At the back of the cupboard I found....

I decided to make my own Christmas cards this year, I used to when I was drawing but once I stumbled into glass - not literally that would be painful - I never found the time to create the cards. My chosen medium, before glass, was pencils: beautiful coloured pencils.  My favourite being Derwent Inktense and 'ordinary' Derwent Artists pencils.  The down side of pencils is they are time consuming but I figured starting my Christmas cards in October gave me loads of time.  I am nothing if not over optimistic! 

After spending a whole day designing and drawing one image in coloured pencil I was being to rethink my Christmas card idea, the thought of popping into town, or better still sending my daughter on her lunch break from work (she works in town) would save me loads of time I am always moaning I don't have.  BUT...  I have already brought the blank cards for printing, got the VERY EXPENSIVE archival ink in my rather posh printer, brought for printing my original drawings years ago and had got the husband to not only source me the clear cellophane packets for the cards but also to bulk buy the cardboard backed envelopes with DO NOT BEND on the front.  Really I had to crack on with this idea having invested money.. well husband's, but what is mine is mine and what is his is mine so.... 

Deciding, that fateful day of the 'great Christmas card idea' to abandon hope I cheered myself up by cleaning out the cupboard in the dinning room - you know the cupboard, you shove everything in it, weld the door shut, pray it won't pop open and squash the cat should the contents burst forth when no one is looking.. we all have one.. don't we?

At the back of this cupboard I found not one, not two but three sets of watercolour paints and a box full of tubes of watercolour paint from way back in my 'I am going to paint and be brilliant at it years' before I abandoned all hope of mastering watercolours believing them to be the gift of the Gods and those Gods were just not gifting me!  

'Ah... ha'  I decided 'a quick doodle with a paintbrush to produce a work of brilliance is WAY quicker than the pencils' and so I dragged out the paints, cleaned up the dried palette's, found an old cup with a crack in it - try finding one without a chip ...my son still lives at home, he of the 'Chief cup chipper' gene - and then dug about a bit more in the cupboard until I found the watercolour brushes.

Armed with my paints, some paper, my brushes I sat at the kitchen table and remembered I was completely rubbish with watercolour so I then Googled, Watercolours for Dummies.  I love Google!

Google told me to try mixing the colour on the brush and .. get this.. USE LOTS OF WATER..  I know shouldn't be rocket science but turns out this was where I was going wrong all those years, not enough water and trying to be clever mixing the paint in the palette.. and never mixing enough although I do know there is more than 20 colours of mud! 

I loaded up my brush, with water, I coated my bristles in pigment from the watercolour pans and I kept it all quite simple, 'I will just use my doodles' I thought 'the ones I sit in front of the TV and do without thinking about line, or form or quality, those doodles that I enjoy and will turn into beads at the next torch session'.  So I did!  Turns out I like watercolour after all, now if you will excuse me I am off to create some more designs for Christmas cards and that owl with the Robin isn't quite right, his eyes are weird and he is flat..   just a tweak here and there!

Introducing me.... Laney Mead

I am a new member of the admin team here at Art Jewelry Elements and thrilled to be part of a great group of extremely talented artists - the head pin challenge of last week left me with a serious addiction to head pins and making them!  I am a lampworker, writer, mother to 2 grown up kids who refuse to leave home, wife, cleaner of house, walker of dogs, chief dribble wiper  (we have a special needs cat, he was brain damaged at birth and dribbles, more about him further down.... ) and de-hairer of the furniture.  What I am not, is a cook or shopper, I do neither well so my husband does those jobs and has been known to leave me easy meals in the fridge should he be at work! 

I thought I would introduce myself via various photos I found whilst looking for one - which I didn't find - and wasting the last 30 minutes or so!!

So this is me... the cute one in the frilly knickers petting the dog, Barney, whom I was told was the most aggressive hound and the person who is headless (!) is my 19 year old mother (she was too young!) wringing her hands in terror.  That was the beginning of my love affair with animals and is in the early 70's - don't you just love the frocks of the day!!  

This is where I live, the beautiful, rural countryside of Hereford, in Herefordshire UK.  We are just 13 miles from the Welsh border.  My bedroom window looks out over the Black Mountains in the Brecon Beacons in Wales and we have the greenest grassland in the UK, because it is nearly always raining!!

One of my walks through the ancient woodlands with my dogs, this Old Man Oak tree is over 300 years old, I tell him all my secrets.

I have drawn since I could hold a pencil and had big dreams of being a famous artist but due to being fostered in my teenage years I hit the job market as soon as I left school at 16 in a bid to leave home for good.  All my artist endeavours have been through just sitting and doing, I am self taught in everything I do from the pencil drawings below to the glass I do now.

Some of my drawings were made into dog tags, prints, key rings and cross stitch designs, to name a few.  I love to draw and although I don't do it to this level any more I still doodle in the evenings, but I do it for pleasure.  Making money from pet portraiture in pencil is hard work as each drawing can take over 50 hours and that is for a small one.

I did a few whimsy ones too!  This one is called 'Bottom's Up'.  I used to keep chickens but being this rural, the fox and the badger came one night and my girls are no more.  I  miss their fluffy bums running around the garden and chasing Defi, my youngest Golden Retriever who used to annoy them!

