So finally I say to myself, “Get off of the computer and make something”. It’s the weekend and I’d better actually get busy with an order I have. Networking is fun but it hasn’t transferred into sales as of yet.
I go out to my garage studio that I used to keep at a low 47 degrees F until it was time to make beads and then I would crank it up to a comfortable temperature. Now with the cost of fuel I have had to curtail that. That and some unseasonably warmer temps here in interior Alaska . I go to turn on my digital controller which is the apparatus that keeps my annealing kiln at 940 degrees F and somehow it wasn’t turning my kiln on. I isolated the kiln from the controller and the kiln worked fine.
After a search for the manual for the controller I had something to go by but it was only telling me how to reboot it if it had a certain kind of error message, which it didn’t.Now you may think I actually know what I’m talking about here but I am not that electronically savvy. I called my friend that fuses glass and owns a kiln just in case he could help me out but no one was home.Wading through pages of instructions I decided to treat it as if it had an error message. Something seemed to be responding. I thought I had success. Then it told me to reset it to the default values from the manufacturer if I so desired. I SO desired! I thought but how the heck do I do that? It took me quite a while to realize that there were two nearly identical pages of instructions and the second page was telling me how I could do it. And guess what? I DID it! MYSELF! without calling the company in Ontario two days later.
A proud moment for this girl. Now I could go ahead and put in a few hours of my production work of rainbow whorls for a local tourist gift shop.These days as an artist I am finding you have to learn quite a few skills to market yourself and even maintain your equipment whether it’s learning how to scan, blog, photograph your work, make business cards, photoshop , it goes on. One of my next goals is to learn how to photograph my work better by using a lightbox. So far I’m recording most of my work with a scanner which is actually not too bad for smaller pieces but I find it lacking for the necklaces as it has to lay flat.I’ve tried to hire people for various aspects of my presentation such as web design but have had problems contacting when I need to make changes. The photography has been a problem as well which leads me back to the realization that I need to do it myself to have the control I need. It is exciting and sometimes daunting and sometimes I get lost on what my priorities should be.
Let’s see …Make something?…. work on tags?…brochure?….. network?……clean my studio?…. Photograph?… enter juried art shows?…. You’re all familiar with this I’m sure.
I was away for a couple of days with no computer access but I’m always in the mode these days for thinking about my art and where I’m headed with it. I have been seriously thinking of developing some metalsmithing skills but was hesitant to invest in all of the equipment before I had gotten a good taste of the medium.
I had a chance to take a most affordable class in Chiang Mai Thailand last year as I was awaiting a new passport. The whole class cost less than $35 including the silver and I was able to produce a passable pendant in that time. For any of you traveling to Thailand I recommend Art Lab for a one to five day class.
The teacher was what I would call rather hands off and that was good. there was no lecture, no handouts,
just jump right in and start learning some basic technique, each of the five of us having our own bench and tools to work with.
I have included a couple of photos of that piece.
I was back east visiting my folks and was able to visit Pauline Warg’s jewelry supply store. I had picked up a book of hers called “Making Metal Beads” that had really inspired me. www.wargetc.com
At Christmas I picked up a copy of “The Complete Metalsmith” by Tim McCreight, also from Maine. ( Extra cool for me since I was born in Maine)
The next chance I’ve had was visiting Bisbee, AZ last month with a former Alaskan, Ali Kauss whose work I much admire. www.alikauss.com
I had just bought a slew of amethyst stalactite slices at the gem show in Tucson and was inspired to make a setting. Not feeling so confident on soldering ,I chose to do cold work it. She helped me with an idea to feature both sides of the slice and she also joined me in creating one for herself.
While I was out relaxing out of town at our other house we met up with the neighbors and I found out that my neighbor is wanting to sell her jewelry tools and I’m thinking this is a sign. I totally coveted the bench that her husband had built for her. How convenient is that?
For my beginning projects I’d like to start fashioning my own findings at least and advance from there.
so I’m really feeling that the time has come for me to make this next step in my development as a jewelry maker to add more originality to my designs.
So now we’re getting into gear for our winter adventure. My husband is an archaeologist and we’ve been invited to participate in a dig at a mammoth kill site in northern Mexico that some of his colleagues are involved in. We’re not going to be paid but just along to help out and I may possibly do some of the cooking for the camp. It’s a four hour trip to the remote site and we’ll be doing some basic camping in the Sonoran desert. I will try to post some pictures when I get back to a computer mid- January.
We’re also going to be spending time at the Tucson Gem and Mineral show in early February and Maine to visit my folks as well.
Basically I have to pack for every kind of weather PLUS the camping gear. I’m excited about it though because sometimes I get a little tired of the tourist traveller thing- another restaurant, more cool stuff to bring home, etc. Most of our money will be spent on beer and tequila I imagine and we won’t have to spend much on anything else. New Years Eve in the desert.
My more memorable New Years have been spent in Sihanoukville Cambodia, Phuket Thailand, Cancun Mexico and steaming in a tub at Circle Hot Springs Alaska.
Now that the temperatures have gotten to a more manageable above zero zone we are once again enjoying winter. I’m trying to improve on my cross country skiing and am gaining some balance on the down hills. My old technically vintage (over 20 years old) wooden Nordic skis are nearly parallel on the gentle downhill beginner glides. I think the yoga may be helping me with the inner core and balance. My confidence is increasing each trip. Now I just hope I can exercise enough on the trip to stay in some sort of shape.
