An Abundance of Tree Inspiration

When Caroline chose trees as the theme for September's challenge I was thrilled! I have been in awe of trees for a very long time. I have taken countless photos and have used trees as inspiration in my jewelry and fiber art for several years.
It wasn't until I sat down to make some jewelry for the challenge that I realized just how many items I had already created using trees/leaves as inspiration.
After completing the tree challenge I wanted to do another blog post so I could share the numerous pieces that I have created over the past 8-10 years with trees as my inspiration.
As you will see trees can be depicted in any medium. They lend themselves to hand stitching, machine stitching, creating leaves from copper, creating trees from wire, stamping in clay, stamping on fabric...The opportunity to use trees as inspiration in your art is endless!
                                            A few pieces of jewelry using leaves-

Brass Etched Leaf, Agate & Acorn Necklace

                      

Hand Forged Copper Leaf & African Turquoise Necklace

Rustic Raku Leaf With Tibetan Agate & Glass Beads

And a beaded cabochon that looks as though you are peaking through hanging limbs at a misty pond.

Bead Embroidered Jasper Necklace Hanging From An Antler

You can etch copper with trees and encase in resin.

Etched Copper In Metal Bezel With Resin

                                     Trees can be embroidered by hand and beaded.

Detail Of Crazy Quilt

Fiber Collage With Ribbon/Embroidered/Beaded Tree

Felted Fiber Collage With Beaded Tree

Photo Printed On Fabric With Multiple Layers of Embroidery & Beads

Trees can be machine embroidered and embellished with jewelry type elements. These are close-ups of art quilts with trees as the central element.

"Keeper of the Woods' Art Quilt

"Can't See the Forest for the Trees' Art Quilt

                              You can use rubber leaf stamps to print on fabric or paper.
                              I used the same hand-carved stamp for both of these pieces.

"Spring Revival" Art Quilt

"Central Park Player" Mixed Media Collage

Or you can actually use leaves to paint and print onto fabrics. After I printed with the leaf I encased the painted leaf between fabric and tuille then edge-stitched it.  I attached the leaf on the printed fabric to create more dimension.

Fiber/Mixed Media Mini Quilt

And again, I used a real leaf in a mixed media collage below.

"Be Who You Are" Mixed Media Collage

Leaves can be used as a resist for sun printing with setacolor paints as in the photos below. The first photo also has leaves stenciled on the fabric. And the second photo has a screenprinted dandelion.

Dyed, Sun Printed, Stenciled, Screen Printed

Dyed, Sun Printed, Screen Printed, Machine Embroidered & Beaded

These trees were screenprinted onto hand dyed silk with discharge dyes and are just waiting for me to do something with them!

Dyed Dupioni Silk Screen Printed With Discharge Dyes

Dyed Dupioni Silk Screen Printed with Discharge Dyes

Leaves can be used to impress into clay. The one below is raku.

Elephant Ear Leaf Plate

The ones below were rubbed with oxides then high fired glazes applied on stoneware.

Hosta Leaf Plate

Hydrangea Leaf Plate

Maple Leaf Plate With Leaf Handles (I forgot what leaves I used?)

Believe it or not, there are still other ways I have used trees.  I mentioned all the photos I've taken- well, they could possibly be a whole series of blog posts by themselves so I will stop here.

Hopefully, you will be inspired by trees in ways you had never considered before. Maybe we will revisit the tree theme here again in the future. If you didn't get a chance to see all the participant's tree inspired pieces please do so. They were fabulous!

Looking forward to October's component of the month-sugar skulls.

August Component of the Month...Melismatic Molten Morsels!

Good morning, and Happy Saturday, all you faithful Art Jewelry Elements readers! I hope you are having a fabulous summer day in your respective time zones!  It is hard to believe that we are only a few days from August!  In only a few short weeks, many of us will be sending the kids back out the door to start a new school year...yikes!  I am about to have a 12 year old in the 7th grade, and it is blowing my mind, just how quickly he got there.

Since I am relatively new to creating jewelry components, I was excited to be able to sign up and offer a Component of the Month.  It took a while to figure out what exactly to offer, but finally decided on some of my Molten Morsels!  These mixed metal pieces are inspired by workshops I have taken with Stephanie Lee, Deryn Mentock, and Richard Salley...they incorporate copper sheet, in this case, layered with molten soft solder and embellished with brass elements. I was drawn to this style and use of soft solder from the very first try.   I love the vintage, or even ancient feel to them.  I can't wait to see what the team here at AJE will create with them.

Sorry for the yucky photos...these suckers are hard to get just right, and the brass reflects off the silver metal.  These have a light antiqued patina on them, but there so many other possibilities...I personally am going to be trying some Vintaj patinas I have stashed away!

Would you like to be a part of the August design team?  It is easy! 

