I know this blog seems dead and gone but it isn't. I have been traveling...moving...for a year now. Actually more than a year. I started packing my house back in Jan 2022. Since then I have been moving from place to place, often with only two suitcases. Most of my things are scattered in three different countries. Some I will probably never see again.
Just this last month I moved into an apartment I hope to be in for the next year. I spent the last few weeks getting my area set up to create, and I started making things again this last week. I hope to have my shop up and running soon, within the next few weeks if possible.
I have been playing a lot with my acrylic drops as you can see from this photo. I love these little swirls of color and I have trays of them all around me to pick and choose from as I create. I invested in some nice jewelry trays back in France and made sure they were one of the things I packed to bring with me. I am not sure if I will be able to find replacements when they run out so these may be a limited item. I love how good my drops look in these.
I have also been experimenting with my resin wings, using different methods to make a variety of styles. Each time I make a new set of wings I feel I get closer to perfecting the process. I now feel very confident I can make good, solid pieces that are worthy to put into my shop. When I first made my wings for my flight-of-dreams collection I made so many duds I had a whole box full of them. Now I rarely make a mistake.
I hope to write a post on the making of my wings soon. And I am not only making wings, I am also going to add other whimsical items.
Hello all, I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer despite the high temperatures in so many places. I have been fortunate with the house here on the mountain. Since it is built into the mountain the downstairs maintains a nice cool temperature even on the hottest of days. It’s like built-in air conditioning without the cost! Though I think we pay for it in the winter.
Kumihimo Beaded Bracelet
I am steadily working on my new collection but I must admit it has been hard. Though I had high aspirations of working on design ideas when I was on my trip to the US, that was not the case. But I don’t regret this. I enjoyed every minute of my trip and all the people that I was able to visit. Then when I arrived home I was sure I would be right back at it but jet lag reared its ugly head and I wasn’t functioning for a good two weeks if not more. When I finally had a clear head I hit on another problem. My muse had left the building. I could not come up with one good idea so I spent the last month frittering my time away on a bunch of disconnected pieces.
Finally, I feel like I have a theme going and ideas are starting to arrive. Of course, as soon as this happens I have to leave again. A week away in Bretagne to go to our dear friends’ wedding. It’s true that I am looking forward to seeing them and attending the wedding but once again I am off course. I am not sure how to solve this problem. Each time I leave, when I return it seems to take forever to find my place again. I told myself that I would release four collections this year. Right now I think I will be lucky to get three done. I know there is no way to do four. Who knows, there might only be two.
A row of mica resin leaves.
All of this to say…I am sorry for any delay. I am here. I am working daily to make new pieces. This is a whole new way of working for me so I guess it will take time for me to find my groove. Does anyone else have this problem when they go away?
Another failureLast time I wrote here everything was still in upheaval. I was deep in the throes of unpacking and tying to settle into a life of living in two places. It took quite awhile to sort everything out and get to a point where I could create again. But time smooths most things and I fell into a rhythm. And finally, yes finally, I managed to complete my collection. The break-thru moment was when I was able to create the resin pieces I wanted. There are a lot of methods out there and I discarded them all. None satisfied me on their durability or looks. Now I am able to make pieces that I feel comfortable selling. Once this was accomplished I started to play 😉 I am constantly amazed at just what you can do with this amazing stuff! It’s like the strongest glue you can find. It is an amazing glass substitute. You can add things, build on it, just so much you can do!
sparkly, pink and bubbles. What's not to like?
So now my latest collection is finished and I publish it in two days. I am so excited to finally be here. I have learned so much along the way and gained much valuable experience. Making a collection is nothing like making one piece of jewelry. It involves a lot of planning and failure but now I feel confident to go forward with that knowledge and make another collection! And that is exactly what I am doing. I am already hard at work in my head, planning and designing a new collection. So I hope you enjoy my latest one “Flight of Dreams” and be sure to check back in the future for my newest creations. I will try to do better about posting my experiments along the way. I get so lost in the process that I often forget to take photos.os.
I have been quiet here since I finished my website, mainly because my life has been filled with things having nothing to do with my art. My husband and I have made a very big decision. We are selling our house and moving to the nearest big town here, Colmar. It is a much needed change but not done without some regret. I love this house up on the side of the mountain. I love the view, the quiet, being so close to nature. But I also crave the city, being close to what I need. I do not drive. This has been a true hardship for me. Since we are SO far out into the mountains we are the last stop on the bus line. It only comes to the town four times a day and makes running into town for a quick errand impossible. There is no post office of grocery store here. I am truly in the sticks! I am also alone most of the time since Frenchie works in Switzerland and stays there during the week. A change was needed.