A perfect night for a sauna at our friend’s cabin. So bright on the trail that no flashlight was needed. 20 above up in the hills. silent and bright. That’s why I love winter here. It may be hard to believe but sometimes it is hard fro me to leave for warmer climates. A bit of winter is marvelous.
*My 30 below beads* 
*After the snowshoeing*
So It’s 35 below zero in town today and a balmy 22 below up in the hills here. It’s kind of like Christmas vacation has already begun. My honey and I don’t have to go to work in the winter since he’s semi retired and I’m a seasonal landscape/groundskeeper. This gives me time to work on the bead and jewelry biz and for us to travel.
We’re hunkering down somewhat but still making trips to town to go to yoga or an appointment here and there. I am choosing to stay home as much as possible. My 24 year old son is back in town from being gone 7 years. He hasn’t experienced an Interior winter in that long and yearned for that extreme again after years in the Southwest. He had a day off yesterday from his construction job (They were still working outside) but when the temperature dipped they called it off. He’s been wanting to get into the studio and try his hand at bead making. He had a short stint helping out a well known glassworker in Santa Fe and seems to have more of a knack for it than when I first started 9 or ten years ago.
I’m hoping that I can get him into some production work for me and get him to make some twisty canes for me which I haven’t put the time into mastering yet. He said that his teacher told him he had a knack for that as well. I’ve been able to walk away from the studio and let him play. Of course he is learning from mistakes the hard way such as letting the beads touch in the kiln and messing up two of his first best beads.
I’m taking some time to play as well with all of my new colors from Frantz Art Glass such as messy Pumpkin, Celadon, Red Roof Tile, Copper red, Copper green and my favorite old standby now Iris Orange Frit otherwise known as Raku Frit. I have been faithful to my Zoozii’s presses too especially the small lentil trio, Nugget trio and large lentil and large Kalera. I’ve been wrapping presents too. I took my scrap rods and used my nippers to make small bits of cane to stack on Morretti sheet glass and went to a fellow fuser friend’s studio to make some random ornaments. It is the first time I’ve fused glass and it was really fun. I can use my own kiln but I need to learn to reprogram my digital controller for another phase for fusing. How hard can it be? Is it confusing? ( ooh that’s bad!)
So we’ve been watching episodes of Six Feet Under since 8:00AM, staving off a wicked sinus headache from extremely dry air and putting logs on the fire like crazy. Lucky we’ve got a huge stack of firewood outside.
I’ve made a few sales with etsy, even an international one so I’m excited.I keep posting more each day hoping to get noticed. It’s kind of fun but a pulls me in a little much at times. Pot’s of beans and Moose stew on the stove and a boatload of Christmas candy that I made . I wanted to make a marshmallow caramel combo candy from scratch.. I didn’t realize how easy marshmallows are to make. Just hard to scrape from the bowl like white oobleck. I found a couple of recipes online and much to my surprise my copy of ReadyMade magazine showed up the very next day with a recipe for homemade marshmallows and Caramel. Am I in the zone or what?!
We went snowshoeing the other day before it got too cold. It was getting a little nippy for cross country skiing but it’s a pleasure to strap on the snowshoes and walk right across the road through the woods following rabbit and moose trails up to the pipeline corridor. The spruce trees were laden with frost and snow looking like Dr. Seuss trees lining the trail. It ’s so magic with the clear skies and frost and the crunching of snow.
This is an example image from the gallery.
Here is an example of my latest creation.
I’ve just recently joined the site www.etsy.com which features handmade goods by individual artists. It’s also a place where you can get supplies for your own artwork as well. As of now it is my main outlet online. It has some unique features such as a shop by color option that randomly finds handmade articles for sale in color groupings. There are gift guides as well as a geo-locator where you can find artists by region and random samplings of recently listed work scroll through every 15 seconds. Etsy has a showcase of hand-picked items that are juried by the staff and also there are treasuries of hand-picked items by members. The site has a trendy, home-spun feel yet artful and even inspiring with the array of homemade good displayed. As a contributor to etsy, I have spend a good many hours learning the ins and outs of posting, scanning, describing my work and assessing what I should charge for shipping as I’m new to the online shopping world. This is my first venture into blogging. I have much to learn as I go along. My sister has a wonderful food blog that I aspire to at www.ovenstobetsy.com I hope you are reading this Betsy! Eventually I’ll have my mini etsy store for you to see right here.
Here is my new site where I will be featuring the process of my lampwork bead making and artisan one-of a kind jewelry. I am along time Alaskan that has been making beads for about ten years. I have lived in Alaska since 1976 when I came here to visit my brothers and sister and fell in love with the place. It has been an adventure for me with many small lifetimes adding up to my present life as a beadmaker. I’ve spent time as a sardine packer, day care cook, camp cook, restaurant cook, highway flag-chick, heavy equipment operator: (street sweeper, dump truck, belly dump, loader operator, pothole filler) building maintenance worker, groundskeeper and momma. I have an affinity with New England as well since I was born in Maine and spent a the best bits bit of my childhood in Connecticut and Maine. Now I’m taking time to travel for more worldly adventures in my quest for beads and new experiences to inspire me.