Etsy Metal Blog Carnival: Where do you live?

This month's Etsy Metal Team blog carnival topic is "Where do you live?"

Well, I live in Stone Mountain, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta. I've lived in the Atlanta area since 1996, and in Stone Mountain since 2004, when my husband and I bought our first house here. Stone Mountain is most famous for the mountain itself, the largest exposed granite dome in North America. There is a large carving on one face of the mountain depicting confederate heroes, and down the street is a cemetary with confederate graves. Georgia actually has a holiday called Confederate Memorial Day. As a non-native southerner, I really don't get all the adulation.

The mountain is surrounded by a huge park with lots of family activities, as well as bike paths, hiking trails, campgrounds, and a great playground. You can walk to the top of the mountain, or take a gondola. Walking up is great exercise, and I love getting above the world for a while. Being able to walk to all of this from our house is wonderful. The strange thing is that, while the mountain is maybe 1/10 mile behind our house, we can't see it because of the masses of huge pine trees in our yard. Trees and plants grow on the mountain as well--strange to see them growing out of a big rock! One of my favorite times of year is late August/early September when the yellow daisies bloom on the mountain--masses of them (see photo below). It's just gorgeous.

For the record, where else have I lived in my life? Berkeley, CA (where I was born); Moraga, CA; Flint, MI; St. Louis, MO; Northfield, MN (college); Montgomery, AL; Decatur, GA; NYC, NY (summer internship); Florence (study abroad) and Venice (internship), Italy, and London (study abroad). Not to mention in my own imagination!

See where other Etsy Metal members live:

Laura Jane Bouton

2Roses
Inbar Bareket
Laney Clark
Abella Blue
Cynthia Del Guidice
Rebecca Bogan
Erin Austin
Deborah Lee Taylor
Theresa Kwong

Grateful

I love Thanksgiving. I love having a break from work, time to spend with family, and time to reflect on the many things I am thankful for.

I am so grateful for my loving family, my amazing husband, and beautiful, imaginative and spirited daughter....for our safe and comfortable home...for dear friends near and far....for my job, great co-workers, and benefits...for the opportunity to run my own business that allows my creativity to flourish...for my good health...for a bountiful Thanksgiving dinner yesterday.

I am grateful that we are able to afford a safe home and that we can afford nutritious food, as much as we need, when so many do not have safe housing and enough to eat. I am grateful that my daughter is able to go to a school with loving, supportive teachers.

I am grateful to live on an earth that sustains us in so many ways, and that provides us with so much beauty. Take time out from this busy, commercial season, to breathe in the air outdoors, really look at the trees, the sky the clouds, the beautiful leaves.

Below, some images of fall, taken on a trip to Missouri in October.

Etsy Metal Blog Carnival: Why do you make jewelry?

This month's Etsy Metal team blog carnival is on the topic "Why do you make jewelry?"

Pendant purchased in Athens.

When I was younger, I always like to accessorize with interesting jewelry. As an art major at a liberal arts college, I was schooled in the traditional art making 2D and 3D techniques (painting/drawing/sculpture, etc.). At that point in time, I was mostly interested in drawing and painting. However, I was able to spend a semester abroad and purchased jewelry as souvenirs. After college, I traveled again, and did the same thing. In Athens, I bought a large silver and brass sun pendant from an artisan at a market (see image at left). That’s when I started thinking, "it would be so great if I could do this."

First piece of metal jewelry, a linked silver chain

Fast forward several years, and I started taking classes and loved metalsmithing. My first piece was a simple linked, hammered chain,
but I was so proud and excited when I finished it. Along the way I’ve learned enameling, granulation and stone setting, but mostly I am drawn to the simplicity of forming, shaping and forging silver and copper.

