Yet while developing my wire skills and selling Kell’s Creations jewelry, I continued to work on my drawing and painting, uploading designs to gifts and apparel in my Zazzle shop, And from time to time I also included the occasional art-focused piece in my overall jewelry collection. That included the Fire Mountain Gems silver medal winning piece, “Faerie Carnivale,” which combined one of my fairy paintings with my metal clay and wire work. Since then, I’ve sold several fantasy art jewelry pieces at shows, and people who have seen the full-page ad featuring that contest piece have tracked me down to have me create pieces just for them.

So last summer I decided to take the hint and get serious about a new line in my Kell’s Creations collection focused solely on jewelry featuring my fantasy art combined with the wire work I love so much. I reserved a domain name, FaeFinery.com, and a shop on Etsy called FaeFineryArtwear, which remained empty until late December. It’s taken a while, but I finally have several pieces in the new shop. All the pieces feature the wire work I love, and I’ve resized and transferred some of my fantasy art paintings to the polymer clay focal pieces. I have ideas for more paintings for more pieces, and best of all, I’ve already had a couple of sales since listing the first items in the store!

I think the fiction writing is now burned to a crisp, and I still have a long way to go before my Fae Finery line is fully in focus with the vision I have for it, but I am excited about where this new journey might take me!

This is Virginia, wearing her new masked fairy piece. We had a great conversation about her love of fairies and about her maternal grandparents who were from Venice, Italy, where the mask is a centuries-old Carnevale fashion tradition.

I am so glad I kept that promise. The course was taught by Terry Kovalcik, professional illustrator, metal clay genius, and master PMC instructor.

The course is structured so that students complete seven projects in three days of class time. The projects are meant to teach and test important techniques that help insure quality craftsmanship, but even though the projects are standardized, we were encouraged to put our own creative twist on most of them.

The only project that didn’t allow a lot of creative leeway was the tetrahedron, a deceptively simple pyramid-shaped object that drove us all a bit nuts, just as Terry promised it would. Even so, not one of us failed to complete the task successfully, though there was much grumbling and griping and sighs of frustration–not to mention a few curse words.Terry was a great teacher, exacting in his standards–not surprising, considering the miraculous detail of his work–but a lot of fun.

The woven earrings pictured above were one of the projects, partially made with a type of PMC that comes in a what looks like fabric form, which is cut in strips and woven together. After my earring pieces were fired, leaving only 99% fine silver, I oxidized them to give them the shades of blue, green and gold that you see in the photo.

Another project was the “double fire ring,” a kind of signet ring in which a cubic zirconia stone is set. This was a completely different method of making a ring than I had done before. The band is sized to account for shrinkage in the kiln and fired flat, then the cooled band is later bent around a ring mandrel before adding the signet portion and refiring. We had a kiln mishap when many of the rings were fired, so the rings of some of the students didn’t survive. I was one of the lucky ones.

Other projects included the saucer bead (aka lentil bead), another type of ring, a relief pendant, and the culminating project–a pen. Since my daughter’s wedding was coming up the very next weekend, I decided to make a pretty pen to use with the guest book. We made the pens on the last day of class, running late, so things were a bit rushed, and I was tired, so I wasn’t completely satisfied with the way my pen turned out. Even so, it was pretty, and it made a great decorative addition to the guestbook table. The next pen I make will be better. Oh, and I earned my certificate, too!

Not only did I want to create something special for my daughter and her fiance, I also needed the practice for the upcoming PMC certification course! Does that sound too mercenary? Probably. I guess I’m just one of those people who tries to get multiple benefits from a single endeavor.

It’s difficult to see in these photos, but I created a leather texture on the silver bands by rolling out some polymer clay on the cover of a leather Bible, thus making a texture plate that I could use not just for these rings, but for future projects as well. (There goes that multiple benefits tendency again.) I also wanted to be sure not to damage the Bible cover by rolling out the silver clay directly on it.

In the second picture you can see something else: the shape of a heart when the two rings are stacked. For over a week I stewed about the design. I tend to do “girly” well, which is why no matter how many times I’m asked at shows if I have jewelry for men, I have to reluctantly admit that I don’t. My brain just doesn’t seem to grasp the lines and styles that most men seem to like. So even these rings would be a bit feminine for some, but I figured that since my daughter’s fiance (now husband) likes nature elements, maybe he wouldn’t mind a few leaves and vines, right? I was so relieved he liked them. In fact, my daughter said she thought he liked them even better than she did! It is so rewarding to know they’re happy with what I created for their life together.

