certifiable

for the past two weekends, I've been driving up to Nashua to take a level 2 certification class in Art Clay Silver at Carol Babineau's studio. For those of you unfamiliar with ACS's cert programs, they're fairly intense- several projects to be completed on site in a limited amount of time.
The cert programs have just been re-written and with a couple of the old projects eliminated (the brass wire and silver pendant and the gauze over clay bead-two of my favorites)  and several of the remaining  projects changed .
So I've been busily crafting, refining and firing away. Today marked the completion of my in-class projects and now I can begin obsessing about what to make for my 3 "submit to be juried" pieces - a ring, a brooch and a pendant , all meeting specific fabrication guidelines.

I do know that the pendant will definitely NOT have a stone as large as the one I created for my in-class project. It was a great learning experience on a couple of levels- setting a stone with corner, and setting a REALLY big stone.  Another challenge has been trying to get the perfect photograph of all the pieces together. aside for a bit of focus issue in the right corner of the really big pendant, this is the best I've been able to do.
of course part of the problem is using a flash with all that shiney silver.
the Dragonfly Inro has different dragonfly scenes on each side - one with bent grasses, the other with cattails, and int underside of the inro cover is adorned with 2 baby dragonflies. Grasses and reeds embellish the sides of the box, too.

so now I'm cruising my favorite supplier sites, trying to find just the perfect stone for the pendant I've designed - either moonstone or a light blue stone would probably be perfect in a 10mm round. The pin gave me the most fits, but I've finally come up with a design I like - can you pick it out of this group of some of the sketches I did for early designs?

Going to Pot

Just before the holidays, I took a traditional hand-throwing clay class with Paula Barry (www.wallacehillpottery.com ) at the Picker Building in Nashua, just down the hall from Car0l Babineau's studio. It's hard to believe, given art education today - or even 20 years ago, that I don't ever remember working with clay in school.

About a year ago, I'd purchased 25 lb of clay, with the intention of making beads that could be used with metal clay...and now I have a pretty solid 25  lb unfired brick sitting in a plastic storage container.

I had a couple of ideas for Christmas gifts that I wanted to try my hand at with an instructor present- who could hopefully tell me how to rehydrate my 25 brick. My hands were giving me trouble the night of the class, and I found the clay more difficult to deal with than either polymer or metal clay initially, so Paula swapped out my "older" clay for some that was nice & fresh. It was somewhat easier to work with than the original batch, so I started playing.

I'd wanted to make a bunny for my cousin, Brittany, whose name I'd drawn for the family exchange - she's got a big, bad (chews on electric cords) house bunny. after several attempts at a "whole " bunny, I gave up and settled for a head.

then I moved on to beads. I decided to keep it simple - a couple of flattish beads with holes for stringing and a couple of little faces that I've been thinking of using as computer "guardians" - to keep the bugs and viruses away

and finally, with time running out, I threw together a couple of pinch pots.

Then it was time to choose the glazes we wanted added and out the door. I'd hoped that the pieces would be ready for the holidays, but alas, they weren't fired until last week.  The glazes came out a bit darker than I'd anticipated and where I'd hoped for blues, I seem to have greens.

So the bunny will be traveling south with me in February. Overall I'm happy with the results and it was an interesting experiment that I'll probably continue . I'd like to make more beads and experiment with other clays and glazes.