AJE February Component of the Month REVEAL

AJE's own Francesca Watson made beautiful Enameled Focals for the month of February!

I paired Francesca's beautiful pinky mauve focal with one of my Paisley Copper rings, and nested the pendant between a couple of snakeskin end caps.

Lovely and rustic pink Rhodochrosite roundelles, and neutral glass beads round off the piece.

I just love all the personality in this beautiful focal!

I was even lucky enough to have some adorable little Rhodochrosite pair to make matching earrings.

Please take a moment to enjoy all the other creations using Francesca's beautiful focal!!

• 
  Jenny Cameron
  Jenny Davies-Reazor
  Susan Kennedy
  Linda Landig
  Melissa Meman
  Kristen Stevens
  Francesca Watson
  
  
  
  Guest Designers:
  
  Dawn Horner
  Kym Hunter
  Kay Thomerson
  Shelley Graham Turner
  Sandi Volpe

There's still time to enter for our next Challenge!

AJE March Component of the Month Giveaway

Kristi

KristiBowmanDesign.Etsy

Earrings Everyday

Check out my Earrings Everyday post.

Earrings Everyday

Rustic Teal by kristibowmandesign featuring platform heels

Kristi

I Heart Macro - Enamel

Today was the reveal for the Colors of Spring Blog hop I participated in.

 We got a sudden burst of sunshine this afternoon which we haven't seen much in the last few days so I decided to attempt to re-take some of my photos and also thought that cool enamel bead with all it's cracks and crackles was a perfect subject for today's I Heart Macro!

Mor Macro to enjoy at Studio Waterstone!

Kristi

Experimentation Part 3

So after getting my headpins out of the kiln with quite good results I might add,

 see Experimentation Part 2 ,

 I decided to go a step further and try to torch fire some enamel on them.

OH YA!!

I think I'm going to be doing lots of experimenting with this!!

Yummy huh?!?!?!

This was the very first one I tried,

 can you imagine the Happy Dance that this created!!!

I started with my little cheap butane torch and dipped it 3 times...I think, it's all a blurr really!

I want to do this again!!!!!!!!!!

For these I pulled out my big Barbara Lewis Painting With Fire

 Burnzomatic Mapp Gas torch,

they are very pretty too, in a much more subtle way.

Accept for......

On the end of one of them are these....

very cool...

dot sort of things...

that almost look like sequins.

How did I do that?????

Good question.

This last one is an attempt to recreate my first one by going back to my little torch,

 cool, but not as spectacular as the first.

Good thing I'm going to a Barbara Lewis class in Portland next week.

Maybe I'll find out why I got some of these results so I can do it again!

Kristi

Fold Forming and Enameling Day 1

I just finished day 1 of a great class with Nancy Megan Corwin, you can call her Megan at The Ranch.

I learned to fold form these awesome leaves out of copper and did a little bit of enameling. We'll do more enameling tomorrow and actually probably more fold forming too. So much fun!!

Here's a grouping of the leaves I made, the one in front that is more red than the others has been torch fired. I've really been wanting to do more enameling and I think this class will build my confidence quite a bit so hopefully I'll will!!

Not my best photography effort but it's been a long (and very fun) day. I'll try to get photos of the work of some of the other students too, some beautiful stuff!

I'm really looking forward to trying enameling on some of my copper clay work!!!

Kristi

http://dreamsome.etsy.com/

http://www.artfire.com/users/KristiBowmanDesign

Playing with Enamel

I've had a little starter kit for some time from Painting With Fire shop on Etsy, been waiting for a number of things to finally give it a try, not the least of which is getting my studio moved to it's new location and set up. It still needs some work but I got it ready enough to have my first go at it.

First off, some time ago I bought a big bag of destash stuff from. I took out the few things I wanted at the time and put the bag in the closet and forgot about it. I just recently remembered it and thought it would be perfect to use as practice pieces for enamel, lots of stuff I can ruin and it's no big deal. There are actually a bunch of cool stuff too, I'm going to save those for when I've gotten better at it, but there is plenty of junk for me to play with for now.

Here is my first attempt, not so good but that's ok. There are probably 30 of these little frames in the pile.

Then I tried a bead, a little bit better but still need practice...I can do that!

Fun fun fun!!

Kristi
Dreamsome.Etsy