A good family friend, Jason Kerby of Natures Witness photography, took the wedding photos, and his wife Melissa  (my best friend since grade school) helped with the editing, and it was her idea to make this one black and white. I love the effect. This photo has to be one of my favorite photos from the wedding.

Oh, and that cake? Let’s just say I won’t be giving up art and jewelry for baking and decorating cakes. I had a huge disaster, which I had to fix the morning of the wedding, yet Jason photographed the cake in such a way that all my booboos were hidden from view. Thanks Jason!

Sunday morning I woke to an amazing view of frost on the trees. Other than taking pictures of my jewelry for inventory purposes, or to list for sale at Artfire or Etsy, I don’t take many photographs, but I was definitely inspired by the lacy beauty of the frosty trees, so despite the frigid temps I put on the layers and headed outdoors.

We have a windmill and some outbuildings not far from the house, and though the windmill is no longer working, and we aren’t using the well, either, I decided it would make for an interesting focal point, since it is flanked by two big trees. I took the photo, and then I thought of Ansel Adams and his glorious black and white photos, some of which feature frosty trees. So here’s the shot of the windmill between the trees–after I changed it to black and white in Photoshop, of course. The fun thing I noticed is that editing the photo and making it black and white caused the outbuilding on the left and the water storage tank on the right to darken, creating two anchors, like the bottom two points of a triangle, which corresponds with the top point, which is the windmill wheel. Love when those accidents happen.

After that, I took pictures of the leftover coil of barbed wire hanging from a fencepost, and the top of a fencepost itself, because the cracked and checkered texture of the old juniper post contrasted so nicely with the lacy skirt of frost clinging to the wire.

I posted the windmill photo to my personal profile on Facebook, saying something like: “I’m no Ansel Adams, but the frost in the trees inspired me to go black and white.” The photo generated lots of likes and comments, but my favorite was the one by my writer friend Janine:

“Ansel wasn’t Ansel–until he was.”

That’s a funny way of saying something pretty profound, when you think about it. Though I don’t intend to change my creative focus to photography, the truth remains that no matter what we choose to do in life, we have to start somewhere. Ansel certainly did; I’m sure he wasn’t born taking perfect and beautiful pictures. So we shouldn’t let the fact that we don’t measure up to some creative icon–an icon who’s had years of practice and dedication–make us feel uncertain or embarrassed to spread our creative wings on occasion and fly somewhere we don’t usually fly. Being creative should be fun. I certainly enjoyed my little creative departure!

This photo is of Eagle Nest, NM, where I did a show I’d never done before at the end of July. We camped, in a tent, with our mini doxie Olivia, and one morning it was 42 degrees. At the end of July. Brrr! Here’s another photos of the area:

While in Eagle Nest, I met Angel Fire artist Carol Rupp, who invited me to put some of my jewelry in her gallery. Carol’s work is fantastic, from landscapes to portraits to wildlife. Be sure to take a look. I am honored to have my work in her gallery.

I also met Carol’s friend Cindy Sprott, who is a fantastic stained glass and fused glass artist. She is the owner of Cinderella Glass, and she also shows and sells her work in Carol Rupp’s Gallery. Cindy, a seahorse lover and avid scuba diver, had me make a piece for her using a piece of chrysocolla drusy. So of course I had to incorporate a seahorse in the design. The pendant piece features a seahorse charm.

And I created a seahorse clasp for the piece, which then prompted me to make her a pair of seahorse earrings.

After teaching summer classes and attending the October Artsfest in Cloudcroft, I just finished 3 commissioned pieces for Carol Rupp. The first is a blue agate slice, the second is a titanium-coated quartz crystal, and the third is a combination of two copper nodules combined with some cubic zirconias.

On the homefront, we finally finished a bathroom remodel that we had been needing to do for years. My husband is a fantastic cabinet builder (he’s the one who built my amazing jewelry display cabinets for shows), but he’s also very busy, and I wanted to be finished. So I begged and pleaded for him to revamp an antique dresser into a vanity. I stained and finished the dresser and the drawer fronts, and he retrofitted the drawers to accommodate the plumbing. He built the counter top using a scrap piece of Avonite, a solid-surface material similar to Corian.

The next few weeks promise to be equally busy. I’m getting ready to take a Precious Metal Clay certification class at the end of this month, and after that I’ll be getting ready for a Christmas show, but I do hope to be a better blogger through it all. Really. Seriously.

The August 2011 issue of Bead Trends magazine, published by Northridge Publishing, features the theme “Reimagined,” and the call went out for jewelry pieces that repurposed vintage jewelry or found objects upcycled into completely new pieces, so I created “Nina May,” a romantic piece named after my grandmother Nina May Hewett who was born on the ninth of May, 1898. A farmer’s wife and mother of seven boys, many of whom she raised during the Depression, she really knew how to make old things into new creations, that’s for sure! She didn’t have much jewelry, but the pieces she did have looked like a queen’s jewelry to me when I was a little girl playing in her jewelry box.

