Etsy Metal Blog Carnival: What in the World are you Doing?

The topic for this month's Etsy Metal Blog Carnival is to talk about your current "goings on." I hope to get back to some posts about jewelry soon, but in the meantime, here's a little bit of my personal life.

First, our daughter graduated from pre-K at the end of May and will be headed to kindergarten this fall. I am so proud of her! Below is a picture of Kate, me, and my mom at her graduation.

Then we took a trip to St. Louis to visit family. We saw the Chinese Lantern Festival at the Missouri Botanical Garden (always a great source of inspiration for me). Chinese artisans came from China and lived in tents at the garden for several months while they constructed these beautiful structures of steel and silk. They are lit at night, but we were there during the day. There were also two incredible, huge dragons made of blue and white plates, cups, and saucers (bottom of the four pictures below). While in St. Louis we visited the Magic House (children's museum) and ate plenty of Ted Drewe's frozen custard (my fave: raspberry with chocolate chips). Yum.

A couple of weeks later we flew to Pennsylvania to visit my husband's parents. We took Kate to Sesame Place (Sesame Street amusement park), and Tim met his childhood hero, Super Grover. Kate's favorite part was getting her face painted. We also visited the lovely Tyler Aboretum. And when it's hot out, what's better than a Slip 'n Slide?

This past weekend I celebrated my birthday on a 106 degree day with friends, sangria, homemade vanilla ice cream, and peach pie. I love summer food! On the jewelry side of things, I'm working on ideas for some new pieces, hopefully coming soon!

See what other Etsy Metal members have to say on this topic:

Silent Goddess: http://silentgoddess.blogspot.com/

Evelyn Markasky - http://markasky.blogspot.com/
Victoria Takahashi - http://vtakahashi.blogspot.com/
Gracebourne - http://gracebourne.blogspot.ca/
Beth Cyr - http://bcyrjewelry.blogspot.com/
Rebecca Bogan - http://adobesol.wordpress.com/
Erin Austin - http://metalmusing.blogspot.com/
Danielle Miller - http://daniellemillerjewelry.blogspot.com/
Nodeform - http://nodeform.blogspot.com/

Fairy Houses

When I first visited the coast of Maine on vacation with my family about 12 or so years ago, we took a day trip to the beautiful Monhegan Island. Our hike took us through Cathedral Woods, where we discovered several little fairy houses, made with materials found on the forest floor. They were so charming and imaginative, and it was fun to look for them on our hike.

Fast forward to 2011, when we took our (then four-year-old) daughter Kate to Maine (her first time there). One of our first stops was the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, which has a wonderful children's garden, and an area for kids to build fairy houses. You are only supposed to use found materials, nothing artificial, and nothing picked off living trees or bushes. We had a great time making fairy houses, and when spring came around this year, we took to the nature trail in Stone Mountain Park near our house to create some there. Some neighborhood friends from South Korea (with a daughter about Kate's age) came with us one day and we introduced them to fairy houses. Both little girls, even though they spoke two different languages, communicated through the language of a shared task (and a love of Tinkerbell).

Kate working on her house.

Kate's finished house, with a path to the front door.

Home under construction by our Korean friends.

This is the house I constructed, an A-frame.

This is part of a beautiful stream in the park that seemed enchanted this spring with multitudes of mountain laurel in bloom.

In the stream we made fairy boats (bark with a leaf sail) and let the gentle current carry them.

This is such a great activity for kids--and adults! We have a really nice story book by Tracy Kane and a DVD about a little girl in Maine who creates fairy houses (goes nicely with the story book). See: www.fairyhouses.com.

Inspiration from an Old Sketchbook

After I graduated college, I went to New York for the summer to intern at the Museum of Modern Art (a great experience), then in the fall traveled to Venice for a three month internship at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (incredible experience). This was such an amazing time in my life, full of art and exploration. I kept a sketchbook while in Venice, and tended to focus on small decorative areas of larger medieval and renaissance artworks. After Venice, my friend Heather and I traveled to some other places in Italy, then on to Greece. Then she returned to Italy and I went on to Turkey, back to Italy, then Spain (by way of Nice), and finally, Switzerland. Even though I had never made a piece of jewelry at that point, it was on my mind a lot during these three months of travel. In fact, most of my souvenirs were pieces of jewelry made by local artists. I knew I wanted to make jewelry someday, so my sketchbook included interesting pieces of jewelry and other art that I saw along the way..