Here’s what I like about it:

• It is small scale art that can be worn. It also doesn’t take much storage space, so people (including myself) can own a lot of it! When I was painting, it was a challenge to find space for everything I produced. Now I can fit a large number of pieces in just a shoebox!
• I find it what you can do with metal interesting and challenging—for example, taking a rigid piece of sheet and forming it into a soft-looking flower. There are infinite ways to work metal, add color, texture it, etc.
• Making art is meditative and calming and satisfies a deep creative need for me.

Read what other Etsy Metal team members have to say about this topic.

Cynthia Del Giudice

Laura Jane Bouton
silentgoddess

Beth Cyr

Peculiar Forest

Tosca Terán

Nodeform

Mary Anne Karren
My Precious Studio
Deborah Lee Taylor

2Roses

Andrea Ring

Gracebourne Design

Danielle Miller

Evelyn Markasky

Inbar Bareket

Jewellietta

Abella Blue

Etsy Metal Blog Carnival: Back to School

The topic for this month's Etsy Metal Blog Carnival is "Back to School" (you and/or your children).

My husband and I have a five year old daughter who started kindergarten last month. She is going to a Quaker school, and so far we are all loving it. Kate comes home telling me how much she loves school, and is excited about everything she's learning. This school is unique in a couple of ways. One is that they have mixed age classrooms, so they have 5-6 year old's together (kindergarten & first grade). There are two teachers, and they separate the grade levels for math and reading, but for most everything else, they are together. The kids stay in the room for two years. The other unique thing is that they integrate the Quaker values of simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, and stewardship into the curriculum. We figure if a Quaker education is good enough for presidents' daughters, it will be good for ours! The only downside to this school is the commute; it's about thirty minutes in traffic, but it's in the direction of my other job. We have to leave pretty early, which has been kind of a challenge for my husband and me, but not for our early-bird daughter.

When I'm not making jewelry, I have a part-time job in the dance department at Emory University. One of the great things about working at Emory is that I can take (audit) classes if I can fit them into my schedule. I've taken several dance classes since I started working there, all in modern dance. This semester they are offering Gyrokinesis movement training for the first time, so I've been trying that out. It's often referred to as yoga for dancers, and helps to mobilize the spine and strengthen the core. It feels so good if you sit most of the time, as I do. I do some yoga almost daily, but I really like Gyrokinesis because of the fluid movements, and the fact that you are moving pretty much all the time (no holding of poses). Here's a video on YouTube if you are curious what it looks like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH-NWfjFT-M

To see what other Etsy Metal team members have to say about this topic, follow the links below.

Evelyn Markasky http://markasky.blogspot.com
2Roses: http://www.jewelrytutorial.blogspot.com
silentgoddess: http://silentgoddess.blogspot.com
Kate Jones: http://www.katejonesdesign.blogspot.com
Abella Blue: http://www.abellablue.com/blog
LauraJaneBouton: http://laurajanebouton.blogspot.it/
Mary Anne Karren Studio: http://silverpearlmetalworks.wordpress. ... to-school/

Inspired by Alexander Calder

The Etsy Metal team that I'm a member of has monthly challenges to create a piece of jewelry around a theme. In July the theme was to make something inspired by Alexander Calder. I've always loved his mobiles, for which he is best known. He also painted, did stationary sculpture, and painted. So, here's what I created, inspiration photo first.

Untitled by Alexander Calder, 1930 (courtesy Calder Foundation)

Pendant inspired by the painting, sterling silver and copper (the piece with the copper swings freely)

International Mobile by Alexander Calder, 1948 (photo courtesy Calder Foundation)

Kinetic earrings inspired by Calder's mobiles. The pieces at the bottom rotate with the motion of the wearer.

Check out the Etsy Metal blog post about this challenge.

I've always enjoyed looking through art history books looking for jewelry inspiration, so this is not the first time I've created things inspired by modern art. Some of the others:

More earrings inspired by Calder

Earrings inspired by Joan Miró

Pendant inspired by Joan Miró

Earrings inspired by Henri Matisse

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.