Because I loved her jewelry, two special pieces were given to me when she passed away. I even used one of her rhinestone necklaces as decoration for the prom dress I made my junior year. “Nina May” features a rhinestone brooch which may date to the 1920s or 1930s. Because I love the brooch so much, I wanted to create a piece that could be completely dismantled so that the brooch could be worn by itself again. This piece can be worn a number of ways: as a complete necklace and pendant, as a brooch with the dangling faceted rose quartz teardrop, or even by removing the brooch completely and connecting the necklace portion directly to the rose quartz pendant using the decorative S hooks.

This was my first show with the new booth displays Monty created. We still have a couple more things to add, including a rack for my new line of Fae Finery™ and Hummingbird Ink™ gift/greeting cards, but overall we’re close to having things the way we want them. All set up it looks like these pieces take up a lot of room, but the two large chests store all the jewelry, the neck displays, the earring rack, and even the upright backs and shelves, so those two large pieces are pretty much self-contained. Monty built a special cart with pneumatic tires so they’re easy to roll from place to place. The structures holding up the glass display cases are hinged, so they will open up flat for on-edge storage in the Suburban while we travel. The show coordinators must have liked it, because we earned an “honor booth” award. Yay!

The wind wasn’t so bad setting up Friday, it was a little worse Saturday, but by Sunday it was really blowing! It was so bad that many of those outside the pavillion packed up and left early. A couple of displays blew over and a few earrings blew off my earring rack, and the displays collected a coating of dust as a few dust devils blew through the pavillion, but we managed to survive until the end of the show.

The good news is that I did well with sales, and two of my favorite new pieces sold! The piece I entered in the Vintaj challenge for the the “Woodland Blush” theme sold to one of the women who was a juror for the show! She loved it so much when she saw the jury photo that she had to have it.

And a woman who has been collecting pieces since I met her at my first Renaissance Fair in Cloudcroft in 2007 bought one of my new shell pieces, which I named “Syrene.”

In other good news, the class I taught at the Cloudcroft Trading Post went well, I met some great new (and talented!) people, and my card display was almost empty! So this week I’m making more cards.

All in all, I had a great time. Of course one of the first things I did on Monday was order a new tent! Found what I think will be a pretty good one in my price range at a camping and outdoor store called Gander Mountain. It is already on its way. Woohoo!

Next we’ll be completely dismantling the old tent and recycling the aluminum.

We live on a cattle ranch near an area where the Anasazi and the Apache once roamed, and also close to an old ghost town that was once a stage stop on the way from White Oaks to Santa Fe. As a result, we find the most interesting things sometimes: ancient pottery shards and arrowheads, tiny cobalt blue antique glass bottles once used for medicine, old skeleton keys, an elaborately patterned doorknob here and there, shards of patterned China, and pretty little perfume bottle stoppers like the one in the picture above. This one was probably clear glass at one time, but a century of high desert sand and wind have given it a frosted appearance that I love.

I always put these little treasures away until just the right elements come together, and I was really excited when the Artbeads.com blog theme for the design partners this time was “What’s Old Is New Again.” I knew I wanted to use one of the perfume bottle stoppers I’d been collecting, so with that in mind I went shopping! I loved the new “Retro Copper Coin Beads” at Artbeads.com, the ones with the pin-up girls, bicycles and butterflies on them, so I chose this pretty orange and blue butterfly bead to work with. And then I found the fantastic base metal copper chain with the 8mm round links and decided that would go well with the butterfly bead and the perfume bottle stopper. And who doesn’t think pearls when presented with a vintage-related theme?

This is what ultimately came to fruition. Notice there are no pearls. I really tried to use the pearls, but instead, like a magpie lured by shiny things, I was drawn to some sparkly faceted orange crystal rondelles I had on hand, along with some 4 mm iolite beads that were the perfect shade of blue to match the lower wings of the butterfly.

The butterfly bead was a little smaller than I had imagined (yes, the measurements are clearly stated on the Artbeads.com website, so the misperception was my fault), so I was stumped for a while. I set the butterfly bead aside, and I started with the  bottle stopper dangle.  I decided on a woven copper coil decorated with beads wrapped around the neck and threads. Here’s a close-up:

When I finished, I realized that the butterfly bead looked even smaller in comparison. So I had to think about it some more, and I got out the sketchbook. You’d think for someone like me who likes to draw and paint, the sketchbook would be the first thing to come out, right? Wrong. Oddly enough that’s not usually the case with my jewelry designing. I really should resort to the ol’ sketchbook sooner! Anyway, I ultimately ended up with an elaborate beaded frame from which the butterfly coin bead and the perfume stopper swing. It gives the whole piece a slightly Persian vibe.

