Creating Enameled Pendants and Jewelry

Enameling tables setup

The last few weekends mom and I have been working on enameling or creating jewelry for our show in a few weeks - Zionsville Brick Street Market show. This will be the first time we have attended this show and we are both really looking forward to it.

These are some of the pendants I enameled a few weeks ago. They have colored powder enamel on them and are drying so they can go into the kiln for firing.

Here is a group shot of the pendants I finished enameling. I really love how they all turned out.

A fire pendant - the men seem to like these a lot. I know the guys who have bought them in the past have the pendants hang from their rear view mirrors.

The front and back of the elephant pendant.

A butterfly pendant - I am still playing with colors. I like how these colors turned out though.

A Celtic Cross pendant - love this color combination - going to have to use it again.

And of course our favorite - the turtle.

While I enameled mom worked on assembling necklaces - she would string them - I would look at them to see if I liked what she did - if we both liked how the piece was strung I would then finish off the necklaces.

A butterfly necklace with our enameled pendant and some of our lampwork glass beads.

A Viking Knit necklace (we made the purple chain) and our lampwork glass beads with accent beads.

A Scottish Thistle necklace - one of our enameled copper pendants, our lampwork glass beads and accent beads.

Another Viking Knit necklace - the chain we made with our lampwork glass beads.

Mom and I also ordered some more metal prints for the show. The finally arrived this week.

These are the new floral prints we ordered.

So - that is a little bit of what we have been up to. I hope to have more to share next week in our saga of getting ready for the Zionsville show.

April ABS Challenge Piece

Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, 1940

By Frida Kahlo

Oil on Canvas

61.25 cm × 47 cm (24.11 in × 18.5 in)

Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin

Well, this months challenge piece went through several different ideas before we finally decided on the final piece.

Mom was going to create a pattern based on the panther in the background. She even downloaded a pattern to draw on, but it still needs to be worked out.

I then thought I would create beads with the colors of the painting and make them in my butterfly wing pattern - well again - that didn't happen.

Then last weekend - while I was enameling and mom was re-packing all of our containers for our show on May 16th - she came across a hummingbird pendant. Well, needless to say that is what we used. Improvise, adapt and overcome.

The hummingbird pendant is one of our enameled copper pendants. We glue a hummingbird pattern on a piece of 20 gauge copper. I usually saw out the perimeter (because mom hates to saw the perimeter and I hate to saw the interior/designs) and then mom saws out the design. We then file and sand the pendant and once that is done I do the enameling because I love to play with the colors.

For accent beads we used green Jasper, brass spacers and our lampwork glass beads. We finished it off with a gunmetal toggle clasp.

I call these lampwork glass beads my Kuiper Belt beads. They remind me of asteroids floating around in space.

So - that is our piece for the April ABS Challenge. Hopefully one of these days we will finish one of these challenges before the end of the month - though I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you :).

Spring Flowers and Cleaning

This past weekend mom and I went to the little hort park over near where I work. We wanted to take the first flower pictures of the year. The only flowers up right now are the daffodils and the drumsticks. Though a lot of the flowers look like they are ready to start making an appearance - I think this is my favorite time of the year - besides fall.

Here are two more pictures I took - like I said only the daffodils and drumstick were blooming.

This weekend mom and I were also working in the garage (spring cleaning) and I also worked on ordering more metal prints for our show next month.

This is a pile of tray with stray beads on it that we need to go through. When we tear apart a piece we just put all the beads on this tray (I think this is three years worth of beads). Mom decided to start tackling this project. It is kind of fun seeing all the beads that are coming out of that tray and trying to remember what we used them for.

The new metal prints we ordered - of course we ordered more angels and more flower images. The angels are given on the selection but mom and I discuss what flower images we like (can you see the one from this past weekend we ordered?).

And finally - mom started stringing necklaces together. Since she hates to crimp I will finish off all of these pieces for our show in a month. Seriously I still can't believe it is April and we have our first show of the year on May 16th. I think panic has set in for mom and I - we seriously need to get our butts into gear and create more pieces!!!!

So - what kind of weekend did you have?