Monday, February 28, 2011

Art Bead Scene February Challenge

While it was never my (conscious) intention to create this bracelet for the challenge, I think these things are constantly swirling around in the back of your brain.  It's been such a crazy month I wasn't sure I was going to get anything made from either the Art Bead Scene Challenge or the Love My Art Jewelry Challenge although I have something started for the LMAJ challenge.

BUT then I found these amazing Faceted Teal Fire Agate beads at my local Ben Franklin store and when I put it all together I noticed it really did fit the ABS challenge inspiration. Even the lovely soft blue of the recycled glass beads seems to fit. The beautiful piece by John Singer Sargent has an inner glow to it that I think this bracelet has. The fire agate remind me of the glowing lanterns the girls in the piece are holding. I hope you agree!



http://www.artfire.com/modules.php?name=Shop&op=listing&product_id=2933750


Kristi
http://dreamsome.etsy.com/
http://www.artfire.com/users/KristiBowmanDesign

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Metal Clay Components

As many of you have seen, I've been in the process of making Metal Clay Components to sell in my Etsy Shop. Well to day is the day!!!

I asked 3 Jewelry Designer friends to take some of my new Components and make their own creations with them. I could not be more tickled with the results. I am also including my wonderful Bead Soup partner that did a fantastic job using one of my Components in her Bead Soup necklace. I hope you enjoy seeing all the creations and share some love with all these amazing ladies and take a look at the new bits I have for sale.

Really difficult to know where to start they are all so gorgeous and each one so different!!

These stunning earrings (below) are the creation of Erin Prais-Hints of http://www.tesoritrovati.etsy.com/ and here is her wonderful Blog. She paired my leaf shaped Silver charms with these wonderful lampwork beads, a perfect combination.




Then we have the amazing work of Gloria Ewing of Chrysalis Originals I just adore the earthy beads she chose to go with the Bronze Components she was given to work with.


And then we have a Beautiful Necklace created by Catherine Waterhouse of Shadow Dog Designs
She combines beautiful stones and copper wire with this Bronze Leaf Pendant. She calls this necklace "Dreaming of Belize" I think it suits it quite well.


Gloria Ewing created another fantastic piece using one of my tiny little charms, set off by big bold Trade beads, I absolutely love this look!!!


Here's a set of Elegant Earrings created by Cathering Waterhouse, the Silver Metal Clay squares with a cascade of blue she aptly calls "Waterfall", beautiful, delicate and uber elegant earrings.


Last but most certaily not least, my Bead Soup partner Shelby of SundownBeadDesign who took the beads I sent her, including the very bold Bronze Butterfly and created a masterpiece necklace.


There are no words to express how thankful I am to these artists for creating such beautiful work. Thank you my wonderful friends!!

I'd love to see what YOU would create with my PMC Components, check them out in my shop and see if there's something that strikes your fancy!!

Kristi





Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Studio Space featured on Waterstone Blog

I'm thrilled to have my studio space shared on Waterstone Blog!! Thank you Lori Plyer for being so generous with your time and energy in featuring myself and other artists on your blog. You are AWESOME!

http://waterstonejewelry.blogspot.com/2011/02/featuring-studio-spaces-kristi-bowman.html

Kristi
http://dreamsome.etsy.com/
http://www.artfire.com/users/KristiBowmanDesign

Bead Table Wednesday

It's BTW time, still trying to get back in to the swing of things since vacation. Playing with Beads is always a good start!!

How about some gorgeous Teal Agate, soft green recycled glass rounds, bright Blue flat glass beads, some bone beads in tan and handmade Copper clasp and maybe a bronze charm. I like it!


It's going to have to wait until I get home from work tonight, but I'll be thinking about it today.

Kristi
http://dreamsome.etsy.com/
http://www.artfire.com/users/KristiBowmanDesign


Here's the finished Bracelet, made a couple of changes in material but pretty much used everything.

http://www.artfire.com/modules.php?name=Shop&op=listing&product_id=2933750

Monday, February 21, 2011

Coming Soon...PMC Components

I mentioned in an earlier Blog Post that I was considering making components out of Metal Clay to sell for others to create their own jewelry pieces from. I had a positive response to this post so decided to do take the plunge!! So I wanted to give a heads up to those who might be interested that within the next couple of days I will be adding a few components to my Etsy Shop. I have some made and ready to go and I have more different ones in the works, not quite ready to fire.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say they love Metal Clay but are afraid to try it, or they don't want the expense that is involved in beginning in Metal Clay, such as a kiln, while not absolutely necessary it sure is the easiest and best way to make quality pieces.