So we are finishing up our big remodeling projects. The bathroom is almost finished and the same with our new bedroom. We will be moving in two weeks. There is still much to do so it is taking away from my creative time but I have not stopped at all! I live to create and so I find little times to sit and make. It keeps me going.
I have changed my thinking on how I create and have decided that from now on I will create groups of things that run along a certain theme and release them all at once when they are finished. This is very exciting for me. It gives me a lot of room to brainstorm and come up with a great idea with lots of fun making more than just one piece. It is a great challenge also to make a group of pieces that are cohesive. It is with this in mind that I have started working on my first themed set. My dear sweet daughter created a face group for me so I could discuss my upcoming lines. She is a great support for me and I think my biggest fan, haha! If you are truly interested in the work I am doing I suggest you join my group. I will be featuring giveaways and contests in the future once i get settled in my new home and things start rolling smoothly again. You can find my group here: CymberRain’s Creations.
I have been quiet here since I finished my website, mainly because my life has been filled with things having nothing to do with my art. My husband and I have made a very big decision. We are selling our house and moving to the nearest big town here, Colmar. It is a much needed change but not done without some regret. I love this house up on the side of the mountain. I love the view, the quiet, being so close to nature. But I also crave the city, being close to what I need. I do not drive. This has been a true hardship for me. Since we are SO far out into the mountains we are the last stop on the bus line. It only comes to the town four times a day and makes running into town for a quick errand impossible. There is no post office of grocery store here. I am truly in the sticks! I am also alone most of the time since Frenchie works in Switzerland and stays there during the week. A change was needed.
So we are finishing up our big remodeling projects. The bathroom is almost finished and the same with our new bedroom. We will be moving in two weeks. There is still much to do so it is taking away from my creative time but I have not stopped at all! I live to create and so I find little times to sit and make. It keeps me going.
I have changed my thinking on how I create and have decided that from now on I will create groups of things that run along a certain theme and release them all at once when they are finished. This is very exciting for me. It gives me a lot of room to brainstorm and come up with a great idea with lots of fun making more than just one piece. It is a great challenge also to make a group of pieces that are cohesive. It is with this in mind that I have started working on my first themed set. My dear sweet daughter created a face group for me so I could discuss my upcoming lines. She is a great support for me and I think my biggest fan, haha! If you are truly interested in the work I am doing I suggest you join my group. I will be featuring giveaways and contests in the future once i get settled in my new home and things start rolling smoothly again. You can find my group here: CymberRain's Creations.
I told you in my last post that my friend had made a request for some new shrink film pieces and I wanted ot show you what I came up with. She is a scientist and she had this idea for a fellow lab mate as a gift. She liked the role reversal with the alien and cow that she asked me to come up with something similar for a rat and scientist. This is what I drew.
I told you in my last post that my friend had made a request for some new shrink film pieces and I wanted ot show you what I came up with. She is a scientist and she had this idea for a fellow lab mate as a gift. She liked the role reversal with the alien and cow that she asked me to come up with something similar for a rat and scientist. This is what I drew.
I then inked them out on the shrink film and colored them in:
And here is the finished pieces, also some cows and aliens as I had an order for a pair of them as earrings.
Unfortunatly I forgot to get a picture of the pieces as finished earrings. It was a rush order and I had to mail them quickly. I had a lot of fun making these. It is way outside of my normal work and it is good to do something a little different occasionally.
Hope you are having a great week!
I then inked them out on the shrink film and colored them in:
And here is the finished pieces, also some cows and aliens as I had an order for a pair of them as earrings.
Unfortunatly I forgot to get a picture of the pieces as finished earrings. It was a rush order and I had to mail them quickly. I had a lot of fun making these. It is way outside of my normal work and it is good to do something a little different occasionally.
I have this friend, she is a little zany. She has a million ideas and they are all a little different and fun. She has long hair and always wears it up in a bun. She told me one day she would love some fun and silly hair sticks to wear in her hair, like an alien beaming up a cow. I thought it was a fun idea and worked on and off for well over a year with different ideas to make these hair sticks. I tried beads and fimo and wire. Nothing really seemed to catch it and I put it aside for awhile. Then I started working with the shrink plastic and one day *bing* the idea came into my head to make the alien and cow in shrink plastic. Why not?
