2009 Metal Clay World Conference: Week in Review

Last week was the Metal Clay World Conference in Chicago. Jackie Truty, Tom, & Katie Baum of Art Clay World USA organized an awesome conference experience & I'm really grateful to have had the opportunity to listen to so many artists share their knowledge! Meeting & making friends from all over the country & world in a hotel that was like a huge beehive? Sweeet!!

Monday & Tuesday: Caged glass beads with Cindy Pankopf

First off, helping Cindy with her class & running around after hours was just uber loads of fun!!

Finished projects in all their fired, yet unbrushed glory, success!! No pic of the beads before they went into the kiln as the glass reacts with the silver clay & an etched ivory & copper green bead lost its frosted look & beacame brown & turquoise. Or an ivory bead with red frit turned brown & blue, just awesome!

Of course, a class pic
(Thanks Emma!)
:)

Wednesday: Sears tower & Charm Swap

Ok, the Sears tower is now the Willis tower???! Taking pics on the glass bottomed Skydeck was fun with gals from the Art Clay UK Guild members. :)

Goodness some people made 100+ charms for this swap! Prosmise I'll be more prepared next time!

Thursday - Saturday: Conference speakers
There was not much sleep this week & I wish I could have gone to everyone's presentation, but after hearing each talk, I just wanted to hole up with my clay & play!

Keynote Speaker: Alan Revere http://www.revereacademy.com/

His talk on jewelry & giving to others is pretty much summed up here: www.adornamerica.com

During his talk, he passed out gold & silver colored foil & challenged everyone to create a ring. Then to go with the giving to others starts here & now, he gave a bracelet with the MCWC logo to someone in the audience & we swapped foil rings with our neighbors.


Clasps: Carol Babineau http://www.artclaystudio.com/
So much eye candy, & so playful! Besides seeing the technicalities of how some of the clasps work, the way she designed her clasps to be a focal that doesn't look like a clasp is amazing!

Masks & Faces: Lis-el Crowley http://www.artandsoulct.com/
For me, demos speak a thousand words because sometimes the key is in the details of the way a certain tool angle or the way a small lump of clay becomes the missing detail. I missed the open table session with her, but I totally need to get some polymer clay to experiment with her way of making molds for faces, quite intruiguing!

Snake Charming & Coils: Cindy Pankopf www.cindypankopf.com
Making coils & snakes is probably considered a basic technique for clay people, though the way Cindy incorporates them into almost everything, is fascinating. Her tips/tricks & sound effect loaded explainations really do de-mystify coil making lol. (yeah, I was scared of making them until recently!)

Tomozuke technique: Ryota Mitsuhashi
As the "Rebel without a kiln," I appreciate the offers from others to fire my pieces (& yes, I'll be taking you up on that!) but anything I can do without a kiln intrigues me!

So "tomo" is to pair & "zuke" is to attach. Fusing brass & copper to fired silver clay pieces, yess...my Rio order can't arrive soon enough!

Teaching: Maria Martinez
People tell me I should teach..but I'm scared! Maria broke the orgainization & process down into manageable bites & I found her anecdotes inspiring :)

Negative caning: Holly Gage http://hollygage.com/
Ok, I REALLY REALLY want to try adapting her caning technique with torch friendly combustibles! Like I bought tortillas this week to try this out! :P

& there's the baby titanium pieces..

Photographing your Art: Jen Lowe
http://jen-lowe-designs.blogspot.com/
I enjoy checking out the crafty stuff on Jen's blog, & wondered about how she got such nice looking pics! 2 thumbs up for the tip of steadying your camera hand by wrapping a string around the camera & holding the other end with your foot to steady & pulling the camera away from the ground for a steadier shot.

Silver screw: Ryota Mitsuhashi
OMG, the tool answer I've been looking for is "screw tap" to make threads for screws!

Water Etching: Lyle Rayfield
I keep reading about the technique & am curious to check it out. Wonder if wax resist would work as a patina mask too...

Complex Hollow Forms: Gwen Bernecker http://www.twoolivesstudio.com/
I found Gwen's process for making hollow forms interesting as I haven't made many. Demystified the way to make a template for walls when you already have the floor & ceiling of a piece.

Bench Tricks for MC: Lorrene Davis http://www.lorrenedavisdesigns.com/
I'm so glad I went to this talk! This maybe an utter "Duh!" thing, but making the tools work for you & not the other way around...well, duh! & the blade bending technique she was showing at her open table session? I am SO going to play with that!

There's all the new "toys" I've come home with...yay!

With love to all my new muses & old, thanks for the inspiration!
~ Michelle

Torching where no torch has gone before!

Ok, maybe not really but seeing how complex of a piece I can torch fire is an interesting challenge & I'm totally tickled (chuffed?) that this piece held together!

It was fired before MCWC & I took it with me, but since then it has had a bit of a face lift with some polishing "wheelie bobbers" to give the flower a satin finish to contrast the band & decorative spikes.