Here's how the giveaway, challenge, and blog-hop will work (please read all the information carefully!)...

• I will give away 1 component to each of 3 winners selected randomly from those who leave comments below this post by midnight,  Wednesday eastern time. I'll choose the morsel and add connector holes, so you'll be surprised!
• Please include your EMAIL address in your comment so that I can contact you ASAP should you win.
• Please (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 1, 2013.
• The blog reveal will be on Saturday morning, August 31, 2013.

Good luck!  Oh, and be sure to come see the creations by the team and guests for the July components...that reveal is Wednesday, July 31! I can't wait!

Melissa Meman
Melismatic Art Jewelry
Art. Life. Love.



Saturday Share...Big Shot, the Sequel!

Back in February, I shared some of my experiences with using the Sizzix Big Shot using their embossing folders.

Several of you commented, asking if the Big Shot could be used  with other materials...brass design plates, found objects, etc.  My curiosity sufficiently aroused, I have since been playing around here and there with using other things besides the suggested embossing folders to create texture on metal with it. So, I thought I would share my findings with you today!

As a standard procedure before running a piece through the Big Shot, I anneal my metal with my torch (I used my Lenk butane, but any torch will do), so they would be as soft as possible.

First up, I wanted to try some design plates I found a while back on the cheap at Michael's.  I bought them to try and hammer the texture into the metal, and put them away...I actually forgot I had them!

I experimented with 3 different textures, to varying degrees of success. At the top of the photos are the plate I used, and the bottom is the outcome.  The plates were 2-sided, opposites...indented on 1 side,  raised on the other.  I used the raise side on all 3 tries.

It worked, but it didn't really give me a clean impression...sort of hazy, whch of course could work, depending on your design.

Next, I decided to try some burlap fabric that I had.  I have hammered fabric and screen wire textures in before to mixed success, so I thought I would give it a go.

Again, not a terribly clean impression, but I sort of like it.

The next pieces used a couple of steel components I just got.  The filigree rectangle actually made one of my favorite textures.  Doesn't really look like the filigree design, but it is a cool texture...sort of like concrete block!  The leaf only gave an outline, but it works!

Tracy over at Cinnamon Jewellery (I absolutely love her work!!) commented that she was etching pieces to use as texture plates, so I decided to try that as well.  I used a piece I etched a couple of weeks ago.  I think it needs to be a deeper etch though.  As you can see, it is pretty, but not very prominent.

Well, there you have it.  In my humble opinion, while these worked to a certain extent, it was pretty hard on the Big Shot.  I had to add more layers to get enough pressure to impress the design and it took more muscle.  I may have warped the top plastic layer of my cutting/embossing pad.  The embossing folders that are designed to work with this machine, since they have 2 sides with an interlocking design, tend to give a more defined impression.  I will probably stick to using a hammer and my bench block with the metal texture plates.

But wait, last minute light bulb...what about using a wire design?  I found a copper wire free-form reject in my scrap bin, and decided to give it a go.

Hmm, this actually worked pretty well.  Bonus, like the embossing folders, you get an inverted design on the other side.  I like them both...this is something I will definitely incorporate!

Well, there you have it!  It is possible to use the Big Shot with design plates and other texturing materials, but make sure to anneal the metal really well,  tape the materials and the metal blank to the machine, so that it doesn't slip around, be mindful to make sure you aren't abusing your machine with too much force, and have fun!

Let me know if you have been experimenting with the Big Shot or something similar since my last post...I would love to hear about your results and opinions!

Melissa Meman
Melismatic Art Jewelry
Art. Life. Love.

Saturday Share - My favorite alternative to LOS

My post today started out so different than it ended up!  I was very inspired by our own Jenny Davies-Reazor's look at the folklore of owls, and all the sweet owls she showed, that I had an idea for an etched owl pendant/necklace that I was going to roll out.  Of course, this idea came late yesterday...yes, right on schedule for a procrastinator who flies by the seat of her pants.

Where is said pendant, you ask?  Uhh, suffice it to say it did not come to pass.  I did design and etch...maybe I will write about that on my personal blog.  For today's purposes, though, I was not happy with the outcome. 

So, today, I decided to share with you my favorite alternative to our beloved liver of sulfur (LOS).  If you know my work, you know I patina everything!  I haven't really embraced the wonderful colors of patina out there...I have tried Vintaj alcohol inks, but haven't ventured into some of the other wonderful patinas that my talented friends use regularly.  I have always been a LOS girl.  I love the vintage or antique quality I get on sterling and copper and LOS delivers that everytime.  But what about on brass, bronze, or other base metals? Not so much!