So I sat down to draw it but realized that the regular alien and cow scenario just wasn’t doing it for me. I needed a twist and that is how the cow abducting the alien came to life!
I inked the pictures onto shrink plastic and came up with this. I then refined it a little, adding some shadows and such. I really love how these came out, they are so fun!
After I was finally satisfied with the piece, I made them into a nice set of hair sticks and gave them to my friend.
She loved them so much she came to me the next week and begged me to make her friend some earrings. I will show you what I made next time 🙂
I was so happy with my rainbow feather piece that I wanted to try this method out again. I loved how the rainbow feather turned out but I felt it was just a bit too detailed, so I set out to simplify the design. I started out with a sketch of an initial D.
I really loved how this sketch turned out. I didnt add the color or fine details in the sketch. I chose to wait until I put it on the plastic. I made up two pieces of the film and tranferred the design onto them for shrinking. I wanted to do one piece with the sharpie markers and one with the prismacolor to compare the two. I immediately made a mistake by tranferring the design onto the wrong side of one of the pieces. I went ahead and finished it anyway though as I wanted to see how it would look with it done on the wrong side. The piece done on the right side is with the colored pencil, the wrong side is the marker one.
So here below are the first two pieces. The one on the left is the one done on the wrong side. As you can see the colors are very muted. I guess this could be used in some applications but I felt it wasn’t suitable for this application. The second one I thought turned out great. I was so excited about it that I set out to wrap it right away. Silly me! I totally forgot to seal it before I started and before I was even halfway finished with the bezel the ink had rubbed off the front of the piece. The bezel also didn’t work so two fails in one day!
So I went on to do two more pieces. I was determined to get this piece right. I again repeated the same experiment, one with marker and one with pencil. This time I inked them both on the right side. This time they both turned out great so I went on to seal them. I decided to use the spray sealer to eliminate the brush stroke that were somewhat evident on the rainbow feather. Boy was that a mistake. I am not sure if it would have worked if I had used a lighter touch but what happend was a reaction with the ink and the sealer. It leaked into the background.Two more pieces regulated to the scrap pile. One good thing though, I can use these with the resin experiments I want to try out as soon as it gets a bit warmer. It is still way too cold up on this mountain for the resin to cure well without using lots of heat in the room.
I was still determined to do this right. I made one more piece. This time with the pencil as I had decided from the previous batches that the pencil looks just a bit better than the marker. Though really it is a close call. They both look quite good in my opinion. So here is the final piece inked and then shrunk.
Finally a good result! I am still not crazy about the background and would probably be more likely to use this with images that fill the whole piece. I still have to play with this more. What do you think? Do you like the results? Would you wear something like this?
I have had a busy day here on the mountain. It was cold and snowy up here and not much fun to be outdoors. Thankfully the forecast shows warmer days to come. I am ready for spring!
And speaking of spring, I think my new piece has a bit of a spring feel.After I shrunk this down I really wanted to give it a wrap to showcase those lovely rainbow colors. So I made this wrap with some of my hand dyed rainbow silk ribbon.
I really do love the color it added but I still think this piece is way too detailed. I plan on doing things a little more simple in the future to see how the color pops. The black just dominates too much. It was just an experiment though.
What do you think? Is it too dark or do you think it shows the colors sufficiently?
Since I loved this piece so much I did decide to refine the sketch and worked hard all week to make this new version. I say work but how can it be when I have so much fun doing it?
So here is the new version, refined quite a bit and much larger. I am really out of practice! It has been so long since I did anything with a pencil that I even took a quick refresher course on shading to get back in the groove. It wasn’t long though before I was shading away happily. I can do this!
This piece will go on my living room wall. I even have a space that has been waiting for that special something. It will fit right in.
Now I am onto more shrink film experiments, I am not done playing with this medium for sure. I think it has a lot of interesting possibilities and I want to see if any of these crazy ideas in my head work out. I will keep you updated.
Until then, take care and enjoy the spring weather!
I have had a busy day here on the mountain. It was cold and snowy up here and not much fun to be outdoors. Thankfully the forecast shows warmer days to come. I am ready for spring!
And speaking of spring, I think my new piece has a bit of a spring feel.After I shrunk this down I really wanted to give it a wrap to showcase those lovely rainbow colors. So I made this wrap with some of my hand dyed rainbow silk ribbon.