Some of my doodles, I love eyes, they are windows to the soul.  These are just for pleasure, although I have been known to sell the odd one every now and again, I do them for me not for profit.

I 'found' glass completely by accident.  A chance 'go' with my (ex) sister in law who used to use fused glass and I was hooked.  I was shown how to light the torch and what a mandrel was and left to my own devices.   Hours of practice in the converted studio: my easel was packed away and my bench was set up.  I started with flowers, but I always wanted to create my pencil portraits in glass.

No matter how hard I tried the portraits 'went' whimsy so I ran with it for a few years.  All my animals had bums, stories, googly eyes.  They are all beads and if they didn't make me smile going in the kiln they didn't make the grade! 

This one is 'The Mummy Cat'.

'Baa-Humbug' was made for a friend who is an author and had just finished writing a book on English sweets and the heritage of them around the UK.   Great book!  For those not in the UK the Humbug is a black and white mint sweet (candy):  Bah-humbug is a miserable old 'git' and the saying was made famous by Shakespeare's Scrooge in A Christmas Carol.

I write tutorials too, this one is for badger beads, but I have done leaves, roses, bees, butterflies... all whimsy ones.  You can find them in my Etsy shop - links at the bottom.

I have written for several magazines too, this is the most recent tutorial I have written and it was published in the 2016 September issue of Glass Line.

..and was for this elephant bead.  My glass work has finally come full circle and now my beads are more realistic, just like the pencil portraits I used to do.

A Lynx, the customer wanted the holes in the ears so they could affix the fluffy bits of the Lynx's ears themselves. 

I have also been experimenting with boro glass and marbles, they are getting more and more round! 

The Wolf, my favourite animal in the kingdom, this one is made with enamel glass powders.

And finally...  I write about my special needs cat Gordy, who is a British Short Hair and more recently Teeko, a Birman,  who is 15 and came to live with us last year, for Cat World magazine.  Gordy is almost 4 and he is a forever kitten, he has limited balance, dribbles and can never go outside on his own due to not learning from his mistakes.  He wears bibs (this is an old article) to protect his fur and those are specially designed for him by Claire of Clasicats.

This is one of my favourite photos of Gordy my son took him outside in the sunshine to play cars and he loved it... Gordy was quite happy too!  Gordy can go outside but can not be unsupervised.

This is all my gang, my dogs Izabel and the reason I am also known as Izzybeads, she is 10, Defi is 6 and came to live with us at 13 months old and Teeko who used to live next door but they moved to Spain so he came here.

And that is me!  You can find me at Art Jewelry Elements but also on my blog

Dust, Dribble and Dog Hair

on Etsy

Izzybeads

and also on FB, I do have a business page but I prefer to use my personal one so come and be my friend!

Laney Mead

Headpin Challenge Reveal

Headpins by Jen Cameron

Today is the big reveal! Each person who accepted this challenge was to make headpins and/or design something using headpins. This was a popular challenge as we had lots of people sign up. The names below are clickable links, so please click them, see what each person created, and don't forget to leave a comment!

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
Lesley Watt
Cathy Mendola
Jenny Davies-Reazor
Susan Kennedy
Laney Mead
Diana Ptaszynski
Lindsay Starr
Niky Sayers

Color me enchanted! A book review...

I sat down to write this post on 2 books in my art/inspiration/history library that I adore. And found a new book by  the author, Victoria Finlay. I only wonder if I can wait until the holidays to purchase it. You know its on my list right away! OK - back to the regularly scheduled post... 

When I need a go to gift for a friend I turn to the work of author Victoria Finlay. Almost everyone I know would find either of her first 2 books interesting. Gems, history, drama, folktales, color, pigments, each, science, paint, art.... see what I mean? I wanted to introduce these to you, for your list or as gifts... since it IS that time of year. 

First: Color: a natural history of the palette. 

This book is a treat. Divided into the colors of the rainbow it delves into origins, materials, organic sources, scientific methods, history, travel, culture... The author shares her travel tales, her detailed and thorough research, both historical and cultural. Its a behind the scenes look into things that are so familiar and remain a complete mystery!

Color by V. Finlay. Available here

From the back cover: 

• Cleopatra used saffron - a source of the color yellow - for seduction... 
• Extracted from an Afghan mine, the blue "ultramarine" used by Michelangelo was so expensive he couldn't afford to buy it himself.
• Since ancient times, carmine red - still found in lipsticks and Cherry Coke - has come from the blood of insects. 

Snippets from "Color..."

"If you open up a box of paints, there are numerous such stories hidden inside it. There are stories of sacredness and profanity, of nostalgia and invention, of secrecy and myth, of luxury and texture, of profit and loss, of fading and poison, or cruelty and greed, and of the determination of some people to let nothing stop them in the pursuit of beauty." ( page24)

Second: Jewels- A secret History

Jewels by V. Finlay available here

Diamonds, rubies, emeralds, amber, jet... 

