Weekend Eye Candy, Rings

1. BEETLE MECHANIQUE Vintage Watch Ring by 19 Moons Adjustable STEAMPUNK CLOCKWORK BEAUTY, 2. Ring 70.6 (2008, IT) Public Treasure Poison Ring, 3. cup ring stack, 4. WORDY GIRASOLE RING, 5. art jewelry money silver aggressive growth ring ooley, 6. Anillo plata, acrilico y 3 circones Xperimenta Fran Duarte, 7. TALLY LACMA ring, 8. black ring, 9. Kawaii Cute Japanese Ring-Coffee With Cream 1

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.Weekend Eye Candy, Rings, originally uploaded by Michelle Ross.

Since I just posted my first successful ring, I thought it would be fun to take a peek at some rings other people have made. Grab a little inspiration or just enjoy the eye candy! I'd love to hear which is your favorite.

Be sure and check out Lora, Paige and Christine's Weekend Eye Candy

What to do when you are not making money?

The answer is simple: spend money! The truth is that while on forced hiatus from teaching, I've decided to take a couple of what I call "Smithy" classes.

I wanted to learn something new, so I signed up to take some simple metal smithing classes. Pictured here is my first ring. I really love it. I learned "jump soldering" (not sure if that is a technical term, or the term my friend Paige coined) but I like it, sweat soldering, and using hard, medium and easy solder. Also, this is the first time I bezel set a stone.

And in case you're wondering, yes, it is off center, on purpose. In fact, I would have liked it to be more asymmetrical, but it jumped when the solder flowed, and being a beginner, I felt best left alone.

That brings me to one of my "art philosophies"(TG for spell checker). You can't draw a straight line, so why try..... go crazy with bendy lines, and if you can't get something exactly in the middle, go way off center.

I think it is much more interesting when things aren't perfectly centered, so my next ring will be even more asymmetrical.

I hope you enjoy seeing this one!

ps: if I could just figure out how to get the photos below the post I'd be happy!:-}

Who Doesn't Love Flowers?

My creation, originally uploaded by Michelle Ross.

Whether you work in metals, fibers, or polymer clay, many artists say that they get their inspiration from nature.

Here are a few examples of work that depict flowers, and one is actually a flower found in nature.

I really like all of these, and I hope you do too.

Weekend Eye Candy, Circles

1. Planet Rock Earrings - SOLD, 2. Rolling Hills - Side 1, 3. Where do circles begin?, 4.Polymer clay Disc earing Detail, 5. Polymer Clay Tumbling Circles Bracelet, 6. Outside Circles, Inside Dots., 7. The Holes in my Argument –Circles in the square!, 8. The Circles, 9. Squircle Set of Favorites from Squared Circle

My friend Lora Hart invited me to join in her Weekend Eye Candy weekly ritual. This is my very first one. Lora recently did one on circles (she read my mind) and it’s really good. Go see hers at Such and Such.
Whether you’re a jewelry maker, knitter, polymer clayer, crafter of any sort, they are always inspirational photos of other peoples work.
Have fun looking and get inspired!

Sketch Books

My friend Maggie Bergman has a post on her blog that I thought was wonderful. She showed one of her jewelry designs from the beginning to the end. Not process photos, but sketch book photos.

She found a seed pod, made a sketch, and completed the jewelry piece from her sketches that actually looked like what she sketched. 

I have a lot of sketch books, and I doodle a lot, but I rarely ever make something that resembles a "doodle" that I did.

I think the reason for that is that I have a collage mentality. I really don't know what the end result will look like. It just happens as I go along. It's always an adventure for me. 

I'm not unhappy at all with my free form process, but I think it is wonderful that she can create exactly what she intended in her sketch! Sometime I'll try that!

Below are some of my sketch books. I love using a book that I have made, but I also buy them too. Click on Maggie Bergman above and see what she did. I think you'll like her process.

In The Beginning......

I woke up way too early one morning and lost my mind! That is to say that I decided to start a blog.

Why did I decide to do this? Two reasons. I'm hoping it will cause me to be a bit more organized in my life, and it seems like a place that I can share my works, ideas, & creativity. I'm an eclectic artist, but I'm not a writer, and that is the scary part.

So here is my process to begin this foreign thing:

I had certain requirements involving what it would look like:

1) It had to be easy on the eyes.

2) The background couldn't be black.

3) The template doesn't include bears or butterflies!

4)  Subtly so as not to compete with my photos. 

5 ) I found that templates that had their graphic in the upper right corner were disturbing to my eye, so I wanted something opposite of that.

I spent HOURS looking at templates and finally bookmarked a total or 28. Then came the elimination process:

Round 1 - cut by 50%! Good job, pat myself on the back! Only 14 left.

Round 2 - This was more difficult, 11 remaining

Round 3 - 8 left

At this point, everything is fuzzy. I somehow managed to get it down to 3, then 2. Took a vote between a couple of friends, and finally had the one I wanted......yay!

I'm not a very computer savvy person, so I needed some help to make the header. Enter Paige of Hammer, Stitch, Burn, a wonderful creative and smart and sensitive friend. I better not forget that patience is one of her virtues!

We quickly threw together a pile of stuff (my stuff) and took a bunch of photos. We settled on 2, then began to work on them to make a final header that I would be happy with FOREVER because I don't want to ever loose my mind like that again. :-}

Here's the one I didn't choose, and it was a hard choice.

What do you think? Send me a comment or email. Did I choose the best one? I'd love to hear what you think because creativity doesn't happen in a vacuum! (I like that!)