Turning Faux Bone Beads with Flemming

My apologies for my long absence. I've been on the road teaching and meeting so many wonderful people. Something had to give. But now I'm back and am excited to feature some students in the next few blogs who share my same reckless spirit.

This September, I had the extreme pleasure of teaching at the Art Clay Festival held at Creative Glass just outside Zurich, Switzerland. My friend Robert Dancik, founder of Faux Bone, was scheduled to teach but unfortunately had to have last minute back surgery (he reports he is doing much better and is already back at his bench working on some new concrete kits he has planned for www.fauxbone.com in 2013). I was thrilled when he asked me to step in, and while I could never fill his shoes (clogs suit him way better than they suit me), I looked forward to the experience of teaching to a group which, in large part, spoke little English.

I could spend the next year blogging about this trip, the kind hospitality of Erna and Harry Sowersby, the unbelievable success of the well-planned and executed event, and the amazing people I met from all over Europe, including artists from the UK, Cyprus, Austria, Hungary, Germany, and Denmark among many other countries. I was pleased to walk away feeling like I created some new Faux Bone ambassadors as well as friends. I already have a collaborative project planned with metal clay artist extraordinaire Joy Funnell (but more on that later)!

Everytime I teach, I learn something: a new technique, something about myself or a new way to teach. On this trip, I was shown a clever trick by a lovely gentleman name Flemming Sorensen from Denmark. Clearly an accomplished jeweler, it was fascinating to watch how he approached working with Faux Bone. He spoke very little English, I speak no Dutch, but it really didn’t matter at all. I think we learned from each other quite well without any spoken words.

Flemming showed me how to turn Faux Bone beads. He cut a half inch square of ¼” thick sheet and drilled a hole in the center. He then mounted the square on a screw mandrel. He placed the mandrel on the flexshaft and, as it was spinning, used his metal file to slowly shape the piece. Depending on the angle and placement of the file, he created round beads, tube beads and oval beads, quickly and neatly. He used tiny tubes to separate the bangles he formed together in his stunning cuff (below).

He warned to watch that you don’t push too hard as you can bend the mandrel and risk pulling it from the flexshaft, flinging it across the room, but other than that precaution, it was an elegant solution. It reminded me very much of how Andy Cooperman works with a flexshaft (which I do believe I have raved about several times in this blog already). 

Thanks Flemming for agreeing to share your trick with us! 

Not So Brave

So long story short, er...as short as I can make it. I am driving down the road and a mouse comes up from the hood, looks at me through the windshield and retreats back under the hood. I, imagining he is going to come in through the gas pedal and crawl over my sandalled foot, pull over and jump out. My mother, who is following me in her car, pulls over.

The mouse pops back out in time for her to see it. Plan 1: make noises inside the car to scare it out...we hit the dashboard. Plan 2: open the hood. We can't figure out how because we both are basically too scared to stick our hands under the popped hood to find the latch. Plan 3. Lure him out with a spoonful of yogurt ( my breakfast while driving that morning). Plan 4: turn the car back on. That works!

The mouse leaps from the car near our feet. I run, screaming like a maniac. Mom reaches through the window and just keeps honking my horn to scare it, yelling "get back in the car and drive, now" over and over. During which time, the mouse is residing directly between her feet, unbeknownst to her. I am physically unable to speak, freaked out the mouse is going to crawl over her sandalled foot, and I just keep pointing, she keeps honking and yelling (my 4 year old is strapped in his seat yelling, "I want to see the mouse, why cant I see the mouse, I never get to see anything"...over and over).

The mouse, to escape the chaos, runs up the back tire into the rear of the car. I am now close to being late to pick my daughter up at camp. So, I hop in and drive down the road weaving, like I am trying to throw Bruce Willis from the hood of my car (this is twice in this blog I have aged myself by pretending Bruce Willis is still an action star) and then drive on the center line bumps trying to shake him out.

Long story short, don't know where the mouse is and now I have yogurt streaks across my window. Yep, forgot about the yogurt and turned on the windshield wipers. Ironically, we were returning home after seeing Brave.

How to Make Jewelry Using a Broken Sonicare

I've had this bottle of Lisa Pavelka's Magic-Glos UV resin and wanted to try it as a coating over my fabric covered cabochons that I use in the new frame flaring tool. However, living in Seattle, inevitably it would be raining outside on the day I wanted to use it, and therefore I could not set it outdoors to cure (ironically, as I write this, it is a beautiful, sunny day).

Our Sonicare broke a few weeks ago and was sitting on the counter waiting for us to figure out how to dispose of it when I realized that it has a UV light in it. The Sonicare has a 10 minute UV brush cleaning cycle, coincidentally, the same amount of time it takes to cure the resin. My "create recklessly mode" clicked on and off I went to see...can I cure UV resin with a Sonicare?

Well you can indeed! I simply removed the molded plastic tray from the door, lined it with foil and laid it flat on the table. Although it was awkward to close as I was using the whole body of the unit as the door since I wanted the door itself to lay flat (allowing the resin to stay level), in 10 minutes I had cured resin.

A UV lamp made for such resins is not too expensive, generally under $30, but what's the fun in that!

I can't imagine a scenario that this would have any safety precautions, but it certainly is not used as intended by the manufacturer, so try it at your own risk. : )

Metal Jewelry in Bloom

I just sent off my first batch of finished jewelry for my next book, Metal Jewelry in Bloom! I'm very excited to see all of the flowers that have been sitting around my studio finally come together into finished pieces. Thought you might like a sneak peak. The photo quality is horrible, I apologize. I managed to snap some quick shots before rushing out to Fedex.

