed people into thinking their horrible food was good by repeating the slogan, "It's a good time for the great taste of McDonald's." (Remember that one?) Because as the great thinker so-and-so so famously said, if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes true. (Oh geez, I just looked it up. It was Joseph Goebbels. I promised my dad didn't think Joseph Goebbels was a great thinker.)
I think that a great example of this phenomenon is the lie that McDonald's isn't delicious, Dad. Here's proof.

Now I want some fries. Shit. Not McDonald's though, that stuff will rot your guts.
You know you're a PMSed mess when you're retelling injustices from your childhood about Christmas, chores and McDonald's. I feel like I should mention that my dad is an amazing scientist who somehow convinced the government to give him half a million dollars for an electron microscope that would have to be specially put together for him in Switzerland whereas my biggest accomplishment today, for example, was moving from the bed to the couch. 

Here's this massive guy with new bail:

P.S. Do you ever wake up with the last thought from your dream still in your head? I woke up this morning thinking how awesome it would be to start signing my name, "Marina Rios, maker of fine Irish whiskey since 1822."

I'm going to put the next two winners, which I already have, in another post because I'm trying to do shorter posts. 

WIP, rafflage

Some WIP, pre-oxidizing.

I had a mess of key rings which some geodes and bits from Uruguay had come on. I had no use for them but before tossing it occurred to me that I'd been looking around for ring things with all the lariats I've been making. Lightbulb moment: I soldered them.

Some I just wire wrapped (top), some I wrapped with stones (right, with steel wire- it's solderable!) and some I went full solderbonkers on. The key is trying to apply the solder in balls, not peaks. I'm still not 100% sure how to manage it. I know the solder, iron and surface need to be super clean. I think the surface needs to be non-molten so the solder doesn't just blend right in. If anyone knows more, help a sister out in the comments.

(Solder.)

I've also been having some serious fun making chain. It's always easier than I expect and I wonder why I don't do it more. But here too I struggled a bit to get solder globs instead of peaks and had to sand some sharp bits away.

Here this cuff needed buttons for a closure, so I made some with antique African cocowood discs, leafed tin, Roman glass and soldered pin. This is one piece of wire that connects on the underside. I need to get some stretchy fabric/cord/lace (?) for the loops now.

Some caged baby the original way, just cuz.

I'm working on a triple wrap bracelet and a lot of the links here are soldered. I have a very minutely stitched strap to finish this. But then I wore it today and realized that the mop hearts with arrow are going to have to be cut in half because they simply don't curve enough. I hate bracelets that have long flat elements, I find them unacceptable.

The bail kept popping off this heart. I tried several different epoxies before I realized I'd have to solder hammered copper there after sanding the top of the heart til I got to bare metal. So now I guess I have to retake all those damned pictures just for this bit! I can be grateful it didn't pop off after being in the hands of a buyer though.

As I've mentioned, I'm all about the lariats at the mo. That and my exercise classes.

The other day I was in spinning class and I was up in the standingish position, checking myself out in the wall o' mirrors and thinking, "Damn, I look just like one of those badass people that do the ... thing that I'm doing right now (!!!)... OMG am I one of those badass-- no wait, calm down." Like, I'm not but I'm super getting there. What was I talking about?
Here's this amazing treasury Pricilla of yesdearsister (previously readbetweenlines) made for Wildthorne:

And Theresa of thoughtfulhands shared her awesome results from my tute:

Aren't they awesome? 

OK, finally here's today's raffle for these babies:

And the winner is: Cindy's Wicked Good Beads! Etsy convo me to give me your address, etc.
How did this turn into such a long post? I'll save the gifs for next time.

First Raffle Pick

Hello my lovlies- so far we have raised $232 for Wildthorne! Thank you so much, lets keep it up. Today I'll do the first drawing for these one-of-a-kind speckled polymer beads.
Anonymous asked if she could pick her prize but if people pick their prizes they'll pick all the big stuff first and then there'll only be little things to win and I'm trying to raise some moola here, ya see?
Anywho, the winner is: Lori Ackerman!!! Please convo me here.
I've removed the one name from the pile, the rest of the name slips stay, including any other entries by someone who already won. So you could win more than once. Everyone else would probly be pissed, but it could happen.
I've been making my own chain, the process of which is in no way related to this entrancing gif I wanted to share:

It's on a page showing how all kinds of things are made.
See you in a couple days for the next drawing and another gif!

