Holiday Shows Galore!

I have been slacking on my blog lately, but I have been busy making new items for upcoming holiday shows and working a 3 gift-commissions.  It's been pretty spastic with all of these little projects bouncing around in my head. So here's a sampling of some new items that you'll see this Thursday at the ICMSA Holiday Boutique Show:

Cluster Earrings $75

 

Leaf Clasp Bracelet $85

 

Daphne Necklace $140

 

Pod Stripe Earrings with brown pearl accents $50

 

Two Leaf Pendant $48

 

Show details:

ICMSA Holiday Boutique Show

Thursday, November 29, 2012

10:00am-3:00pm

U-Club, East Lansing MI

Official event page here.
 

Donation to the ICMSA Raffle Pendant $55

(*I usually don't do donations because of low stock, but this

show takes a very small portion of sales)

 

And 2 more shows after this Thursday:

Art for the Soul home sale
Saturday, December 8, 2012
10:00am-5:00pm
at MargaBeth Cibulka's Home
6177 Zimmer Road
Williamston, MI
(I have to leave early from this show as I have my husband's work party that evening.)

Office Shopping at Speaker Law Firm
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
10:00am-4:00pm
230 N. Sycamore Street
Lansing MI 48933
Last year I held an impromptu show in our conference room as there were people at Speaker Law Firm's Holiday Party that were interested in my work. We've decided to keep it going. Plus Liisa likes that I bring my stock to the office once a year.

And lastly, I have started to use Constant Contact.  You can view the last email that went out HERE.  If you would like to subscribe, I'm trying to send out an email once every two weeks with updates.  There's a button at the bottom of the page that says "Join my mailing list" to start to receive email updates.
 

"Uprooted 1" nearing done!

I finally finished the third and last tendril for this sculpture just before Halloween, and then Halloween and Holiday shows kicked in.  So I have been distracted by pieces for customers and keeping my jewelry stock up some for Grove Gallery and the 3 more shows I have coming up through November/December. Check out www.jennyschu.com for the dates/times of these.

The above photo is just a little sample, the tendrils will actually be positioned a little different than this, but you get the idea.   

(I love my drill and dremel tool!)

I drilled my last hole for the third tendril and am on to the finish work of sanding.  The sanding is taking longer than I had anticipated because there's always another crevice or corner that I didn't get to.  I've decided not to stain or varnish the wood, so the next step will be to oil the root and add the finishing touches of beading and accent beads to bring the tendrils and the wood root together in harmony.

 

 

This activity is made possible in part by a
grant from the Arts Council of Greater Lansing

 

Happy Halloween! Jellyfish Costume 2012

 

As you may or may not know, I LOVE HALLOWEEN! And so I try my best to come up with a great new costume and make it.  This year's brainstorm came a little late (since I start thinking about Halloween around June).  But I did get a start into it and posted a blog about taking over the pool table with my jellyfish dress and hat project.

 

 

As I was hand stitching all of the parts of the hat together last week, I started to put Sparkle and blue LED lights into the base of the hat.  The whole time thinking "I hope this works, how am I going to stick this darn 3V battery in?"  Since the conductive thread needs full pressure on the positive and negative side of the battery, I decided to try a binder clip:

 

These little guys are great for everything.  That's why I carry them around in my purse.  And it worked!

I would strongly suggest this as a quick-fix for your eTextiles.  It held on all night, including the point where I took the hat off and it started to get passed around.  Here's an ok image of the hat lit up:

So, as usual, I got my costume together in time and fun was had by all.  Happy Halloween and good luck on the candy jackpot tonight!



"No Space is Sacred"

When my husband was out of town at a bachelor party it's sometimes like getting bonus art-time because I try to set weekends aside to spend time with Zack.

As you may have noticed, I have more than a handful of projects going on at any one time.  Sometimes I do wish I could focus on just one at a time, but my ADD doesn't stand for it.  And so, I really felt I needed to get a jump on my Halloween costume.  I needed a table to lay out my fabric and cut it.  The dining room table is slippery and this rayon/spandex is springy. 

What table is always clear in our house?  The pool table of course!  The fabric sticks to the felt and I can pin it into the felt top if need be.  It's the perfect table for this sort of thing. 

So when Zack got home, I explained to him how great it was that I could use the pool table to cutting and pinning fabric (which I had already cleared off before he had gotten home).

His reply: "No space is sacred in this house, is it?"

Welcome to living with an artist.  I try to keep beads, fabric and yarn out of the man-cave side of the basement.  But when the cat's away.....

I also had every intention to clean off the pool table, but it was such a great workspace that I used it to make the base of the hat for my costume too.

Dyes in the Fridge.

I've been doing a lot more dyeing of yarn and fabric lately and I wasn't enjoying it quite as much as when I was in college.  I realized that keeping the dyes in liquid form in the fridge took out the entire step of dealing with the powder form of procion dyes and kept everything bottled, liquid and easy to mix.

The last Ann Arbor Fiber Arts Guild meeting I was at, Nancy, our Fiber lab coordinator from the U of M School of Art and Design was there.  So I finally got to ask her the recipe.

So. Easy.

1 powder dye to 4 water. 
ie: 1 cup of dye to 4 cups of water.

You mix them up, put them in an old dish soap bottle and they're good in the fridge for 3 months.  So while I was dyeing some pieces yesterday, I made some of the basics.

Sherri, my professor from Art School says to double up on the black.  Nancy said it didn't matter too much.  I found doubling the black to make it more goopy and difficult to get all the way through the funnel into the dish soap bottle.  I think in general black dye is a lot better than it once was.  I remember having trouble getting a good black, but I have not had that issue in the past year of getting back to dyeing.

Purple Brown and Gold Leaf Clasp Bracelet

 

I've been moving my red and purple pieces in Grove Gallery lately and this one has been getting some attention from customers wandering in.

 

I love purple and brown together, and I just stared using this fantastic new 15/0 gold seed bead which has a bit of an antique look to it.  If you want to see this piece in person, swing by Grove Gallery soon! 

Leaf Clasp Bracelet $85.00

5-Leaf Grandchildren's Colors Pendant

 (Pendant finished with silver chain customer provided)

I had the pleasure of working on a really meaningful birthday gift this past week.  My customer asked if I could do a pendant with more leaves (or would it be too bulky?).  I told her I could make them smaller so that it would not be too big.

The idea behind this pendant was to have each of the 5 grandchildren pick their favorite color for a leaf, then go from there.  I received this nice little write-up which I thought was so adorable, and helped me in the process.

(names blurred for privacy)

 

Now this wasn't exactly a mix of colors that you would think to put together, but luckily seed beads comes in all shapes, sizes, finishes and colors.  So I pulled what I thought would be the best color mix of these suggestions.  I did a couple of different arrangements, this one seemed to make the most sense at the end of it all, so I sent this image to my customer:

 

(faceted dk red leaf, fancy finish dk red leaf, silver lined aqua leaf,

rainbow finish blue leaf & matte finish copper leaf)

She's is so wonderful to work with because she just loves everything, first try.  Which makes working with her a dream.  The package went out on Tuesday afternoon and I have to say, I was so excited to send it out!