Im sure you have heard of the infamous and tragic Hope diamond, of Mikimoto and the first cultured pearls. But what of Whitby, the town jet built? The emerald city of Sikait? The amber washing championships on Jantar, Poland? I didn't think so! These and more tales await you in the pages of "Jewels"! I am the first to admit that I am a "gemstone junkie" and that I most frequently use stones in my beadwork. But this is a multicultural exploration into places, gems, folklore...  that appeals to me on so many levels!

Snippets from "Jewels"

And most recently: The BRILLIANT history of Color in Art

Finalys' newest! Im so excited! On Amazon... 

Looking inside this one on Amazon, I may have actually sealed out loud in excitement. COLOR and ART HISTORY. I am in heaven. Cave paintings! Tyrian purple and Egyptian blue, gilded Medieval painting, sepia photography... 

from the back cover: 

• Cleopatra made purple the royal color of the Western world. Her favorite was made with rotten shellfish soaked in urine. 
• Cobalt blue was the key evidence in a infamous trial  involving Nazi collaboration and a forged Vermeer. 
• Van Gogh used chrome yellow beautifully in his paintings - but he probably shouldn't have eaten it. 

( I searched for this last night at Barnes & Noble. To look, maybe to bring it home... Sadly their one copy wasn't not the shelf. So for now - it remains on my Wish list.) 

I know that was a very biased, enthusiastic review. But if all I achieve is to have you look up these books and consider them... they speak for themselves. Great gifts - for yourself, or your art/jewelry/history/folklore friends! 

More DC Museum/Tourist Inspiration

By now, you've probably heard about the adventure I had last Sunday with team-mates Jenny Davies-Reazor and Lesley Watt in D.C.  If you haven't, go read all about it. Jenny shares some wonderful, inspirational, creativity-sparking photos from our visit to the National Museum of the American Indian.  In continuing the virtual tour, and looking through my photos, I realize that I was "oohing" and "ahhing" a lot more than I was pointing and shooting!

I have some different shots from Jenny, not sure why I chose them, but as a relatively new component maker, I am always on the look for inspiration.

Very, other-worldly flowers outside the Smithsonian castle!  A rare "tree lily', native to Cuba and Jamaica.  I can envision smaller versions of these in polymer clay or glass perhaps?

Part of a "Yarn-Bombing" art project called  Perspectives at the Smithsonian by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota.

Jenny and Lesley outside the NMAI...melting. I just noticed that the profile of the building looks like a sort of primitive face!

Cool art in the sidewalk of the museum of the phases of the moon. Spiral and circles...what's not to love!

Jenny shared this one as well,  but I loved it...the handles remind me of coiled copper beads I have made before!  There was also a wonderful blast of cool air that came out!

One of the 1st photos I took inside the museum, these are spindles for spinning wool.  Smaller versions for metal clay disks, anyone?

These stamps are hundreds of years old!  The exhibit showed them used in textile printing, but of course, I would use them on polymer or metal clay.  I would love to have that skull!

This really resonated with all of us when we saw it. 

One of my favorite sculptures I saw that day. Future Clone, by Fritz Scholder, 1999.  It was included in a scene of the movie, "The Black Swan". 

There was so much to take in and see here...I would love to go back and spend more time reading every plaque, opening every drawer and watching every video!

Musings on Creativity

Lately I've been working on a series of Bird Totems. I'm really loving this idea and each time I approach the subject, I continue to expand on the idea and improve it. Watching it evolve is a lot of fun.

Here are some of my pieces...

Here are some newer pieces, in clay (not yet fired)... one of the images shows my hand carved stamps used to create the belly symbols. I am playing with the idea of the Bird Totem as symbolic of the Bird  as Messenger - who brings us insights, messages, and gifts of inspiration from the inner workings of our soul / consciousness, and from the connection we have with sources outside of ourselves and our everyday world.

About Creativity and How Art Happens... 

As artists, we sometimes play with ideas, not really knowing where the underlying sources of inspiration come from. Upon seeing my bird totems, a friend pointed out that they reminded him of native american art, especially that of Pacific Northwest nations. Fascinated, I looked up some of the art of these sources and was immediately excited. I love the idea of art as a dialogue with our our selves, our culture, other artists, and historical - often ancient - sources. Art is not created in a vacuum, but rather, works as a kind of PLAY on themes both old and new. I emphasize the word "Play" because it is critical to step outside of one's routine and get into a state of absolute flow. One must not worry or fuss about the particulars (such as planning what to make, how to make it) of a particular meme or idea, but rather, continue to play with it, riffing on it with each iteration. The particulars happen as part of the flow. This flow must not be interrupted by our logical reasoning daytime brain. Moreover, it is important to sometimes "sleep on ideas" - when one is stuck or tired, just allow it to rest, go to bed and approach it anew.

Here are some of the native american pieces that I find absolutely fascinating and inspiring. I was not consciously aware of this body of work prior to making my bird totems, but when I reflect back I clearly see a line of evolution... (these are all images from the Shaw Collection at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, NY.

Thoughts about Creativity from John Cleese...

Finally, I would like to share a lecture by John Cleese, about how we create. I think you will find this enlightening... particularly about the notion of how our unconsciousness contributes to the creative process...  I invite you to watch and learn...