Sunday, November 21, 2010

I am SO bad at updating these things sometimes. In my defence, work has been crazy (I LOVE it, but it's crazy). I've also started volunteering for the American Red Cross as a Military Caseworker. Basically when soldiers' families need to get emergency messages to troops the red Cross handles that. I do overnight shifts. It's pretty cool.

The Jewelry buisness has been crazy! The women I work with love my stuff, and have been buying jewelry at a rate that I can barely keep up with. The extra income has allowed me to get some new tools and I'm looking into a few new techniques, mainly metalsmithing and embossing. Jewelrymaking is like art, there are an infinite number of techniques and tools, and you have to narrow your focus down to just a few if you really want to get good at them, or have any sort of artistic style. I suppose you COULD be an artists who does sculpture, oil paints, japanese watercolors, lithography, Conte Crayons, and photography...but if someone looked at the body of your work in all those mediums, could they see a unified "style?" (plus, unless you're 105, do you have time to master the subtlties of each one?).

I have been dabbling in a few things here and there. I see a piece made with a certain technique, I try a few and move on. I really want to focus on a few things because there is SO much to learn about even a single medium/technique.

I love, love, love my polymer clay. But I am really leaning towards mixed media. I can't make a solid-clay peice anymore and not feel like it's missing something. There are just some things clay cannot do, plus I just love the asthetic of the mixed media pices I've done so far (mainly clay/steampunk pices, with bits of metal and beads in the clay). I want to expand on that, so I'm asking for gift certificates for christmas!! lol

In the same vein as this, I want to re-open my etsy store and look at getting a website up again. However, I don't think my store name of Firesprite Beads really fits my current pieces. That was the name I came up with when I was doing glass beads, but it doesn't really fit anymore. So, I am racking my brains trying to come up with a new buisness name. I know a lot of artists just use their own name, but that's just not me. I want something that invokes an idea, or a feeling, or an image related to my work..my name just doesn't do that lol. So, once I can actually hammer THAT out I plan on starting a purely jewelry-blog that I can link to my website and stuff. (Yea, Yea I know...7 months and I can't even post in ONE blog, how can I do two?" Well, in the art blog I won't feel like I'm cheating to just post a picture or two as my blog post without saying anything further. Plus, if people do start finding my blog through my buisness site or messageboards, I do';t think they care if my cat threw up on the rug last night, or that Sara got an A in math this marking period :-).

1 Comments:

At 7:38 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Can't wait to see more of your work, Mel! :)

I know what you mean about the marketing aspect of things- website, Etsy store, name, etc. I do highly suggest using Wordpress- you can have your website and blog in the same place, and it is SO easy to use.

Would love to see more pics (esp. of steampunk? It sounds so cool!).

Jen
PS- Love hearing about your life btw...it never seems dull... and congrats on Sara getting an A!!

 

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home