Studio Tour 2

Studio tour and some light metal smithing

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Light metal smithing 101
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Head piece project. I started with wire. I use an old tree stump to hammer on so that it absorbs the sound.



I cut the wire into the right lengths and flattened out each piece. I hammered one to create a texture.



The other, I used the pliers to make it wavy and then filed the surface to create a different texture.



Then I curved them into the right shape.



I thought I'd like the simple one.



But I like the curvy one better now.



The cats were patiently waiting to be fed while I was finishing up the head pieces.



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And now a studio tour
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This is my soldering area.



My bench.



Little trays on my bench.



A tray of yummy cabochon stones. They are like candy. The littlest ones are 3mm and the larger ones are 8mm.



My hammers. I built the rack for them.



My files.



My pliers. Kinda like shoes, a girl can never have too many pliers.



My jewelry supply catalogues. Posters of 2 of my favorite Texans; Lance and Lyle. And a poster for the senior film show for my college from a few years back.



Emily has got it right. :)



These are 2" x 2" copper and brass pieces that I emboss with designs and then rivet onto colored paper to make greeting cards and ornaments. I call them 'D-rivatives' (get it? D as in me and rivatives as in riveted) :)



All my little drawers of stones and plastic bags.



Drawers and drawers of castings.



More castings.



Tangerine crates make great organizational boxes. My studio is pretty small so I store lots of stuff up high.



My personal nature lab. I collect all sorts of leaves and pods.



And shells and things found on the beach. People give me all sorts of organic things they find.



While visiting friends in Vermont I found this bird skull in a field. It was already completely bleached and clean. Thankfully.



A friend gave me a muskrat skull for Christmas. I'm really not morbid, but I do strangely find this really cool.



My shelf-o-plenty. I bought the shelf at an auction, It was battleship gray so I painted it off white. It is metal and doesn't come apart but I have had it through 3 different studios. It is double sided so holds loads of stuff, though hard to place as it needs to be up against a wall to keep it steady. The top 5 shelves are all nature things. The bottom shelf is spoons that I forged in college and the shelf above that are cups that I fabricated in college. The other side is bags and boxes and stuff I don't use too often.



This is my rolling mill. I bought it right out of college. It rolls metal sheet and wire thinner. A friend gave me an 'I' beam to use as a stand. Ideally it should be bolted to the floor, but my landlord wouldn't like that (one day when I am not living in this apartment, my studio will again be a dining room) So for now it is bolted to a board and I stand on the board when I use it. It works well enough.



My drill press. A little rusty and a lot old, but it works great. I got it when a big jewelry company went out of business. I don't use it much because I have a foredom at my bench (which is just a fancy dremel)



My hydraulic press that I use to emboss the copper and brass pieces for the D-rivatives.



My bench and my soldering table.

Rhode Island Spring Flower & Garden Show

I know I am supposed to be working on my Amsterdam part 2 but I went to a flower show today and there were so many pretty flower displays that I just had to share them :)

I don't know much about flowers so I can't tell you what these are, but they are pretty.
































Aha! An iris.


Daffodils.


Tulips...











Orchids are so strange and weird...


And of course cool.














Wooden flowers!


Metal flowers!





A grass flower. Say what?


Cute or scary? you decide.


A pretty koi pond.


Another koi pond.


Hello koi fish.


A nice garden with a sculpure.


This was my favorite garden/landscape, there were frames hanging all around where you could look through them and 'see' a painting.


Sculpures by a friend of mine. Hee.


Totally cool sand sculpture. Click to enlarge, you gotta see the details!


So cool! They said it took 6 days to build.


My favorite exhibit. It didn't even have any flowers. Ha! It was a statement about global warming. I just really liked the simple, clean and minimal design of it.











And that's all. :)

Amsterdam vol 1

January 2007.

I went to Amsterdam. It was a lot of fun and I took LOADS of pictures. So I thought I'd share my adventures.

It is said that getting there is half the fun, then again, maybe not!

We left Boston at 8:30pm and landed in Iceland at 7am though with the time change it was less than a 4 hour flight. I was hoping to see an awesome view, but all I saw was the runway in the dark.



We took off at 8:30am and it was still completely dark as you can see, so no northern lights. No nothing. Oh well.



A little arty shot of the sunrise somewhere over the ocean between Iceland and Europe.



