AJE Earring Challenge

The Art Jewelry Elements Blog is having a challenge this year.

Come join in the fun over at the AJE Blog.

 

  

 

Sign up today to become part of the Challenge Board on Pinterest,

we'd love to see your creations using Art Jewelry Elements!!

First Reveal January 20th!

Kristi

KristiBowmanDesign.Etsy

Focusing on Life Self Portrait

So much going on in life I somewhat reluctantly joined in the
 Focusing on Life 52 week photo challenge hosted by Sally Russick.

 The first challenge is a tough one and I think just about everybody would agree. Very few of us like to be in front of the camera and taking a Self Portrait is not easy.

 

I kind of like this one cause it has a very cheeky mischievious look to it and I had to play with it in pic monkey to minimize the things I didn't like about it.

 So I focused on my eye looking right at the camera.
As far as cropping I didn't need to, this is the exact shot that came from my camera, I was just holding the camera at arms length and clicking and this was really the only useable shot I got.
 

 

And when I was playing I came across this effect that I thought was cool so I'll share it too.

 

 

 

 

 Kristi

KristiBowmanDesign.Etsy

WBW - Snowy Owl

Welcome to 2013!!!!

It was a big year for me, I've seen and been able to photogragh so many new birds!

Many right at my back yard feeders!

 

I've also been lucky enough to do some traveling and see more new birds that way.

These gorgeous Snowy Owls are not in my back yard but I don't have to travel very far to see them.

These 2 and probably a couple more are about a 30 minute drive for me in the
Ballard neighborhood of Seattle.

 

 

 

I went back this morning to see them and this one on the rooftop was there again.

(that is assuming it's the same one but I think this is it's preferred hangout)

 

Unfortunately when I took my camera out I realized I hadn't put the memory card back in so couldn't take new pictures.

 

Kristi

Labyrinths revealed, AJE December Component of the Month

This month's Component of the Month is an awesom Labyrinth piece from Jenny Davies Reazor.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to finish mine, I love the look but it's not mechanically sound yet. I woke up at 3am this morning with an idea of how to do just that so if you have a chance to stop by later today or tomorrow I hope to have a much improved piece.

 

 

I'm going to make more wire tubes to connect the focal to the wire and make it more mechanically sound, I'll improve on the connection of the smaller wire spiral to the larger one as well and add another set to finish the bracelet.

 

I decided to post the unfinished bracelet because I know we all go through this process, sometimes very frustrating when it doesn't work quite the way we want but we persevere!!!

Here is my first re-vamped connection,
I love the look but let me tell you it's not going together easily!!
Definitely a journey in to the Labyrinth lol!

 

 

Check out the other creations using this wonderful Labyrinth Focal

This months guests of honor:

Emma Todd

Lee Koopman

Jess Green

And participating AJE team members:

Jen Cameron 

Kristi Bowman

Diana Ptaszynski

Kristen Stevens

Lesley Watt

Francesca Watson

Melissa Meman

Jo Tinley

Linda Landig

Sue Kennedy

Jenny Davies-Reazor 

Kristi

KristiBowmanDesign.Etsy

52 Earrings

All this year I've been participating in a Flickr group challenging artists to create 52 earrings during the year, technically 1 per week but I certainly didn't post mine weekly. I just posted pair number 52, I wanted to finish a little early because there's so much going on the last few weeks of the year.

Over at the Art Jewelry Elements Blog

 we're working on creating a similar challenge

 where you can link your creations to a special pinterest group and to our blog bi-weekly.

Watch for details coming up in the new year.

Kristi

KristiBowmanDesign.Etsy

Lotus Earrings

My new obsession is Lotus, Lotus Flower, Lotus Root!! I recently made some new pieces inspired by these and shared them last week in this Blog Post. I should have made more because I immediately wanted to save the 1 pair I made of each of these to create jewelry,
 but I'm working on more and the components are available for Pre-Order in my Etsy Shop.

Here are the earrings I created using these new components.

Lotus Flower



Lotus Flower



Using gorgeous Headpins by GeneaBeads that looks like water or dew drops and I think are a perfect combination to these Copper Lotus Flowers.

Here are the Lotus Root Pinwheel earrings.



Lotus Root Pinwheels



Both pair are available in my Etsy Shop.

Kristi

KristiBowmanDesign.Etsy

Goldie Bronze

A long long time ago I won some Goldie Bronze from Val Lewis
I'm just now giving it a try.
So many wonderful things to try, so little time!

I didn't make anything brand new,
 I used some of my favorite scratch foam textures that I've created to test it out.

Below is a Lotus Root in Goldie Bronze on the Left and Copper on the Right.

Right away the most obvious difference is the size. I used the same mold I created for both.

Shrinkage for Goldie Bronze is about 5% and for CopprClay about 20%.

I'll definitely have to keep that in mind in the future because many of my pieces I create for earrings pairs will be too big using Goldie Bronze. I'll have to do some downsizing.

Although the larger size is good for pendants.

Below is one of my Elephants, Goldie Bronze above and CopprClay below.

My little tiny elephant is not so tiny any more.

Bronzie Gold Elephant is about 1.75" from nose to tail

Copper Elephant is 1.25" nose to tail.

I did get some nice color on the bronze, especially on the Lotus Root above.

There are some other more subtle differences between the 2, it's a powder you have to mix which isn't bad at all. The texture is different, when in clay form it's a bit grittier I guess and when it's dry it's much more rigid and actually files away easier.

I was also hoping for some cool color straight from the kiln, I've seen some other people get some wonderful greens and really wonderful rustic finishes but I did not. I had to tumble them for at least an hour and then I torched them to get a little warmth and color.

 

Thank you Lesley Watt for remind me about the firing schedule. It's a 2 step firing but both are very quick. One drawback is the first step you can only do a single layer, you can stack layers during the second stage so I think I'd do a few batches of the first firing and combine them all during the second phase.

Bottom line I like it, everything sintered and I got no blistering which is a problem I've been having with BronzClay so I quit using it quite some time ago.

If anybody out there has used Goldie Bronze I'd love to see it,

please leave a link in your comments so we can all go take a look!

Kristi

KristiBowmanDesign.Etsy