ATC Work in Progress

One night this week, I was inspired to start an ATC. I don’t usually draw~I’m more a collage girl~but I thought I’d give this a try.

I love bats but I also love color. Here's the first step in this project:

I drew my Vampire Butterfly

Step 2: I took a few copies of the drawing and played with color.

I'm not totally happy with this and need to try another combination of colors.

Stay tuned!

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Let's Talk Color

The folks who forecast color trends have pronounced Rich Colors will take the lead for spring. I've always loved purple and so I use it a lot in my jewelry. I also love the primary colors in general. Let's see what Bear Chick can offer for Rich Color Trends:

Mardi Gras Necklace

Comforts of Home

Splendid Color Necklace

Peace and Love Necklace

A big Howdy! to all my fellow Blogfire Guild members!

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Only in Cali

The Husband and I found ourselves with time on our hands today. I won’t bore you with the details of the travails we’re having with our automobiles. Suffice to say we’re still driving a rental (we were supposed to have it till Friday, today’s Saturday…) and since we found out we had to keep it when we were so close to the beach, we thought we’d have ourselves a nice walk on Balboa Island.

Balboa, a 5 minute ferry ride from Newport Beach, is one major piece of real estate. The smallest, tiniest houses are worth 7 figures there. Even though they’re crammed together with inches of space between dwellings.

But we don’t really care about living conditions… Ok, I admit we have Island Envy and would move there in a heartbeat…

But for now, firmly rooted in reality, we just like to walk the 2.2 miles around the outer perimeter, looking at the houses and docks and yachts and ducks and, oh, yeah, these wild examples of Cali style decorating…

A chicly rusted llama, for a private dock…

As the husband says, some people can afford to import their own national monuments…

This Dinosaur gets the royal treatment during the holidays~~lights and ornaments~~and a front row seat for the world famous Parade of Lights boat show…

Life has been a little hectic lately, not much art being made around Casa Bear Chick, but I went to one of my fave bead shops tonight for a midnight madness sale and I am terrifically inspired by the beads and charms I got great deals on! As soon as the taxes are ready to go to the tax lady, I’ll be beadin’ up a storm!

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My Favorite Clasps

Here's a quick rundown of the types of clasps I use and why I use certain ones on certain pieces.

Toggle

Toggle clasps are my favorite favorite, because they're so easy to use and they're made in endless variations of design. A lot of my older personal jewelry had those boxes you needed to line up the thinner piece with and slide it in till it clicked and connected. I spent many frustrating mornings trying to get those to work. When I started making jewelry, I fell in love with toggles. It's generally not difficult to find the hole in the design of the larger piece, send the bar piece through and then settle it on the surface. Of course, I'm partial to heart shapes, but I also like flower themes, stars and anything with a pattern to it. Using the toggle as part of the overall design makes for an interesting piece. I use them for all my necklaces and a lot of my bracelets.

Magnetic

Lately, I've been using magnetic clasps more and more for bracelets since it's so hard to put on a bracelet by yourself. With the magnetic clasps, you just have to get them close enough together, usually by hanging both ends down from the wrist and, woosh, they attract each other easily. But remember when using them you need to slide them apart, not pull them apart. Pulling will dislodge the actual magnet. Learned that the hard way, although I was able to slide the magnet back in and all was well.

Lobster Claw

I use the lobster claw clasps primarily on anklets. Most of my anklets are self-adjusting, which means you can pick the length you want by attaching the clasp where it feels comfortable. You can't do that with the toggle or magnetic clasps because they're basically finite. They're relatively easy to use since you can see what you're doing with an anklet, which isn't always true when you're trying to work a lobster claw on a necklace. They also fit well into the design of most anklets since they're relatively flat and make a pretty statement wherever they're clipped.

If you see a piece of mine that you like but would rather have a different type of clasp, let me know. There's always a way to create what you want!

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Some Inspiration

I subscribe to a jewelry newsletter produced by David Weiman, a jewelry marketing expert. Here's a poem he remembers from his high school football days, that applies to all of us. Enjoy!

If you think you are beaten, you are.

If you think you dare not, you won't.

If you like to win, but don't think you can,

It's almost a cinch that you won't.

If you think you'll lose, you're lost.

For out in the world you'll find

Success begins with a fellow's will;

It's all in a state of mind.

Think big and your deeds will grow;

Think small and you'll fall behind;

Think that you can and you will;

It's all in a state of mind.

If you think you're out-classed, you are;

You've got to think high to rise.

You've got to be sure of yourself before

You can ever win a prize.

Life's battles don't always go

To the stronger or faster man,

But sooner or later, the man who wins

Is the fellow who thinks he can!

David Weiman couldn't find the poet and when I googled it, I find several names attributed to this work. My thanks to whoever the real writer is!

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My "Studio"

There are several magazines that showcase artists' studios. I am envious of their dedicated, organized spaces. I'm sure if I searched "art studio" on Flickr, the photography website, I'd find 100's of examples of studio's at their finest. Beads neatly stored in plastic cases, fabric folded and piled on shelves by color, paint brushes in shiny little buckets.