The flower was made & fired as 1 piece with cz already set in place; the shank as 1 piece, the flower & shank joined, then a couple more times to patch some small cracks .


As the ring wraps around 2 fingers & is on the poky side if you're on the receiving end, it's girly brass knuckles!

Midnight musing

Ok, took a bit of a break from the flower ring & tried putting together this little unicycle dude that's been bouncing around my desk. Well, mostly figuring out the cycle part, as the unicyclist has been chilling on my desk for a while.

One side of the wheel says "dream" & is decorated with silver flakes.

The other side has a pattern with the silver flakes.

The unicyclist is a paste person with a fine silver skeleton (armature) & he's still nekked, but I haven't quite figured out how I want to dress him.

Crafty Surprise - Ponte Amour

Crafty Surprise - Ponte wine cork set in Art Clay silver bezel with the couple's names, wedding date & a heart on the back.

Crafty Surprise was a chain-note, going through Facebook (see end of post for the text). Based on the concept of Paying it forward, you make something for a couple people & they do the same for others.

I looove stories, if they involve friends being happy, even better! Last year, a couple friends from work invited me & another friend to the annual grape stomping event held at Ponte winery in Temecula. As fun as the event was watching people run around covered in grape pulp, Ponte winery is a special for them because they were married there May 12, 2006. As they have just celebrated another wedding anniversary, I wish them many more! :)

If you want to take part in your own crafty surprise, here's a start:

Crafty Surprise

The first five (5) people to respond to this post will get something made by me.
This offer does have some restrictions and limitations so please read carefully:

1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make. Whatcha get is whatcha get.
2. What I create will be just for you, with love.
3. It'll be done this year (2009).
4. I will not give you any clue what it's going to be. It will be something made in the real world and not something cyber. It may be weird or beautiful. Heck, I might bake something for you and mail it to you when you least expect it. I may even create something totally unbelievable and surprise you at work!! Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!
5. I reserve the right to do something extremely strange. Or extremely boring.
6. In return, all you need to do is post this text into a note of your own and make 5 things for the first 5 to respond to your note.
7. Send your mailing address if you don't live close to me!

IMPORTANT: This offer is null and void if I do not see you post your own note to pay this forward. ( well, not really..)

Neuron neurosis: Sketch to Completion

Funny the Metal Clay gallery on Yahoo Groups has a sketch to completion themed challenge this month as that is the whole point of my blog-venture, well here goes: Neuron-ic as the Next Guy.

This doodle has been bidding it's time in the sketchbook since my birthday in February, & the amethyst cab was one of my gifts. The design for the ring is based on a neuron twining itself around 2 fingers. The ring turned out close to my original sketch, though it evolved a bit to accommodate for functionality & structural support.


I first started building the ring shank with 1 thick coil laid out over a S shaped pattern. After it dried, the tentacle & bezel setting "cup" perched on one side & decorative coils tacked onto the others with syringe. (I do <3 class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Humpty Dumpty proportions, & never got put back together the same again. (The nice way of summarizing a couple hr long ordeal!) A messy blessing in disguise, as the final ring band with 3 layers of thinner coils is lighter & more proportional looking than the original band.
As I don't have a kiln, the secret to building larger & more abstract things seems to be Overlay paste & repeated torch firings. Fire small pieces, cement them together with overlay paste, dry/sand/fire, & repeat. So the 3 swirls on the dendrite tail (swirly end) were formed & fired together, before being pasted to the previously fired setting (yay for salvage!). One thing I found about overlay paste is that it doesn't particularly appreciate sand paper or files. Smoothing blemishes with a rotary tool after firing still remains to be seen, but I'm psyched everything is holding together nicely!

The final challenge for this ring was to set the amethyst in the bezel setting, which I haven't tried before but it didn't seem that difficult. The stone was easy enough to get into the setting, & though it isn't technically the right tool, I used the scoop/burnisher to push the bezel walls in. It is the tiniest bit loose still, but the stone doesn't seem like it will fall out. I tried putting the ring in the tumbler with stainless steel shot to hopefully work harden the ring & bezel, though the bezel seems unaffected. Probably the shot was too big to get into the little nooks & crannies.

So here's one that's hopped off my sketchbook. Going from theory & asking for advice to actually doing has resulted in some "oh duh" moments, & even better - more ideas, including 1 with the original attempted ring shank, hmmm.....

Tsuru crane carving

Has it really been a week since Breabeadworks' Bead Away in Las Vegas? Well, obviously there's been too much fun (& tool unpacking) to be had!

I took a carving workshop with Gordon Uyehara, & learned how scrape/carve a tsuru out of a flat piece of clay. It was challenging, fun when you get into the groove of it (haha), & something I want to keep playing with. Besides learning the techniques highlighted in the projet & being able to hang out with clay buddies, I also get the reminder to have patience & be gentle with my pieces. Common sense, but still a good reminder!

So it seems my claying has also spread to some of my friends, though in polymer. I <3 getting other people into crafts, don't you? :D