I shared some components with a few of my jewelry making friends for them to create with and we'll also be sharing those creations. I've had so much fun seeing what they create with these PMC Pieces.

So, here's a look at some of the components I will be listing soon.



As many of you know I love to make my jewelry look ancient and rustic. So I often purposely leave cracks and rough spots and my components will be no different, the little charms above are great examples of this.


This is a great pendant, a very unusual piece I really look forward to seeing what is created with this Bronze Pendant.


Another new pattern for me, a little more smooth around the edges but still plenty rustic.

At the moment I have mostly Bronze pieces created but plan on also having Silver and probably Copper pieces at some point.


Kristi


Saturday, February 19, 2011

Puerto Vallarta Part Dos

In my previous post Puerto Vallarta Part 1 I shared the beady finds I got in Puerto Vallarta when we visited last week. I can't believe how long it's taking me to get back in to the swing of things this week, this cold I was bless with the day we flew back isn't helping matters.

I've been thinking about how much I didn't realize I fill my daily life these days, after having been away for a week and trying to catch up it really made me very conscious of it. Even without the cold I'd probably still be feeling behind. This 3 day weekend I hope to get somewhat caught up.

Load of bronze in the kiln, that's a good first step. I've started this load a week or 2 before our trip I think so it's ready to be cooked!!! Some new shapes and textures in this load so I'll be really excited to see how they turn out. I've actually cleaned them and put holes in them since this picture, this was my BTW photo this week. Should have blogged it but see previous paragragh about trying to catch up lol!



Ok, this post is titled Puerto Vallarta so I guess I'd better get to the PV photos huh. I'm not like most people...I think when most people travel they get lots of people pictures, me at the beach, me at the, restaurant, us at the.....you get my drift. Well, I took around 1,000 pictures and only got 1 of me and my husband and 2 of our traveling companions. The rest are Pelicans, Sunsets, Beaches, etc etc etc. I'll have to try to do better at getting pictures of us next time.

Without any more blabbing here are some photos.

 I'll begin with what is I think THE picture of the trip, the Sunset with the Ship.


Then several other very nice sunset or near sunset photos.





And I adore this one!!! This fisherman, a very tiny little guy was fishing most of the time I was taking Pelican photos which I'll show next. These little bird is a Cattle Egret (there were actually 2) stood waiting patiently for little castoffs from the fisherman. The bird seemed to be in no hurry, he knew if he waited there would be plenty of spoils for him.



Here are the Pelicans, I had so much fun standing on the beach shooting these birds!! I honestly think I probably could have stood there for the entire day, but I had my very patient traveling companions waiting and they were kind enough to let me spend quite a long stretch taking pictures while they waited for me.



They often flew in groupings of 3-4 as well as alone, it was fun to start to be able to read them and anticipate when they were about to dive in to the ocean.





Here's one in a sudden change of direction, I'm fairly sure he was in the process of diving. My camera was challenged keeping up when I had it set to shoot continuously. Unfortunatly I don't know enough about photograghy to have my camera set properly so it was on Auto. I didn't want to miss getting as many decent shots as possible. Next time I'll know alot more!


Here's the group dive, they completely let themselves go when they dive, the 2 on the right are almost on their backs lol




This one flew right over my head, there were actually 2 but I just barely got this one in my sites before it was out of the frame again.

I hope even though I may not have given you traditional vacation photos of PV that y ou still enjoyed seeing them, I sure enjoyed taking them and sharing them with you.

Today I'm going to Ben Franklin to shop for beads, not only do I have a 20% off entire order coupon, I know the person who runs the bead section was at the Tuscon Bead Show so I'm hoping for some major scores!!! I'll either post about that or about my newly fired Bronze, one tomorrow and one on Monday in whatever order they end up. I like having lots of subjects to blog about and having to juggle them, doesn't often happen that way.

