DIY Doodle cane necklace - finished piece from live event

Sunday

Well, Sunday has come and is almost gone. I did have an amazing day. I barely started to feel a little tired in the past 15 minutes or so.

Woke up a little after 5 am. Ingested the required insane amount of coffee so I can function - this is no joke. I am one of those rare people who have LOW blood pressure as a norm. Even at 56, I still have low blood pressure. MY normal is anywhere from 100 to 110 systolic and 68 to 76 diastolic. When I wake up it's in the 90s so I do require a large quantity of caffeine and liquids before I can walk and move around without getting dizzy.

After which I was actually able to put together 3 of the pieces that were laying around waiting. Took photos. Only got one of them uploaded in the store for now but getting ready to upload the other two as well. I do think that I will make a video though because on these specific pieces it's hard to get a good photo. And I'm not talking about a photo that would do them justice and show all the nice 3d effects, but a good photo - exactly because of the 3d effects and layers the photos look like if they're blurry! Take a look

You know these from the "3d ripple blade effect" tutorial

This is the "Key to my heart" necklace. It's got a purple cat's eye opal bead and this heart key charm - take a look in the store to see it better!

See what I mean?

Anyway. Also did some varnishing on some focals and beads that needed it. Worked on the new piece with the "barbed" cane and did the last two beads on one of the assymmetrical necklaces. Sanded everything I worked on today (well except for two).

Had the live event - which was a lot of fun. And it looked like everybody was enjoying themselves. The piece I worked on came up cute as a button, but I will not finish it today. In my mind (crazy artist mind) it requires a combo of chain with very large links and smaller (medium) links of various shapes and patterns, to do justice and keep the whole spirit of the piece as it came out. For me always pieces are like they are waiting to come into existence, and I'm there just like some kind of tool who helps them get born. It is true that about half the time I do plan my pieces, about 90% of the time I start with something in mind. But the truth is that about 90% of the time what I had in my mind/planned is not what comes out.

So, here's a glimpse of my work today

From top left going right - 2 beads that just got out of the oven, part of an asymmetrical necklace; beads that got varnished, part of a summerish necklace. New ear rings. A mokume gane abstract pendant; part of another asymmetrical necklace

Beads from today's live even (doodle canes - a symphony in black and white) and beads of the new piece I am making with the "barbed cane" of yesterday's tutorial/ I just finished sanding all of them

A closeup of that long bead. I thought you might want to see it better

Top: set of bracelet, pendant and ear rings that got first coat of varnish, need to apply second coat. Bottom: focal of the new piece. I think I'll call it "undersea lair" haha

As you can see, busy busy. I think I will call it a day though, because of being on the chair at the work space too long, I started to get really bad painful cramps in my back muscles (that area where they took out the largest muscle and the remaining ones can't compensate for the lack of that one). So I learned in the past years to not push it, because if I do, I will need at least 2 days to recover.

There's always a tomorrow, isn't it?

I will probably do the little "top hat caterpillar" tomorrow. I don't have a lot of time, I have the appointment with the orthopedist at noon, and that means that by the time I'll get back home I'll be pooped. Also, if they give me tomorrow the shots in the hands, probably won't be able to do anything anyway.

Tuesday and Wednesday at this point are inter-changeable. It will all depend how I feel Tuesday.

Yes, I will make another piece with the "barbed cane". I always do make a piece with a technique I just made a tutorial of, don't I? *smile*

I will also do the low-temp enamel test and review next week. Hopefully by the end of the week I'll get the ok to post it from the manufacturer. 

Don't forget, Saturday morning CDT (probably 9:30 or so) I will have a live event. I decided to do the "monthly wrap-up and plans for next month) live, so I can answer not just the questions I got in emails and messages, but also live questions. No worries, the Sunday Clay with me is still on.

You all have a great end of the week-end!!!

Hands feeling a tad better

So I started working on stuff.

Rough attempt at black Australian bolder opal. To be very honest, I had this planned in a long time. Just didn't have the money to get all I needed, and then, by the time I got all I needed, Ludmila Bakulina came up with her tutorial on that. I think I am overly ethical sometimes (I even manage to get irritated at myself) so I postponed my tutorial for black opal for a while

It is true that:

1. My way of doing it is not really like hers.
2. There are other tutorials out there on the same stuff
3. Goodness gracious there's so much stealing nonchalantly going on from people's ideas and tutorials it's flabbergasting. The other day (I wrote about it) in  one day only, I saw two fresh tutorials presenting the stuff I had just posted in mine, with no reference to my tutorials, presented like it was their idea. And this was on things I came up with, not common knowledge. I even commented on one of those "I am happy when I see people doing beautiful things from my tutorials". The woman just said "glad you like it". No shit. Then another one, just copied exactly (well tiny differences in the execution) one of the tutorials Gayle Thompson had just posted, same subject, same colors, same title (only in French). So  ... if I'm not even using her technique, I shouldn't even worry, right? Sigh

But.

I know there are people who would see it as some kind of challenge. I am not here to challenge anyone. Even if I am always honest and if I don't like something or I think it's done wrong I will come out and say it (well, of course, coated in honey so I wouldn't hurt people's feelings), I don't like people to feel like I'm against them or something.

After all, people make money because of the Adsense accounts, the ads on their videos. I don't. My Adsense account has been suspended about 8 years ago - long story short, Google shafted me (like they did hundreds of thousands of people, we're a whole group) when it was time to pay me and said I had invalid clicks, and because I wasn't able to tell them were all the 1,300+ internationally-spread members of the dating website I owned were accessing the website from (No, I am not kidding, that is what they wanted to know), they suspended my account. For ever.

So yea, back to our subject - I do understand they make money, and that is why they are so desperate in getting more subscribers and views. But still. I promise you, I'm a very nice person, until someone takes me for granted or thinks that they can bully me or take advantage of me or lie to me.

So... there, you know more about me. I was told I don't write enough about me and I'm too short on my blog posts. Ok, I can only promise that I'll try to write longer, and I'll try to write about myself and what's around me too.

So, now that my hands are starting to work again, let's see:

Got that black opal cooking. It's a rough attempt, just want to see how the colors would come out and if the way I thought of putting things together would work. I doubt it will look too good, but it will give me an idea.

I do need to work on tomorrow's tutorial. I have to get out of the house to grab some money - not a whole lot - from the store I have stuff in consignment/ And get some fresh fruit. I've been out for 3 days now. That should be around 10 am, so considering I wake up between 4 am and 5 am, and need at least an hour of coffee to get functional, I need to work on it a little bit tonight too.

Not sure yet what it will be though. Soutache? Not the carnelian for sure, I need daylight and sun coming from the East in the room. Maybe another type of stacked - well it's not a cane so I don't know how to call it really.


I finally got the gold and silver leaf in the mail. And I have 3 different techniques I have to try with those.  They are related to mokume gane and to Sutton slice.

I'll update this later after the first attempt to boulder opal is cooked and I sand and buff it.

And what about some polymer clay doodle technique? Huh? Huh?

Update 8:40 pm

Ok. Not bad. I know exactly what I need to do and I need one more ingredient and already ordered it. Honestly I'd love to have bronze (or at least copper) foil instead of gold but I think I can do that with alcohol inks (change the color of the foil that is)