Whole Bead Show NY, Oct 17-19

I have 25 discounted tickets available.

Go to the Event page on Brown Paper Tickets
(Click HERE) and use this code BShzdDyF.

I've been working feverishly to get as many pieces made as possible, I'll probably end up with a ton left over but I'd rather have that than not have enough.
If I have lots left that just means I can take it easy for awhile.
Over the last month or so I've gone through the better part of 3KG of CopprClay!

I have numerous piles of copper pieces like this...

That need to be sorted in to matching pairs and tied together like this.

One of my least favorite jobs and very time consuming!
I'd much rather continue creating but it has to be done!


My husband made me a new earring display which holds way more than the shutters I usually use and it's much lighter which is great since I have to ship it along with lots of other display items.

I have to pack up all of my displays and ship them to the venue. Quite a process!!
I was going to build a box for it thinking there was no way I'd find a box that fit it well enough but I did find one!

That's my new earring display with cards and bags and all kinds of thing packed between the rungs.

This has my display trays, lights, power strip and the kitchen sink piled on top!

This box is perfect, it's very snug but has just a few inches at one end where I can tuck a few more things.

Last minute trip to the store tomorrow and buy some more receipt books and then I think I'm ready to ship it! 

Took a break from organizing and packing to color these beautiful Pendants!

Wish me luck and I hope some of you can use the codes at the top of the page for discount admissions, please come by and say HI!!

Artisan Booth 709A

Kristi

KristiBowmanDesign.com

KristiBowmanDesign.Etsy

September Component of the Month REVEAL

September Component of the Month REVEAL!!

I'm so excited to share with you the creations of these wonderful Artisans!!

ENJOY!!

Monthly Winners

SJ Designs Jewelry

Kari Asbury

Shirley Moore

AJE Team Members

Caroline Dewison

Diana Ptaszynski

Lesley Watt

Melissa Meman

Linda Landig

Kristen Stevens

Jenny Davies-Reazor
Sue Kennedy

KristiBowmanDesign.com

KristiBowmanDesign.Etsy

September Component of the Month and Giveaway!

Winners have been announced HERE
Thank you!

Hi there Beady People!!! It's time for the September Component of the Month Giveaway!!

This month I made something new and I hope you love them as much as I do!!

I call them Goddess Vessels! They are good sized Focals made with Copper and White Copper in several different designs!

 I'll be giving away 3 of them to those that are randomly picked from the comments.

Let me know your preference in color and texture and I'll do my best to get you what you want!

Want to play along? Here are the rules…

• I will giveaway 1 Goddess Vessel to each of 3 winners selected randomly from those who leave comments below this post.
• Your comment must included your EMAIL address and a link to your blog, so we can contact you should you win.
• Please — only leave a comment if you can commit to creating a finished piece and blogging about it on the reveal date.
• The names of the 3 winners will be announced on Thursday August 28th.
• This giveaway is open to US and international countries, but please be aware that international addresses will have longer postage times… sometimes up to 3 weeks.
• The blog reveal will take place on Sunday, Sept 28th, 2014.

Kristi

KristiBowmanDesign.com

KristiBowmanDesign.Etsy

PMC Class Update!

Remember when I took that PMC (Precious Metal Clay) class with Donna Penoyer?  I got my pieces back, and thought I would update you with the results. 

This is how they went to Donna - dry, but not fired.  She fired them at her studio, and when they were ready I went to pick them up.  Unfortunately, she was out of town so I didn't get to see her studio.

This is how they came back to me, after she fired them and polished them.  I asked her to just leave them polished so I could use the liver of sulpher (LOS) on them myself.  They are very very shiny!  It's hard to tell how shiny, because we have not sun while I am writing this!

And here's how they look after LOS and polished with steel wool.  I was slightly worried because I thought, what if I hate them after I used the liver of sulpher?  But I don't, I like them.  It gives a nice colorful patina on the silver if you don't polish it with the steel wool, I supposed you would need to seal it with Ren Wax or PermaLac if you wanted the color to stay?  I any event, I like them.  The tentacle will be a necklace and the odd shell-like construction will probably sit around in a box! 

PMC Class with Donna Penoyer

This past weekend, I took a PMC (Precious Metal Clay) class with Donna Penoyer.  It was at the Society for Contemporary Craft here in Pittsburgh, and the class title was Imaginary Sea Creatures in PMC.  I has asked if a newbie could take the class, and was told yes, but it really wasn't a newbie class!  However, I plugged along and thought I'd show you what we did.

 First we started out with an exercise making a PMC tentacle.  We made a form using epoxy putty, and then made a mold with polymer clay.

 We decorated the polymer after pressing the form, and baked it.  Using the PMC, and the putty form, we pressed the clay into the mold.

 This is my rough tentacle, after drying but before sanding.  You can really see how rough it it - I had no idea you had to sand PMC so much. 

 Here's my finished, sanded tentacle.  If I made another one, I think I would use a toothbrush or something to give the areas in between the suckers a brushed metal look. We didn't fire it in the shop, Donna is taking them to her studio to fire and we can pick them up later.  I'll be sure to show you how it turned out.  I'm hopeful!

After that exercise, we got into the class topic...making sea-like imaginary creatures.  She brought a lot of shells, urchins, texture sheets, etc. for us to use.  Here's where being a newbie was somewhat of a challenge - since I had no experience with this at all, I had truly no idea what I was doing.  Donna was very helpful, but probably I should have taken PMC 101 first.  I did do some sketching of things I thought I would make, and here's how it ended up.

 I took molds of three different types of shells, with the idea of using parts of each.

 We made armitures (structures to drape the clay on while drying) and then pressed our clay in the molds and created the piece.