Thank you for taking a look!!

Kristi

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Puerto Vallarta Part 1

I'll warn you, I'm going to ramble on a bit on this one, not my usual pictures without much text. But there are pictures at the end...trust me!!! Bead Porn at the end of this post!

Just returned from a week in Puerto Vallarta, we had a wonderful time. Perfect weather, warm but moderate. Got lots of sun, did lots of walking, ate great food what more could one ask for.

Before I left I searched online to try to find places that carry beads, didn't really find any good leads. So we spent a good amount of time walking from place to place following the directions of local shop owners and our Concierge trying to find bead stores. I am very thankful to my traveling companions for going along with me, and for supporting my obsession with Pelicans, more on that in a future post.

First of all, trying to convey to them exactly what I was looking for was not easy. My Spanish is very poor, I can pick out words here and there but this was beyond my meager abilities by a long way. I was sent to a couple of places that had small sections on the wall of small seed beads and small plastic beads, not what I was looking for.

On our last night we were on the way back to our room after having dinner and my husband spotted a store where he saw lots of ribbons and said we should check it out. After a number of disappointments I was not convinced it was worth our time to look, but he convinced me to go in. Yup lots of ribbon and flowers and crafty items, I thought we'd hit another dead end. Then I hear my husband calling from the doorway of another room so I went to see and there they were, a small room with 2 big walls full of beads and stones, not the little ones but the big ones, we had finally found the mother load!!!

Many of these beads I could probably have found elsewhere but it's fun to use beads I've purchased from another country, ads to the back story of the jewelry made with it don't you think. My big regret that I didn't buy the black coral they had, now I've come to find out it's not that common. I've searched for it now that I'm home and I see that would have been an excellent purchase. We did try to go back the next day but the store wasn't open early enough, we had to get to the airport for our return flight so couldn't wait for it to open.

OK, here are most of the stones I got in Mexico.


Above you can see Pearls in Diamond and Heart shapes, have never seen those before. Then Pink Turquoise, the red beads she called MOP which typically means Mother Of Pearl but we both agreed they are not. They are very pretty, very red but have a sort of matte finish. there are rounds, smaller faceted rounds and disc shapes. Then Composit Coral and really light blue turquoise in 12 and 17mm rounds. So rustic I just LOVE THEM!!



Beautiful Pink Turquoise Briolettes in 2 sizes, so soft and pretty but with all that matrix a little rough around the edges too.


Turquoise and Tiger Eye Carved in Butterfly shapes, these are so pretty!!

If you're ever in Puerto Vallarta and you want beads go to Manualidades La Perlita and speak to Ingrid, she's very nice and we had fun talking to her. I'll be happy to share the address and phone number if you contact me.

I'm sorting through the 1,000 plus photos I took and will post non jewelry pictures in a post in the next few days.

Kristi
http://dreamsome.etsy.com/
http://www.artfire.com/users/kristibowmandesign

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Bead Soup sneak peak

I can't share my creation with you just yet but I can tease you with it...give you just a spoon full...open the lid so you can have a sniff...but that's it!

It's pretty cool, my partner Shelby of SunDownBeadDesigns set me up with some awesome ingredients.



Here's your little sniff!! :)


Hope I've left you hungry for more soup!

Kristi
http://dreamsome.etsy.com/
http://www.artfire.com/users/KristiBowmanDesign

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Is it Friday yet?

I hate to wish time to go fast but I do wish it was Friday!!! On that note, here are some pictures of my girls, pictures of some jewelry you may have seen before but I had the opportunity to take new pictures in actual sunlight, so pretty! AND some new goodies I'd like to share!


The girls in their favorite spot, looking out the window. I like this sillouette shot!


Here's a different shot!


Shasta, ears up on alert...what's out there?


Nothing new, just some pretty sunlight shots in Picasa Collage form!
Something so pretty about a Collage.


Received this new book today,
 ordered it some time ago and pretty much forgot it was coming.
AND it's got a DVD, I like that!


Beautiful Raku Angel Fish from
Also got those adorable Scrimshaw Turtles from this website.


Bullion, French Coil Wire.
She was very helpful to get me what I wanted.
I look forward to trying this instead of Wire Guards which I don't care for.


That's all folks!
Kristi