Saturday, August 20, 2005

Organics, Electroforming and More


Eek! Weeks have gone by again. But I've been a busy little beaver - I really have! I took a wonderful class on organic beadmaking from Kimberly Affleck last weekend. It was a three-day workshop at Pratt Fine Arts Center. We learned a lot of great techniques using siver and copper leaf, silver fuming, great color combinations, deep encasing, flat lapping (on a lapidary wheel) and electroforming.

Which brings me to another thing that has kept me busy this week. I set up my electroforming kit, found some leaves in the forest, combined them with some beads made with the new organic techniques - and voila! Some pretty cool-looking beads! I'd love to hear what you think of them. There is a pretty nice deposition of copper on the leaves and the "binders" at the top and bottom of the leaves are electroformed waxed linen. I've used a patina on both of these and then laquered them to keep it. There will definitely
be more of them and soon!



A call went out for artists for a neat set of artist trading cards that an innovative little glass shop is putting out. I submitted this photo of some of my perfume bottles. I'm hoping it will turn out.

Finally, I gave a presentation at work about my trip to Venice. The school's (UW) staff and faculty newspaper is going to to an article (not specifically about me but about how my department gets together and shares) in a couple of weeks. I'll have my big mug in it though and I'll post a link when it comes online.

Have a great week! So many things to do. So very little time!

Janelle