I wired some of the orange crystals into the round links of the chain, and I incorporated one of those round links into the clasp as well. Because the focal piece was so elaborate compared to the chain, I tried to incorporate some of the beads and weaving into the clasp. This is what I came up with–something that kind of echoed the scroll work frame around the butterfly bead:

That left the pearls. I was feeling guilty that I hadn’t used the beautiful freshwater pearls I had ordered (psst, you can get to them from the Steampunk page). After seeing the amazing beaded ammonite fossil design from new Artbeads.com design partner Lynn of NEDbeads, I was inspired again. Of course I didn’t want to use an ammonite fossil similar to the one she had used, the kind that had been sawn in half to reveal the Nautilus-like chambers within, so instead I used a whole fossil, one with a pearlized outer shell in iridescent flashes of green, peach, and gold.

Ammonite fossils date back to the days of the dinosaurs, and they have quite a bit of interesting folklore attached to them, which Lynn discusses in her blog post. One more snippet of folkloric trivia has it that ammonites are known as “snake stones” in England. Supposedly, St. Hilda cast a spell on all the snakes of her abbey, beheading them and causing them to curl up into spirals and turn into stone. Makes you wonder if she and St. Patrick shared their snake killing secrets with one another, doesn’t it?

Here is the piece I came up with using my Ammonite fossil. I used some amber sand seed beads, olive green cubic zirconia briolettes and squares, and some 21 gauge and 26 gauge antique brass colored square wire.

Where the Persian butterfly piece is airy, yet also bright and bold, the colors in this one are more subdued, and the style is more traditional, yet quirky with that ancient fossil as the focal point. I can imagine a bride wearing this piece. It certainly covers the “something old” and “something new” requirements, wouldn’t you say?

Disclaimer: From time to time Artbeads provides me with beads and supplies to review free of charge. I have not been compensated in any other way for my usage or my opinions of their products.

I’m breathing a huge sigh of relief tonight. I finally finished the 5 metal clay Faerie Carnivale pieces I’ve been working for what seems like forever! Because of the Fire Mountain Gems ad in Jewelry Affaire and Lapidary Journal’s Jewelry Artist, I’ve had people contact me about purchasing similar pieces. Great news, except I’ve been having kiln problems (actually, it’s probably the kiln operator at fault), so it’s taken me a lot longer than I intended. But here they are! The copper piece topping this post just has a simple bail with a ribbon, but the other four are a bit more elaborate.

This one is BRONZclay™, with an emerald green cubic zirconia, garnets, and emerald green Swarovski crystal tapered beads in the jeweler’s brass wire swirls. Except for creating this one out of bronze clay, I stayed true to the color scheme from the piece in the ad.

This piece is made from COPPRclay™ with an amethyst purple cubic zirconia, amethyst Swarovski crystal tapered beads, a few garnet leaves, and silk ribbons in garnet and purple. This color scheme pulls out some of the colors in the fairy’s mask.

This is another made with COPPRclay™ and features round garnet beads and emerald green Swarovski tapered beads. I used a wide silk ribbon on this one.

And here’s the last one–but not least! It’s made with BRONZclay™. I created a wire festoon for this one, somewhat similar to the award-winning piece in the ad. This one features garnets and magenta fire-polished glass beads.

Whew! Now it’s on to some creations for my Artbeads.com blog post, greeting cards and jewelry for Mother’s Day, a mermaid drawing to turn into a painting, and some ocean-themed jewelry to go with the mermaid. I should be busy and keeping myself out of trouble for a while!

Aren’t agate slices fun? Especially the ones with the crystals in the center. This druzy agate piece will be in the April 2011 issue of Bead Trends magazine. I called it “Dragonfly on Crystal Lake.” I used a delicate sterling silver weave to enclose the agate, and clustered at the top a little flower nest for the dragonfly made of keshi pearls with aqua seed bead centers.

Not sure why they photographed this piece with a yellow mug instead of against something ethereal and mysterious like I envisioned (cue the Enya music!), but the color combination is really pretty. And, come to think of it, I am getting a little stir crazy out here in the boonies waiting for spring, so here I go on my mental vacation–I’m envisioning myself at the lake in the summer, watching dragonflies gracefully hover over the still water as I enjoy a nice cup of tea and enjoy the sunrise. Ahhhh!