I really do love the color it added but I still think this piece is way too detailed. I plan on doing things a little more simple in the future to see how the color pops. The black just dominates too much. It was just an experiment though.
What do you think? Is it too dark or do you think it shows the colors sufficiently?
Since I loved this piece so much I did decide to refine the sketch and worked hard all week to make this new version. I say work but how can it be when I have so much fun doing it?
So here is the new version, refined quite a bit and much larger. I am really out of practice! It has been so long since I did anything with a pencil that I even took a quick refresher course on shading to get back in the groove. It wasn't long though before I was shading away happily. I can do this!
This piece will go on my living room wall. I even have a space that has been waiting for that special something. It will fit right in.
Now I am onto more shrink film experiments, I am not done playing with this medium for sure. I think it has a lot of interesting possibilities and I want to see if any of these crazy ideas in my head work out. I will keep you updated.
Until then, take care and enjoy the spring weather!
I wrote recently on my experiments with alcohol inks. In my last experiment, I used the inks on shrink film and I was very interested in the results. I looked at the wings I had quickly inked and I suddenly saw an opportunity to use my fine art skills in jewelry. I love making jewelry. It does satisfy something in me but I am constantly trying to find ways to bring my art into my jewelry. The wire is lovely but popping colors? Even better!
So I set about on a trial to see just exactly how much art could I bring to a miniature medium like this. Here are my results and I think you will be quite pleased as I was.
First off, I wanted a nice intricate piece with lots of colors. Feathers have been on my mind a lot so I did a sketch of a feather in pencil. I didn’t take a lot of time on this piece but I ended up loving it. So I will definitely go back and redo this in a larger size and ink it properly. This is definitely a sketch, not a finished piece.
This is the piece I am going to do. This image is only about 4″ tall.
I did a lot of reading on this subject before I started. I wanted to know the pros and cons and to catch the little tips people throw out in forums, etc. I learned that a sanded surface works great for colored pencils. Since I had no colored Sharpies or other alcohol markers, colored pencils it was.
I had already did quite a few test runs on my oven and slowly took the temperature down till I found the good temp. 140c seems to be just about right.
I did a test with my colored pencils. I have many brands and wanted to see which pencils would work the best. I decided that the Marco pencils seemed to go on much nicer than the others. Later during the coloring of the piece I actually found the Stabilos going on much smoother.
Here is my little color chart I made for reference.
The brighter side is the unsanded side, as you can see the titles are backwards.
While I was at it I made a ruler too. This is a great little reference tool to give you an idea of how large your piece of plastic needs to be to get the proper size.
As you can see, I still hadn’t figured out my oven temps with this piece and the colored pencil templates and they cooked way too fast. I could probably put it back in the oven and flatten it a bit more if I wanted to
After doing my pencil test I sanded down my film. I took my jewelers sanding blocks in gradient grits ranging from P60 to P600 and set about sanding the whole surface area. I tried to make it as smooth as possible and eliminate as many lines as I could.
Many people had talked of sanding their paper but only with one grit and in a back and forth motion. This didn’t seem enough to me so I sanded it as I would a piece of jewelry. It came out with a pretty good smooth surface though there were still some scratches in it.
Next, I taped my film over my pencil sketch and inked it with my fine tip sharpie on the unsanded side. Having that one sharpie on hand sure saved me.
After it dried I turned it over to do the pencil on the sanded side.
Here is the piece with the colors finished. The shiny side is shown.
Then it was time for the oven. I was so nervous and thinking that maybe I was just a bit crazy to put so much time and effort into a shrink plastic piece!
By now I was used to the shrinking process and sat right in front of the oven. I opened it often to help the piece along when it curled too much. They can get hot but I don’t find them too hot to touch quickly. I just open the oven door, reach in and help it unbend a bit when it seems to be curling too much. Sometimes if they curl too much they stick together and I didn’t want that to happen.
It melted down well (with a little help) and then I set my bench block on top of it to flatten it further. It is nice and heavy and does the job perfectly!
Here is the finished piece and I am in love once again.
THis project made me so happy. Not only did I remind myself of how much I love to work with pencils and draw I also found a fantastic way to bring my fine art to my jewelry.
Now my next job is to figure out how to wrap this in wire to make a pendant so that it satifies me. That itself might be a monumental task.
