This month we were treated by our lovely leader Jen to one of her gorgeous lamp work beads. They make me think of aurora and the beautiful starry skies of Van Gogh. There’s so much happening in these little nuggets, they’re full of sparkle and colour.

I decided from the beginning it was going to be turned in to something for me. I don’t tend to wear much jewellery, I’m usually up to my ears in clay so everything gets ruined, but when I do, I like to keep it simple, so I decided it would make a great wrap bracelet.

I kept the surrounding bead colours fairly dark to make sure the focus stayed on the central wrap. 

And tried to reflect the gorgeous colours from the focal, with a little added sparkle around the central wrap with some of my other favourite hoarded beads. 

I’m going to wear this lots! 

Thanks to Jen for a beautiful component to work with. I’m looking forward to showing this off when I’m not covered in mud!

To see what the rest of the AE Team and guests have made, follow the links below…

Guest Designers:

Sarajo Wentling

Deb Stewart

Art Elements Team:

Sue Kennedy

Laney Mead

Lesley Watt

Claire Fabian

Karen Totten

Cooky Schock

Jenny Davies-Reazor

Caroline Dewison << you are here.

Cathy Spivey Mendola

Niky Sayers

Lindsay Starr

Jen Cameron

This month on the Art Elements Blog we were given a Theme Challenge by the lovely and incredibly talented Cathy Spivey Mendola. Her theme for March was amulet bags. We were to create a little pouch or secret keeper to hold tiny treasures or words.  View Cathy’s original post with more details here

As luck would have it, I recently went on a trip to an embroidery exhibition to meet team mate Lesley and returned home with all sorts of fabric goodies, so I had a root through to see what I could come up with.

I bought some gorgeous inspiration packs with odds and ends of coloured threads, wool and fabrics, and decided to create something in felt and wool. The curly threads in the pack reminded me of pea pods, so with some green felt, I sewed a little pea pod complete with curly tendrils. 

The spots were created with ‘O’ beads and tiny seeds, and a little bit of wool with pine cone ends created a tie closure.

Some soutache cord (which I’ve used for everything other than soutache) finished the design off for wearing. I haven’t decided what secrets it will keep yet… maybe a crystal or another tiny treasure?

I did intend on making more as I really enjoyed working on a smaller design, but time got away from me this month. I hope to make more in the future though.

Big thanks to Cathy for her wonderful inspiration, and if you’d like to see what she and the rest of the team made, follow the links below 🙂 

All we need is love!

This month’s component of the month are these stunning hearts provided by the multi talented Jenny Davies-Reazor. 

The Japanese have a technique in pottery – almost a philosophy really – called “Kintsugi“. Breaks in the pottery are repaired and embellished with gold leaf. The breakage and repair is seen as part of the history of the object, rather than a flaw to disguise. Isn’t that an apt metaphor for life? 

So the scars and flaws are evident here in these hearts. I hope that these inspired you – to restore love, in your day to day, and in the world around us. 

-Jenny Davies-Reazor

Read more about Jenny’s inspiration in her original post here.

We got to choose which colour we’d like to design with and I chose sage green. I hadn’t seen the colour, but I knew I’d love anything of Jenny’s and when it arrived I wasn’t disappointed!

Of course I got over excited and forgot a pic of it, so here it is after I’d finished.

For some reason, all of my seed bead designs end up as brooches, but I could see this one on a fancy chain, it’s still a WIP though while I look at it and decide! The heart was glued on to some embroidery backing and I built up a bezel using size 11’s in shades of green and 15’s in gold. I envisioned it as a sort of flaming heart design and the broken section of an earring fitted for the crown perfectly with it’s green stones. 

I added an extra row of gold seeds around the base and some soutache braid around the edge to hide the rough edges of the backing. Over this I added ‘O’ beads with size 15’s to hold them in place. I left a gap at the bottom to add a dangle, but I’m not sure whether to or not now? I thought I’d look at it for a bit before deciding!

Thank you to Jenny for a wonderful component to design around, I’ve had loads of fun working with it! To see what the rest of the team and guests created with their hearts, follow the links below!

Guests: 

Rosantia Petkova

Shai Williams 

Sally Russick

Elaine Thornton

Art Elements team: 

Lindsay Starr

Laney Mead

Claire Fabian

Sue Kennedy

Diana Ptaszynski

Caroline Dewison

Lesley Watt

Jennifer Cameron

Cooky Schock

Niky Sayers

Cathy Mendola

Jenny Davies-Reazor

It’s my first post of the year so first I’d like to wish you a Happy New Year. I hope you all had a great holiday and are enjoying the first days of 2017.