But you won't find a picture of mine. Anywhere. I can always blame it on the fact that I work full time. That I have a husband and cats to take care of. But the real reason is I've always been messy. ALWAYS. I have no photographic evidence, but I'll wager that my crib was cluttered with stuffed animals, books and zwieback. I have a talent for taking up more space than anyone (ironic, since I'm usually the smallest one in the room), with an abundance of stuff, junk and things. You can always tell where I've been sitting because there's a corona of stuff around the area. I try to keep things neat, I really do...

My jewelry "studio" consists of a little set of drawers meant for nuts and screws and a huge amount of those pretty storage boxes you buy at hobby stores. They're piled off to the side of the sofa in the living room. There's a Harry Potter pillow on the floor, mashed flat as a piece of paper, that I sit on to create jewelry. Assorted components and findings slip off some other boxes near the coffee table. Oh, yeah, then there's a bunch of other things in the rolltop desk across the room that's really supposed to be where I create... Sequins and little beads decorate the space between all these boxes and holders. I actually went through all the boxes a few weeks ago, to donate some supplies to a friend who teaches jewelry making at a homeless shelter. Barely made a dent in all this stuff. But that's a different blog post (The Obsession with Beads...).

My bathroom serves as my other "studio", for art and ATC's. This is The Kingdom of Paper: old books, maps, colorful pages ripped from magazines. Paints fill a big plastic holder and brushes and colored pens and pencils teeter on piles of ATC blanks and stencils. Rubber stamps, ribbons and buttons fill drawers. Oh, and there are some more of those pretty storage boxes again, filled with jewelry from yard sales and church bazaars, waiting for me to breathe new life into them.

*Sigh*

We have a work room. The plan is to turn it into a studio.

*Sigh*

Someday...

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Fun with Rubber Rings

Hope that doesn't sound risque'!

After I started making chain, I noticed rubber rings in my favorite wholesale jewelry component catalog. I'd been using rubber tubing specifically designed for memory wire, which I liked, so I thought I'd give the rings a try.

They're so much fun to work with and the patterns I can create with them and jump ring connectors are endless. The colors are bold and whether I combine them or go monotone, the designs are always eye-catching. They come in different sizes and are so light weight, it's like wearing feathers.

I love that they're so reasonably priced and quick to work with, so I can offer them at low prices. This is costume jewelry that's fun and affordable!

Here are some examples, on ArtFire:

Mardi Gras Necklace

Rubber and stone earrings

Light as a feather green anklet

If you have a request for a particular style or color, let me know. I love to do custom work!

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Beaducation, A Learning Resource

I don't often reveal my sources but my Blogfire Guild on ArtFire has a theme of How-to's coming up so I thought I'd share the site that turned me onto making chains.

It's called Beaducation, founded by Lisa Niven Kelly, and along with selling metal stamping tools and other jewelry components, they teach all sorts of jewelry techniques, hence the Beaducation name. All of the video's I've downloaded have been very thorough and easy to follow. I'm a visual person, so I have to see techniques done and when it's a video with close ups and step by step instruction like these, I do really well. There's nothing more frustrating than not being able to follow what an instructor is doing because you can't see them working or they're assuming you're at a higher level than you are.

The really cool thing about these video's is that once you buy one and download it, it stays in your queue on the site so you can watch it over and over. You've paid to download the video, not just to see it once, then it goes away. So it's a resource you can keep and refer to as needed.

This is a very smart company in that they offer free video's to show you some basic techniques. Once you get hooked by the freebie, you want to take all the more advanced classes! None of the pay classes are over $28.00, which is really a bargain. Some examples of classes are metal stamping and design, chainmaille, fusing, beading, PMC and wireworking.

I've mostly taken the chain classes and here are a few examples of what I've done:

I'm looking forward to taking more of their classes soon. Give them a try when you have the urge to try something new!

www.beaducation.com


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Etsy Lampwork Sale!

I want to get my lampwork jewelry out into the world! Lampwork is so beautiful and all of the beads I used were made in the USA or Wales, by artisans working "in the flame".

So, I'm taking $5 off each pair of earrings and $15 off necklaces, in the hopes that you'll treat yourself, or someone special, in these financially nerve wracking times.

Look for the word SALE in the item titles or click here to go to the Lampwork Sale section.

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Bear Chick's Guarantee

Oh, how I hate to admit this, but I was standing at my boss's desk earlier this week when a necklace I'd made 5 years ago suddenly broke, spewing beads all over her desk and floor! She laughed and helped me pick up all the errant fire polished glass, lampwork beads and aventurine. But I was SO upset. It's never a good thing when the stringing wire breaks.

So this is an excellent time to reiterate my Bear Chick Guarantee. No matter how long you've had an item of mine, if it should break, just send it back to me and I'll remake it, plus refund your postage. When you buy something from Bear Chick, that isn't the end of the transaction. I want you to be happy now and 10 years from now!

I've been working on some fun projects with rubber rings but haven't had a chance to take pictures. This weekend, I promise! They'll be on ArtFire or Etsy.

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