 Here is my rough sea creature.  It did not turn out the way I drew it, but since it was my first time making anything, I didn't really care.  I was taking the class for the experience.

 Here's my sea creature after standing and adding a hole for the jump ring.  This one is a little bit rougher than the other one on the surface, as I'm leaving the texture from the shells.  I wonder how it will look when it's all shiny and silver?

There were more steps than I mentioned of course, but I can't give Donna's class away, now can I?  I did conclude that for right now, PMC is not really for me.  The expense of the clay, and the amount of time required sanding, makes it seem almost impossible to get into.  Perhaps as you get more experienced, the sanding time goes down, and I am sure copper clay has to be less expensive, but for now, I'll just admire things other people make with PMC.

 

Here's an example of Donna's art, which you can see on her web site.

 

Scratch Foam

Today I'm going to share some of my newest Foam Board Textures.

I really like this long and lean design, I made several mistakes which I was able to disguise (below) but I think I'll try this one again and see if I can do a better job!

I've had it in my mind for awhile to use the coptic cross shape and do some original texture in them and I really love results! 

I should have taken a picture of these before I rolled the copper on it, they would have looked much prettier without all that copper left behind but I was too excited to see what they looked like.

Very Tribal inspired, I haven't even cleaned these up so they are very rough around the edges.

I'm really looking forward to firing these.

Now for some bloopers, these could not be saved!

I didn't even see how much it looked like a flag until I rolled the copper on to it, I tried to doctor it up but nothing worked.

I know you can't see much with that sign over the top but you're not missing anything.

I rolled copper on to it to see what it looked like but nope, it is a reject!

Sometimes you can't tell what it's going to look like until you roll it out,

and sometimes rolling it out doesn't help one bit.

Click HERE to see one of my previous Scratch Foam posts.

Kristi

KristiBowmanDesign.Etsy

KristiBowmanDesign on Artfire

October Component of the Month Reveal

This year is going by at lightening speed, I remember only a few days ago being amazed it was October already and now October is almost over! Crazy!!!

I am very excited to see what everybody has created with my Copper Ammonite pieces!!!

 They are basically Bracelet Focals but I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a necklace thrown in the mix.

We've got an amazing group of talented artisans playing along this month, please take a look and I know they would love to hear what you think of their creations!

Guests

Kym Hunter Designs
MiShel Designs

AJE Team Members
Jennifer Cameron Glass Addictions
Lesley Watt Gossiping Goddess
Kristen Stevens My Bead Journey
Caroline Dewison Blueberri Beads
Jenny Davies-Reazor 
Melissa Meman 
Rebekah Payne Tree Wing Studio
Francesca Watson
Sue Kenney SueBeads
Kristi Bowman Design

And the WINNERS for
 NOVEMBER Challenge are...

Alice of Alice Dreaming
Lindsay Durflinger

Kristi

KristiBowmanDesign.Etsy

October Component of the Month Giveaway

A week or so ago I saw this amazing picture on Pinterest and then found the original on Flickr.

This inspired my October Component of the month.

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/144396731776123971/

I could just picture how cool it would look with different sizes and shapes of Ammonite on a piece of copper, all over lapping each other.

This is the result!

As you can see each one is different. Different textures in different places on each piece and the copper colored differently as well. I really worked hard to get some nice color on each one of them which isn't always easy with copper but I'm pleased with the results on these.

I made 2 extra to give away and the rest go to my AJE team mates.

I plan to make more to have available in my Etsy shop as well in the future.

Here's how it goes!!

Please read carefully

• I will give away 1 component to each of 2 winners selected randomly from those who leave comments below this post by midnight,  Sunday September 29th, eastern time. 
• Please include your EMAIL address in your comment so that I can contact you ASAP should you win.
• Please only leave a comment if you can commit to creating a finished piece and blogging about it on the reveal date!
• The names of the 2 winners will be announced on Monday September 30th.
• The blog reveal will be on Wednesday October 30th.

Kristi

KristiBowmanDesign.Etsy

Texture Texture Texture

Texture is one of the things I love most and use as much as possible in everything I make!

You can make a texture mold off of so many things you might not even think about.

I'm going to share some of my tried and true favorites and some newer ones I've discovered fairly recently.

While putting together this post I walked around the house and found several brand new things to take molds of that I had never considered before and some I just hadn't gotten around to yet.

Above I've made a mold of an inexpensive lace doily and I really love the look.

I've been using this mold for awhile now and show some finished Copper pieces using it.

This is a new one! I think when I bought it for my show table display I considered trying to make a texture of it but I never got around to it. While I was thinking about this post I remembered so I went and got it and I really like the result!

Now this one is kind of an odd one but it turned out well. This is one of those sticky mat things you cut and put in your cupboards to set dishes and glasses on.

Not bad.

I love this one!!

It's a WigJig!!

Yup, makes great little dots!

Above you'll see the results that look like stone.

The texture is taken from the candle holder pictured below.

It really looks like stone and is up at the top of my list of favorites!

While the above isn't my favorite it's not bad. This is a serving tray.

Not quite enough definition for me but I might use it again.

This Gold Charger Plate I wasn't so sure about. The dots are so tiny I wasn't sure if the texture would be too find, but it turned out much better than I expected.

It's actually much better looking than the picture shows.

Goes to show you, you gotta give it a try cause you never know!!

And last but not least!

I think this might be my favorite of the bunch, I've played around quite a bit with it and I love the little twigs and things I've made with it.

It's a shingle or a piece of siding, not sure to be honest, don't even know where it came from.

It's got such a variety of texture on it I'll probably make even more molds from it.

I'd love to know what kind of strange things you've made molds of,

the sky is the limit!!

Kristi

KristiBowmanDesign.Etsy