Today is the reveal for Niky’s Challenge. She chose Dragons as the theme, a Brilliant subject!, and tasked us all with creating something inspired by these wonderful creatures. 

I immediately though of one of my favourite films, Spirited Away.

Without giving too much away for anyone who hasn’t seen it, the story follows, a young girl, Chihiro, who is moving with her parents, they stop on the journey to their new home and explore an abandoned theme park. She finds herself in a spirit world and on a mission to rescue her parents. Along the way she meets weird and wonderful creatures including a dragon called Haku. I decided I wanted to have a go at sculpting Japanese dragon bead as I thought a flowing body would look great winding around a pendant. 

I decided to colour my version in shades of blue. The pics aren’t great as it’s 8pm and it’s only just cool enough to take out of the kiln…

I think I might add a bit of white in to his eye so it stands out more!

If you haven’t seen the film, I would recommend it to everyone, it’s amazing! It’s an animation by Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli (with English dubbing) and I didn’t know until just now, but was written for young girls which is awesome, as it isn’t your usual pretty princess story, it’s about growing up, overcoming  your fears, and fighting on against the odds. It does have some mild scary bits, but my little girl, 7, (who is scared of everything!) loves it! 

My second favourite dragons are from Game of Thrones, but I thought the actual dragons would be a little too ambitious so I thought why not create them before they’d hatched, so for my second design I created dragon’s eggs! I studied the eggs from the film to recreate a mini bead version.

They were painted with underglaze and glaze fired to finish.

I was thrilled to bits with how they turned out and in the excitement, got slightly carried away. They needed a chest, so I dug out a display box, waxed it, and made an insert with foam and silk fabric to hold the eggs.

I don’t usually go in for trends when I’m making, but I couldn’t resist with these. I’m going to make a necklace so the eggs are interchangeable. 

It’s the wrong Daenerys, she should be wearing her wedding dress, but I don’t have that one… you get the idea! These ones are for my personal collection 🙂 

Thanks to Niky for a brilliant challenge, I’ve had loads of fun creating dragon beads! I hope you’ll join us in the hop to see what dragon themed creations the AE team and guests have dreamed up!

Guests

Shai Williams

Kathy Lindemer

Anita Rao

Kelly Rodgers

Tammy Adams

AE Team

Susan

Jenny

Cathy 

Jen

Niky

Diana

Laney 

Caroline << You are here.

It doesn’t seem like 5 minutes ago that I was announcing this months AJE Challenge with the theme of trees. It’s been another quick month, but looking back at everything, I managed to create quite a few designs. I suppose it’s easy when it’s your favourite subject!

I’m always inspired by trees, their branches, bark, roots, leaves… walking through a forest would have to be one of my top things to do. It never gets boring, no matter what the season, or the weather, it’s a magical place to be.

As part of the challenge, I gave away a couple of my own beads to two participants to join us. They were a popular design so I created a few in other colours.

If you remember, last month was the headpin challenge, and I had trees on the brain already while I created these gingko and twig headpins.

And for my final bead design, I made these landscape tree beads using multiple glazes and finished with china painted tree designs.

My main make though was inspired by a wonderful video posted by fellow AJE member Laney Mead.

In the video were Dragon’s Blood trees. I’ve seen these before, but never knew what they were, so I hunted out the name and they are just as amazing as they sound!

When cut, they produce a red sap that looks as though they’re bleeding.

The dense interwoven branches of the tree inspired the design in a hand built ceramic bowl. I’ve spent the last few months exploring working larger. Beads are great fun to make, but I wanted a bigger canvas to design on. I’ve been experimenting with in glaze lustre, and it turned out better than I could have ever hoped!

I have to admit, I did a little dance when I opened up the kiln to this!

The colours shift and change depending on the light and the angle.

It’s definitely a keeper 🙂

Thanks for reading and I hope you’ll join us in the blog hop… follow the links below to see what everyone else has created!

AJE Team

Jennifer Stout Cameron

Lesley Watt

Jenny Davies-Reazor

Laney Mead

Niky Sayers

Cooky Schock

Cathy Spivey Mendola

Caroline Dewison << You are here!

Guests

Brooke Bock

Karin Grosset Grange

Merja Sundström

Cindy Martin Shaw

Allison L Norfleet Bruenger

Melissa Trudinger

Kathy Lindemer

Gloria Allen

Shai Williams

Tammy Adams

Mona Arnott

Terri Del Signore

For this month’s challenge we’re trying something a little different than our usual component of the month. Our blog leader Jen set us a headpin challenge. We could make some in our chosen medium, create something with headpins from another Artisan maker, or both…. pretty much anything goes as long as the design has, as Jen put it, some ‘fancy schmancy’ pins in it!

