jewelry in the making
Hanging tassels made and unmade
An Indian tapestry and my grandmas framed Our Lady of Guadalupe handed down to me
my loft to fabric heaven
dia de los muertos, our lady of guad and multiple icon shrine mirror(leads into the bathroom)
oh what a mess..i love it!
new jewelry components in the making
jewelry work bench..cool stuff
an old polymer clay shrine i made
my what ever/tag/doll/crap table
my jewelry table
I taught a journal class at Peicemakers this past Sunday and my students LOVED their journal creations. They learned two paper surface techniques using dry brushing and ink pads that are super easy and fast AND pretty. This laid the foundation to embellish to their hearts delight. We also explored rubber stamp techniques, adhesives, tassels, 3-D embellishment, ribbon flowers and composition. Their journals came out so pretty and all so different. Thanks for taking my class!
I'll be doing a gig Friday and had to sample my henna to make sure it was okay. I took the picture outside of my house with my newly blooming hydrangea. Those big leaves sure make a nice back drop.
I first started making wire jewelry about 10 years ago. I loved the antique look of dousing the pristine shiny silver into liver of sulphur, making it charcoal grey, buffing it then finally polishing it. By doing this it picks up the light on the parts where the patina has been lifted and polished and leaves the black patina in the crevasse's and twists. I love this look but because I was trying to sell my jewelry to the "main" stream, I stopped because it seemed most people didn't like the antique look. Well....I'm over that and have come full circle! I have always said, make what YOU like not what other people like and I wasn't doing that anymore. There are some pieces of jewelry that don't require the antiquing and I will still work on those pieces, but my roots and love of everything kinda grungy in so much that it looks like it has been just dug out of the earth is my first impulse. Just for the record, it takes twice as much work to make the jewelry look that way plus as my teacher Lynne Merchant says (I'm paraphrasing) the more you work a piece of jewelry by polishing and handling it the more of your energy will transfer into it and consequently (inevitably) this gives your piece energy and vibrancy, almost like it's alive! I think that to be true in all our endeavors. Don't you?
I found out about art retreats while discovering the rubber stamp world. It was probably about 9 or 10 years ago, when my girl was a wee pup still nursing that I ran out while she was napping (yes you nursing mommies can relate...and yes my husband was home to watch her) to get my fix of rubber stamps at the local rubber stamp convention in Carson,CA (The Original). While I was furiously wandering to hurry and buy some stamps and then rush home to my baby, I spied a vendor that had tons of mostly women surrounding it. When I got a chance to wade through the 9 deep swell of sweaty bodies surrounding the tables to see what the fuss was about I knew why no one wanted to give up their sacred spot until they got their fill! The vendors were the husband and wife team of Teesha and Tracy Moore and they created a new wave of possibilities that moved from the elementary form of rubber stamp art to the out of the box-just what we needed graduate style of rubber stamp art. They had the most original, cutting edge altered, some what macabre style that our collective subconscious had been waiting to witness. In my world, that was the moment of enlightenment when I began to look at things a little differently and I believe that might be the case for lots of other mixed media, altered art type individuals, even though we probably didn't call ourselves that at the time. I think Teesha and Tracy started a whole new revolution in the rubber stamp world that branched out into the art of journaling, "altered art" and mixing different mediums. Nothing is ever new, really, however it sometimes takes the right people at the right time to re-emerge in new forms in other centuries or decades and populations and is either recognized or not depending on what people need in their life, sometimes on a collective level. T & T also started a wave of art retreats teaching their art and inviting other teachers to do the same that offered new perspectives on traditional art forms. This attracted the most innovative, creative, out of the box instructors willing to make and teach art from a whole new outlook to those of us craving the odd and unconventional. Along with this wave came others wanting to start their own mixed media/altered art retreats and so we are at a point now, 10 years later, where at any given time during the year, you can go to a variety of art retreats and become an artist for a few days and mingle and emerse with others in the artistic frame of mind. 