Studio time!

Finally some time in the studio to get down with some makages.

Like this my latest giant lariat. It's all about lariats, ladies!

Don't know what to do with a bunch of components? Make a lariat! Don't know what to do about your employment status? Make a lariat. Don't know what to do with your unwanted pregnancy? Make a .... oh god. Oh, no, no, abort that thought. Ugh, unwanted mental image, more like. Just, don't make a lariat with your unwanted... ugh, I'm gonna just shut up now.

Phew, back on track. Here's another giant thing I never finished or listed full of Patroness beads.

Like these huge antique African Bauxite tubes.

Check this guy out. I love graduated sizes! You can actually see a lot of that in my lariat dangles as well. This guy is all about the graduation. Plus it incorporates some huge faux ancient polys that I didn't know what to do with.

As well as this cool-ass leather button from Uruguay. For this piece I wanted a really thick leather cord, but I didn't have anything like that so I just fucking made my own!!! I know! Just wrapped cord around other cord and used wire and also a bit of quick dry epoxy resin to keep everything in place on the inside. 

You know what's kind of amazing though? This was all this stuff I had just sitting around, including way too much leather cord. When you're inspired to make, it sure is different.

Even simple things are so fun and satisfying. Check out that sexy graduation.

So inspired to make was I that I didn't even mind going in and making a zillion of these designs that I have plenty of supplies for and sell well for me, which I think of as production work, as they call it in the art jewelry sphere.

Order and Harmony. (Some of these are listed, some not yet.)

 Like these little plaque guys.

 They're all a little different, with lots of beads from my Kathyhaul. (OMG I just realized Kathyhaul was over a year ago guys. Time is freaky.)

Order and Harmony. 

 And ear wires I fashioned from matte black eye pins that I hammered for strength.

 I'm even trying some out with these fatter plaques, see how they do.

Added some carved bone from Kathyhaul and such.

Djenné. 

Some caged babies without the soldering, cuz why make more work for yourself if you don't have to? Like have you ever poked your nose into a jewelry making book and they always start out with showing you how to make jumprings? Even though you can get a thousand of them for a dollar? What is that? Time is energy people. Like, prioritize.

 

Many Moons.

Some baroque pearl ones which I grunged up with gilder's and acrylic, since these beads were overly pristine.

Pair of starry shard babies.

The Lightless Sector. 

Someone recently asked me if I ever have trouble photographing iridescent things, trying to capture the iridescence of something. What I do is I increase the saturation on the iridescent part until it conveys how it really looks in my hand. I end up having to decrease the saturation in the stuff around it though. 

Suton. 

 Though usually I have to drastically decrease the saturation, as my camera and photoshop conspire to make my subtle pictures more interesting.

The Silent Figure.  

 Here's some tin cones using my own polybabies, which I've really been enjoying now that I've destashed some and can look around a bit. As I pick these back up I'm like, "Damn straight I made these. They rock."

And finally these. OMG I suffered trying to find shit to put turquoise-and-red beads on to after buying a handful of these a while ago. Finally used them all up thank friggin god. Who came up with this damned combo? Of course, people who lived in subtle natural landscapes and so were drawn to bright colors that pop. 

A Light from the Past.

.And yeah, I've been using these faux amberish polys in everything. It's like I recently discovered the red/brown/gold range of colors and everything works beautifully. 

I wanna thank you all for making the launch of my tiuute super awesome. As in the past, I turned off the 10% coupon after 48 hours, though in the past I gave a warning. This time I was keeping you on your toes? But the commenter coupons are still open. 

  Let us celebrate with cat gifs.

 

Oh also this thing because it made me laugh for 10 years: