First....look!

I would have thought I'd come home from vacation permanently hunched over from all the time we spent looking closely at the stones, shells, sea glass, sand dollars and seaweed strewn across the beaches of Matinicus last month. I looked at pebbles closely, as I had been taught to do in Tracy Holmes class "A Day at the Beach, developing a criticial eye in regard to my own polymer clay versions. (This echoed my Dad's drawing instruction when I was little "always look at the thing you are drawing MORE than at your piece of paper".)

Here's my fiddling around. The more realistic looking ones have been sanded; the others are rough.


This might be what happens next.


And I am definitely headed in this direction but with custom sterling rings.

Learning a new language

I haven't been in the studio much these past two weeks. The rest of the things that I am responsible for in life seem quite pressing (homeschooling, peeling apples, buying new pants for boys who seem to grow over night). Then there have been days when its just so lovely...that I go here instead.


I think thats ok though. Seeds of inspiration often get planted on days such as the one pictured above.

I did start making lots and lots translucent "shell" beads, as my friend Natalie calls them.



They made an appearance in this necklace that took me months to complete. ("Why?" I ask myself because it isn't really a complicated piece in any way.)

Mentally for me though it was a departure in that being trained as a metal smith I often still design/think in metal. Then I translate to polymer, modify and moved on. This is the first piece that, in my head at least, I felt like I thought through the process in the new language (polymer). I designed it to lay asymmetrically against the neck by stringing, trying on, stringing, trying on. I'd like to be able to get a little more control over that process.