We landed in Amsterdam during one of the worst storms that they have ever had. (Sure can't tell from the picture below) The plane was being knocked around like a feather and I can say I felt a lot queazy. The 20 minutes on the ground before they let us deplane didn't help as the plane was shaking right there on the runway. We waited for our bags for an hour. Being concerned that we'd be going through customs and that might be a big deal, we stayed put though we were tired, hungry and thirsty. Once we finally got our bags however, we walked right out into the airport without a customs officer in sight. We rushed to catch the train only to be told that the one we wanted to the Central Station was cancelled. So we went to get our money back and research buses. We were told the train was leaving and we needed to book it back down to the track. But once there we were once again told that the train right in front of us was not going where we needed to go. So once again we went back upstairs and got our money back for the train tickets. (We later learned that part of the ceiling had fallen in at the Central Station)



We headed out into the windy afternoon (though thankfully it actually wasn't cold) We asked around and though there were no buses to the Central Station there was one that went sort of near by. The bus was crazy full. LeeAnn found a seat in the back to study the guide book and get her bearings. Katie and I stood for the half hour trip. Katie got to talking to two boys on the bus and in their thick accents and broken English we surmised that the airport was sending people home (So that was why it took an hour to get our bags) One of these boys had the prettiest blue eyes. Mesmerizing I tell you. *grin* Anyway, they worked at the airport and usually took the train so they had never been on this bus and were not very helpful with directions, but they did tell us the best place to go listen to very 'Amsterdam music'. We got off at the last stop and it started to rain just a little. A guy came up to us and started chatting with us. He was from Eretria. He had lived all his life in Amsterdam but had been to Texas. A taxi finally came and we had to leave our new friend behind. Not that he wasn't nice (if not completely stoned) but it was the equivalent of 9am US time and I'd only slept for about 45 minutes on the nauseating plane ride since we'd left Boston at 8:30 the night before. I wasn't in the most chatty of moods.



The cab ride was about 15 minutes of whizzing through the tiny streets until we got to our street and it was blocked off! We got out and as soon as we did the sky opened up and we were completely drenched within seconds. Half way down the street we came to the tree that had fallen down and was blocking the road. (This tree below was in our neighborhood - I didn't stop in the middle of the storm to take a picture of that tree. It was sad to see quite a few of these really old trees down all over the city) So we rushed along the wet and slippery cobblestones hoping beyond hope that we were on the right street. Finally we found the rental office and were able to get in out of the rain (dripping all over his floor). He gave us the keys to the apartment and a map where he circled all the things we needed to know about. Of course he was going so fast and I was tired and cranky so I wasn't really paying attention (that map did become our bible of sorts though for the rest of the trip) We painfully headed back out into the rain and the wind and walked maybe another 5 blocks to our apartment.



The stairs going up to the second floor were more like a ladder than stairs and with luggage and no sleep it was a little tricky to navigate. The apartment looked just like online and that was a huge relief. Hardwood floors, a bedroom, a large living-room with 2 beds (not cots but actual beds!) a kitchen and OMG we were seriously excited about the washer and drier.



I was cold and completely drenched so I opted for a hot shower and dry clothes while LeeAnn and Katie decided to go see if they could find some food.



And wouldn't you know they came back with crackers and cheese and more to the point a mini Heineken keg. It really was the cutest thing ever! I may not love beer, but I do love miniaturized things. Oh they brought me back a coke :) Notice the keg on the counter.



See it's about the size of the bottle of wine!



After we were all dry and a little rested we ventured out to find a meal. The rental guy said the best Italian restaurant was right around the corner from us so even though we thought it a bit odd to eat Italian our first night in Holland, we didn't have a lot of energy to search out anything else. It ended up being a very yummy meal. I was completely exhausted, figuring that I'd only had 45 minutes of sleep in the past 29 hours. Katee and LeeAnn were revving to go. Katie slept at least 4 or 5 hours on the planes and even though LeeAnn only got a few hours in of sleep, just somehow seemed to have energy to spare. I on the other hand couldn't even fathom going out again. That night I fell asleep and didn't even hear them come in. And then the next morning this greeted us!

So 7:30am came way too soon the next morning. We woke up to two guys talking right outside our door. The walls were literally paper thin! Then they proceeded to use a tape gun for the next hour. Once we were all awake because the noises (and the 80's music from their radio) were no longer avoidable we realized that they were actually not in the hallway but rather right below us (if we looked through the floor boards we could actually see them!) and they were demolitioning the space! Completely ripping out everything!



You see for you to really appreciate the irony of this, you need to know that LeeAnn spent from April to September with her house in complete chaos as she had additions put on and her kitchen and bathrooms remodeled. The only rooms in her house that stayed intact were the bedroom and the livingroom. It was a long and painful 6 months for her and to wake up to those sounds our first morning in Amsterdam was just too ironic to say the least. This is what we had the pleasure of waking up to every weekday morning!

Let's just say we quite quickly got ourselves ready and got out of the apartment to start our first day of sightseeing. But I'm going to save that for another day.