Rushing being the operative word here. Last Fedex pickup was at 5:30 and I finished packing everything up at 4:30. The Problem was that Robert Dancik's Craftcast class on hinges started at 5 and I really wanted to tune in. So what's a girl to do but turn her phone into a hotspot and bring along her laptop for the ride. (Of course, just to listen!) I love technology. This time.

Faux Bone Yarn

The beauty of the 2mm Faux Bone strip is that you can make it into a cylindrical rod. I use this shape to make organic, wound beads or to crochet a quick cuff (a future blog entry). While you can simply use the Faux Bone shaping tool to round the edges and then sand it into a round shape, my favorite way is inspired by techniques I learned at Danaca Design.

Several times during a class with Andy Cooperman, he put the piece we were working on in the flexshaft handpiece rather than the bit, bur or brush. I had seen this only once before during a toolmaking class with Bill Dawson, who had us remove our flexshaft handpiece, place our tool steel in it, and shape the steel on the grinder. This allowed the piece to spin freely and perfectly centered. I didn't realize it at the time, but these two classes have dramatically changed the way I work and how I use my flexshaft.

Now, when I want to create a perfectly round piece of Faux Bone (that because of its texture and size reminds me of yarn) I place one end of a 2mm strip in my flexshaft handle and the other side in a cordless drill. I stretch it taut, turn the drill on low, and the strip spins. Then, I run it along my running belt sander to quickly create a cylindrical rod.

  

I guess you can call it a faux lathe. Hmmm, I own a lathe, I wonder if....



You can see more of Andy Cooperman's flexshaft tips in his series of articles in Art Jewelry magazine and be sure to check out the Summer class schedule at Danaca Design, being released soon. I am absolutely thrilled to be teaching a class with one of the most talented (and absolutely nicest) artists and teachers I know, Nancy Megan Corwin. She will be teaching students how to use Faux Bone with the hydraulic press and I'll be helping students incorporate their Faux Bone dies into their finished pieces of jewelry. Join us!

Snowballs Make Good Snowmen

You know the saying “it snowballed?” That saying comes into play in my life often. One example is with the recent Art Jewelry hardware store jewelry call for entry. I always love a good challenge, so my 7-year-old daughter and I went to my local Ace hardware and picked out items I could envision incorporating into jewelry. She carefully recorded all the counts and costs onto the plastic bag in the hardware section (and really deserves a shout out for her patience as mom entered her creative zombie state).

Among the items we picked up were nylon spacers. I had just finished testing fabric dyes on Faux Bone (see previous blog) and was curious as to how they would perform on nylon. The acid dyes worked so well that I immediately ran out and bought more colors and start dying batch after batch. I made a few bracelets for the call for entry, settling on one (above), made one for my friend Kristi's blog hop (see previous blog), and then stumbled upon a necklace design I fell in love with (left - soon to be in the hands of it's new owner Lisa D). From this, I created my first jewelry line to sell, a goal I had wanted to set for myself this year but, frankly, didn't think I'd accomplish! 

So those snowballs...well, they stacked up to be a pretty good snowman! Thanks Art Jewelry for pushing me down the hill.

Be sure to check out the online Art Jewelry hardware store jewelry gallery. There are some AMAZING pieces...and check back soon for more photos of my new Rhythm series of jewelry.

To Everything Turn, Turn, Turn

So, as you may have read in my last blog...last week was a disaster as far as real work getting done. But I DID turn a dradle, or a top, er, something that resembles one of those things.

It started out two weeks ago when I made a necklace out of a nylon sink part to submit to an Art Jewelry call for submission for harware store jewelry (the piece didn't get accepted, but another did! Thanks folks! Look for their online gallery in the coming month).  It had holes in it, so I filled the holes with wool (after dying the nylon piece brown) and felted it before adding some other embellishments. I've been wearing it ever since. It has become one of my favorite new designs. Then I got the itch to make it in other materials. So off to Woodcraft in downtown Seattle. Surely, I could make these out of wood. While there I picked out some beautiful wood and learned the best way to make spheres was on a lathe. I was referred to an instructor who I called immediately.


Mr Jack Wayne was happy to help and we set up a time for a class. Turns out his first project ever was a sphere, so this told me it was meant to be. Often times when I am learning a new skill, I learn just as much about teaching as I do the skill. This was one of those cases.

I was struggling to turn a round form, not giving up, but struggling. It is all about holding the tool at the right angle and I just couldn't get it. Poor guy kept having to resharpen his tools, which I am sure was because I was holding them wrong. I kept thinking it must be like giving someone who has never driven a manual transmission keys to your sports car. It was clear he valued his tools and took good care of them. But he didn't say a word...in fact he even taught me how to resharpen tools (I suspect because he knew I'd be doing a lot of that!)

He was very patient and just kept reloading new pieces of wood on the lathe, gently repositioning my tool and reminding me not to be scared of the loud noises they'd make now and again when I turned at too harsh of an angle.

Then he suggested I try a different tool and BAM...I got it. It reminded me that, as a teacher, sometimes we need to teach students not in the way WE want them do it, but the way THEY need to do it.

Sadly, I forgot to take my last, slightly oval bead off the lathe, but here are my first tries (the two on the right)...and his (the two on the left). He made that sphere in under 2 minutes. He made the top from my most miserable bead. That took him 1 minute.

But with a new rusty old lathe bought from an estate sale (complete with tools)...I am on my way to making a bead!