My "go to" solution for these metals is Novacan Black.  I was introduced to it by Stephanie Lee, when I took her Homesteading class online and later, when I took another class with her at ArtBliss.  If you are familiar with Stephanie's gorgeous mixed-media work, you know she uses hardware store lead-free solder and other base metals a lot.  To get the beloved antique finish that LOS can't deliver on these metals, she uses the Novacan Black.  To be honest, I have never even tried the other ones out there, as I took her at her word on this one. 

 

This brass disk has been cleaned up after etching, no patina.  

Here are some different pieces (I used the other because I forgot to photograph these raw, duhhh) after I used the Novacan Black...I usually put a bit in the bottle cap, and use a q-tip to rub the solution on.  You may have to change the q-tip frequently...when it starts turning black, I have found it doesn't deliver the solution as readily.  Let it dry completely.

Remove the amount you want with 000 gauge steel wool...available at your local hardware store.

Here are my afters...a cool thing about this kind of solution, is that you can go back in for another layer until you get the depth you desire.  These haven't been tumbled yet, but after that I will probably polish them with Renaissance wax to seal.  Yes, that is the very owl I tried to do...part of him I love, and other parts, not so much!  I'm going to keep trying, though!

The one thing Novacan doesn't work on very well is sterling...it just doesn't go very dark.  If I am using mixed metals, like with my Molten Morsels, I sometimes use LOS first, then go back over the metals that don't change with the Novacan.



So, there you go!  What about you?  What "go-to" patina do you use?  Please share!!

Oh, you can usually find Novacan at stained-glass suppliers, because it is used a lot to patina the solder on stained glass pieces.  It comes in other colors, but I have only tried the black.

Melissa Meman
Melismatic Art Jewelry
Art. Life. Love

Metal Etching - A Newbie Perspective

This is my inaugural post for Art Jewelry Elements, and I am so glad to be here! (You can read more about me and why hammers make me a little weak in the knees here if you're interested.) I am a nut for all things metal, and I recently took a class in metal etching to try and expand my toolbox of techniques a little bit, since I don't own a rolling mill to impress patterns into the metal I use in my studio. (Yet.)

Before we continue, a word about safety: metal etching involves working with chemicals that can do a lot of damage.

This is what a splash of etchant did to concrete. Now imagine what it could do to your skin!

So this isn't a tutorial - I don't want your third degree chemical burns on my conscience! If you're interested in metal etching, I strongly encourage you to take a class from a qualified instructor who can walk you through the safe use of the chemicals and how to troubleshoot when you run into problems, which you inevitably will. (If you're in the San Antonio, Texas area, I highly recommend Wired Designs Studio - they offer classes in all things metal, wire, metal clay, and glass fusing.)

The lovely Gail Stouffer walked us through marking up our metal sheet with resist.

The lovely Gail is not actually teaching in this photo. Use your imagination!

"Resist" can be any waterproof material that will resist the action of the etchant. Basically, the metal will stay unchanged under the resist while the metal around it will be etched away, resulting in a raised pattern. In our case, we used a waterproof stamping ink called Staz-on.

I loved the wood-grain stamp, but couldn't find on at my local stamp store

Once we'd played around with some designs and the ink on our sheets were dry, we headed outside to mix up some chemicals and start the etching process.

Note the gloves and safety glasses!

The etchant started out clear, but as it ate away the copper in the metal sheet, it began to turn green.

Not lime jello!

The first round of etching only took 30 minutes, and we got a nice deep etch with lots of detail.

Before and after

When we cleaned up the panels and started cutting out the designs, it all started to come together. I was particularly fond of these two sections, which really popped when I lightly patina'd them.

Woodgrain etch (left) and music sheet etch (right)

Our second etch wasn't quite so successful. The etchant by this time was a bright green - like lime jello - but it should have had plenty of "oomph" to give us a good etch. After nearly an hour, the etch was still very shallow - more of a polished area. Even cleaned and with a patina on it, the pattern was hard to see and the metal felt nearly completely smooth.

Neutralized but uncleaned sand dollar etch (left); cleaned and patina'd sand dollar etch (right)

If I were doing it over again, I would have left the second batch in the etchant a little longer and put them in face up. But since we were getting to the end of the day and had to clean and close up the studio, we went with what we had. Obviously I need to experiment more!

So while the process is a little involved and I don't love having all those chemicals around, the result is totally worth it. As a matter of process, I think it probably makes sense to mark up a bunch of metal sheet and spend an afternoon once or twice a month just etching it all. Then I'll have lots of custom-patterned metal to make components with when the mood strikes me. This is the first pair of earrings I made with the patterned brass (and also my first attempt at this stirrup-style bail, which kicked my butt).

The stirrup bail/tops on these earrings kicked my butt - I need more practice on that technique!

All in all, if metal is your thing, I highly recommend adding an etching class to your class schedule sometime soon. It's a great, flexible, and customizable technique that will really expand your repertoire.

Until next time!