Recently I pulled out this sketchbook hoping for some inspiration for a new piece of jewelry. I found a drawing of a floral decoration from the Accademia Museum in Venice. I didn't note what it was, but I think it was probably a decorative element on an altarpiece frame. Here's the sketchbook page, and the flower I wanted to use is in the lower left.

And here are the resulting pieces of jewelry:

A 1" wide flower pendant (I also made a smaller one that is 3/4" wide.)

Matching earrings with pale pink pearls

The jewelry above is available in the "Flowers" section of my Etsy shop: www.annewalkerjewelry.etsy.com. 

Who knows? Maybe some other new pieces will come from old sketches. Meanwhile, just for kicks, here are some other drawings from that sketchbook.

Sketches from the Archeological Museum, Iraklion, Crete (Greece)

These sketches are from the Byzantine Museum in Athens (Greece). I actually made a pendant many years ago, inspired by the drawing in the upper left (see below).

Now for some non-jewelry decorative sketches...

From Durer's "Jesus Among the Doctors," Thyssen Bornemisza Museum, Madrid

A work by Goya in the Prado Museum, Madrid

Not sure what this was from, but it was a work in the Thyssen Bornemisza Museum, Madrid

My beautiful Venice

Nobody's Perfect

Last month I was invited to join a great group of metalsmiths who all sell on Etsy--the EtsyMetal team. Once a month they have a blog carnival where several group members all blog on the same topic. This month's topic is "Nobody's Perfect," blogging about pieces that didn't happen as planned, or some variation on that theme.

I feel like I have too much experience in this area! What you see in my Etsy shop or on my website are the pieces that did turn out right. The ones that didn't have either been recycled, relegated to scrap, are in my personal jewelry box, or sitting in my studio half-finished (and there have been many of them).

Things usually don't turn out either because of faulty design, or for one of the following reasons.

1) Gravity, or not thinking about the laws of physics. I like asymmetrical things, but asymmetry still has to be balanced so that things don't hang at odd angles--this has happened to me several times. It can be a challenge to figure out what will work during the design and construction phase of a jewelry piece. It is often hard to test  the gravitational pull on an object until is is done. I wish I had some images to show you, but these pieces have all been recycled or put into the scrap pile!

2) Forgetting about mirror images. Earrings, to look right, need to be mirror images of each other if they have an asymmetrical design. Assuming they are hanging right (see #1 above), I also need to make sure they don't look exactly the same (see below for what I'm talking about). The flower on one of these earrings should be leaning on the opposite side of the frame.

3) Never finishing. I have several projects that didn't turn out the way I intended because they've never turned out! I occasionally start a project and then get frustrated halfway through and never finish the piece. Or I get nervous I'll mess it up so I don't finish it. Or I feel that the design is not right, and start over with something new. Below is a granulated silver bead that is tarnished because it's been sitting around for about 10 years. The problem? I'm afraid to drill a hole in it so I can actually use it! Below that are some Egyptian inspired cloisonne components I made while learning enameling. I would love to put them into a pendant along with the star sapphire pictured with them, but I messed up on the pendant design (melted a bezel when I was almost done) and was so mad that I never got back to it. That was probably about 10 years ago too! One of these days I will, because  I really love them, and they'll make a dramatic necklace. Maybe I'll hang it on one of the fine silver chains I started to weave and never finished!

Part of being an artist is trial and error. You will always have some things that work better than others. It's all part of the process of learning and growing!