I have only made ceramic headpins once before. They’re difficult in clay if you want them on anything other than high temperature wire. I don’t think it’s as pretty as copper or other wires which will melt while firing, so you need to fire them on something that won’t collapse in the kiln at stoneware temperatures. I rigged up a little firing tray from soft kiln brick with wire wedged in it to hold them and crossed my fingers I wouldn’t open the kiln to a welded lump!

Luckily everything came out well and after fixing with bronze wire the pins were finished.

I’ve been playing around with lots of tree ideas so the first pair were based on buds on a branch.

I like how the buds looked so I tried out a multi bud design. It’s hard to keep everything so small!

Next I tried out some leaves… these are my favourites!

I decided they needed something to finish them off so I added some tiny copper flower spacers.

I had intended to use some of each to create some jewellery, but it’s been a busy month, so I only managed a quick pair of earrings. I love these… they remind me of magic wands!

I’ve really enjoyed working on something smaller and I’ll definitely be trying out some new ideas in the future!

To see what the rest of the AJE Team and special guests have created, join us in the blog hop by following the links below.

Guests:

Alison Herrington

Renetha Stanziano

Karin Grosset Grange

Gloria Allen

Deb Fortin

Cate van Alphen

Mona Arnott

Shai Williams

Sarajo Wentling

Kathy Lindemer

Solange Collin

Brooke Bock

Melissa Meman

Patricia Handschuh

Tammy Adams

Melissa Trudinger

AJE Team Members:

Caroline Dewison << You are here

Lesley Watt

Cathy Mendola

Jenny Davies-Reazor

Susan Kennedy

Laney Mead

Diana Ptaszynski

Lindsay Starr

Niky Sayers

Another month has flown by and it’s time for the big reveal of our Component of the month challenge.

This month we were all treated to a gorgeous fossilised pebble pendant from Lesley Watt of TheaElements.

Aren’t they gorgeous? I love Lesley’s stoneware designs, they’re always wonderfully tactile, beautifully finished, and she has all the best glazes!

This is the one I received to work with…

I raided my stash and found a couple of bronze ammonite components (also made by Lesley) that I’d been hiding, which made my decision for how I wanted the design to look. I think these were earring charms, and having large holes for stringing, I decided to join them with leather thong and wrap them with bronze wire. I’m a little bit obsessed with bronze at the minute, it has such a lovely warm colour and looks great with everything!

I chose some matching beads in Czech glass, Amazonite, and some of my own lamp work, and made long connectors for the lower part of the chain.

And finished the top section with Aged seed beads and a Vintaj clasp.

It ended up as quite a simple design, but I think it leaves the focus nicely on the pendant! I’d like to say a big thank you to Lesley for such a gorgeous component to play with 🙂

To join us in the blog hop and see what the rest of the AJE Team plus special guests have made, follow the links below…

It seems to have been dark forever, so I’ve really enjoyed taking part in Lesley’s Winter AJE theme challenge – The Rebirth of the Sun… thinking about brighter days coming has really cheered me up!

Earlier in December, I created some pendants…

But for the reveal I decided I would like to try something other than jewellery or components.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks looking for inspiration and reading through winter solstice stories and it’s fascinating to see how the different cultures interpreted the changes in light. My favourite story and the one I chose to portray is the tale of The Raven and the Sun from the Tsimshian Tribe. Here’s an abbreviated version…

Once the sky had no day. When the sky was clear there was some light from the stars but when it was cloudy it was very dark. Raven had put fish in the rivers and fruit trees in the land but he was saddened by the darkness. The Sun at that time was kept in a box by a chief in the sky. The Raven came to a hole in the sky and went through. He came to a spring where the chief’s daughter would fetch water. He changed himself into a cedar seed and floated on the water. When the girl drank from spring she swallowed the seed without noticing and became pregnant. A boy child was born which was really Raven. As a toddler he begged to play with the yellow ball that grandfather kept in a box. He was allowed to play with the Sun and when the chief looked away he turned back into Raven and flew back through the hole in the sky.                                                          http://solar-center.stanford.edu/folklore/raven-and-sun.html

And here’s my interpretation of the story…

The box is hand built from raku clay and smoke fired. Raven sits on top of the box in his true form.

And inside the box is the sun…

The glowing inner was created with copper leaf. I did want to use gold leaf, but couldn’t get hold of any in time. I still think the copper gives it a lovely warm glow, and I love the contrast against the smokey dark clay.

Thanks for reading, and if you’d like to see what the rest of the team and guests have made for the challenge, follow the links below 🙂