craftgrrl | There be leaves, even in Winter (Reply)

'Allo my fellow crafty folke! It's been a while since I posted, but my husband recently managed to finally get a new job, and it's leaving me a bit more opportunity for semi-regular studio time. Woo-hoo! Eniways, I've got one finished-but-yet-not-finished piece for you today, and one sketch of something to come...

This is the oak leaf pendant I've made for Helene, my son's speech therapist, for her mother's birthday. It was popped into the kiln along with the last batch of leaves I made for roaming's sets. Yes, it's a very simple piece, but that's how she wanted it...and the ginko leaf pendant that I have to finish for her, too. Helene wants this (both pieces, actually) to have a vibrant "Autumn-wash" finish -- but my chemicals were defying me, the last time I tried getting it to look "right". To distract me from my frustration with it, I thought I'd get a photo of the piece with just subtle antiquing, to bring out the vein structure. This is one of those pieces that I wish my customer wanted without the fun-colored finishes, because as lovely as those are, they do distract from the detail of the leaves themselves......and this is one of those leaves that worked out with such marvelous detail. Yum. I love a good oak leaf sample, I do.

And yes, PMC3-silver is involved, but I'm not using the typical paint-PMC-paste-onto-a-leaf-in-layers technique tought in all the classes and books. Explaining what I do do, though, is a bit harder.

Less pretty, but full of greater potential, is a sketch of the basic design of the Demeter necklace someone wants to commission from me eventually. I kept trying to do the sketch in color, since it's a colorful piece, but it just wasn't translating well into colored pencil, and it was driving me nuts. This basic pencil sketch might not paint as clear a picture, but at least it doesn't make things uglier than they will actually be. The finished design will probably deviate from this, of course...once I take into account the natural samples I end up working from, and desired measurements, and whatnot...but this should give a general idea of the flow of the piece. For Spring there are tri-lobe-type leaves, finished in green tones, with curls of wire "vine", and pearl cluster "flowers". For Summer there are standard serrated-pinched-oval-type leaves, given my natural-wash finish, with garnet "berries". For Autumn there are oak leaves, given my Autumn-wash finish, with red-tigereye "acorns". For Winter there will be some manner of evergreen branches, left the natural silver-white color of the fine silver, and given a "frost" of clear CZ crystals. It will be a hell of a piece of make, but it should be really something, when it's done.