See what other EtsyMetal team members have to say about this topic:
Silentgoddess: http://silentgoddess.blogspot.com/
Gracebourne: http://gracebourne.blogspot.com/
2Roses: http://jewelrytutorial.blogspot.com/
Inbar Baraket: http://inbarbaraket.info/blog
Beth Cyr: http://bcyrjewelry.blogspot.com/
Wildflower Designs: http://wildflowerdesigns.blogspot.com/
Michele Grady Designs: http://michelegradydesigns.blogspot.com/
TK Metal Arts: http://tkmetalarts.blogspot.com/
Evelyn Markasky: http://markasky.blogspot.com/

Blooms in My Yard and Studio

What was blooming in my yard last week. It's amazing to have so much inspiration right outside the window.

Cherry Blossoms

Azaleas

Wisteria (invasive but beautiful)

Dogwood Tree

Azaleas

Inspired by the Cherry Blossoms:

Cherry Blossom Pendant

Cherry Blossom Earrings

Cherry Tree Pendant

And inspired by the spring in general:

Circular Flower Pendant

Millions of Daffodils

I have to warn you that this will be the first of several posts about flowers and blooming trees, because I love spring! My allergic body doesn't love spring so much, but I think the beauty outweighs the sneezing. A couple of weeks ago we went to visit Gibbs Gardens, a new garden that just opened in north Georgia. Thirty years ago, Jim Gibbs, owner of a landscaping company, purchased over 200 acres for his home and future gardens. He's spent the last 30 years developing the land around his home, and this March he opened them to the public. The grounds now have 20 million daffodils--probably 1/3 of them were in bloom when we were there. It was like rivers of flowers, one of the most amazing sights I've ever seen. He also has a gorgeous Japanese Garden (if you know me, you know I love Japanese gardens and my jewelry has been greatly inspired by them). So, here are a few photos from our excursion.

Daffodils as far as the eye can see

Weeping willow and lantern in the Japanese garden

River of daffodils

We took our art supplies for a little sketching session.

New Year, New Look, New Resolutions

I am back, trying to reinvigorate my blog once again! I realize we are already three months into the new year, but my goal is to post more regularly about my jewelry and other creative pursuits.

So, for my first post of the year--transforming my business "look."

Late last year I decided my logo and brand identity for my jewelry business needed an upgrade. The previous logo wasn’t easy to reproduce, and it was black and white. I wanted something more streamlined and something in color. I also wanted to change the typeface I was using from a san-serif to a more modern serif font. For those of you who don’t know the difference, serif fonts have little “feet” and extensions from the letters. San serif fonts don’t have the “feet” and therefore look more modern and streamlined, much like my jewelry.

Old Business Identity

So I began the process of working on my new logo. First I decided I wanted something either geometric or something organic. Either would represent my jewelry, which has both components.

I came up with one idea of interlocking squares with rounded corners, and a few ideas involving leaves. Once I had some ideas, I started playing around in Adobe Illustrator to draw them digitally. I should say that while I know Photoshop and InDesign, I had never used Illustrator before. So I watched some video tutorials online about creating simple logos, then had a go at it. See some of my ideas below.

Playing around with logo ideas

In the end I chose a logo that combined my two ideas of geometric and organic—three leaves inside a square with rounded corners. I had long ago decided on green as the color, specifically a sage-y green. Not only has green been my favorite color since childhood, it accurately represents the large part that nature plays in the inspiration for my pieces.

After designing the logo, I then designed new business cards—green logo and dark brown text. Century Gothic is my favorite san-serif font (okay, I’m a little bit of a font nerd), so that’s what I used. I added my tagline, "modern jewelry, traditional craft." Credit goes to my husband for that! Along with the business cards, I made round stickers, reversing the colors (green background, white logo and brown text). These are for the dark brown boxes I use for my jewelry. Then I designed some postcards using several images from my collections, with a short artist statement/description on the back. I had all of this ready for the holidays and the couple of shows I did in November and December.

New Logo with Tagline

New Promotional Postcard

Postcard-back side

In January I updated my website with the new logo. I’ll probably continue to tweak the site design as the year goes on, but for now I am quite happy with the updated look. See for yourself: www.annewalkerjewelry.com.