hiatus

So it appears, since having a child I can either write about stuff or make stuff, and sometimes neither of those two things. I love my son to bits and as a result he takes a hell of a lot of my energy and focus. Every now and again I got ARRRRGGGH! or more likely *whimper* and I got outside and make more stuff before I go completely nuts. Suffice to say, I am not selfless enough to be satisfied my motherhood alone. But something has to give and right now, it's this blog, housekeeping, cooking, exercising and kind of everything else. If you hadn't worked it out yet, this blog will be on a hiatus for awhile, until I get the mental space back to keep adding to it (when he's 18 right?). I still make new pieces, you can see them at my Flickr photostream. If you're interested, check em out!

Imaginative Bloom

The lovely people over at Imaginative bloom featured my zen brooch in their latest Flickr group picks! Very kind. Check it out here.

Principles of jewellery design: Scale

This was gonna be a fav resin designer post, but when I looked again at images of the Monies work I realised that scale is a huge part of what appeals to me about their oevre. If these pieces were ten times smaller, or larger, would they have the same impact?
This photo in particular just had me in awe when I saw it. I LOVE the massivity of their pieces, would love to be working on this kind of scale myself if I had the confidence . That someone was, successfully was incredibly inspiring to me. For some reason to me, big has a kind of expansive exuberance to it. It shoves all else out the way to make way for it. I'm sure you'd slowly dislocate your shoulder wearing one of those bangles above for a long time but wow!

Beautiful resin pieces that are not mine #3

Not sure if this is made from resin or not. I suspect not, a stronger plastic polymer or something. Anyway, nothing intelligent to say except sigh... Love the scale, love the shape, love the complex pierced lightness of it...

post baby production and Craft Fairs

I think I started to reach the limitations of being a mum, and not doing anything else in the second month. Bubba was starting to hit his stride, I was starting to feel more on top of the whole caring for a baby thing. This was pre-smiles, Bubba took until 11 or 12 weeks to start smiling regularly, so I was in a house, with a baby who cried or stared at me (or pooped, screamed or slept). Whilst still feeling the love, the lack of sleep and being at the beck and call of a fairly grumpy or expressionless little person was starting to get me down. I'd hold this little person and feel a great rush, but still, needed something else. This was the point I realised it was time to start doing something else as well, or risk good ol depression coming back to visit
All good in theory. I scurried out and started pouring resin again when Bubba was asleep, suddenly able to move at subsonic speeds to make sure he hadn't woken up and gotten upset in my absence. But, like many things I do, it kinda got out of hand...
So, come and see my excess of resiny goodness if you're a local at the Territory Craft Christmas Craft Fair from 10.00-3.00 on the 21st of November. I seriously went overboard! I made hundreds of pieces with my super ninja resin powers and you can see a lot of it here!

Resin Jewellery company of the Week

If you're Australian (like I am) when you think of resin jewellery, you think of Dinosaur Designs. Not sure if they were first in Oz to start using resins to make frosty smooth sanded jewellery, but in recent collective memory it is the Dinos that introduced Australia to the jewellery and homewares potential of the medium.
I remember reading a critical reading of one of their pieces, marvelling at how the soft moulded original form, presumably made in clay or plasticine, had been captured and transformed into something rigid through the moulding process, that there was an interesting tension in the pieces, where the former squishiness is retained in the shape, yet when you touch it, you realise it's something else altogether
Loved by fash mags and art institutions alike, Dinosaurs is as far away from glitter and 100s and 1000s encased resin pendants as you can get. They give amazing surface. All have that amazing perfect smooth surface that still retains a few of the subtle lumps and bumps that indicate it was handformed and lately they have played a lot with almost painting with resin. The Sun and Moon and Fungi collections are good examples of this.
It was the work of the Dinos that had me inspired to take a stab at resin in the first place. I was very keen on it in the 90s and desperate to find out how to use resin, even contemplating going back to Uni to study jewellery to find out how. Lucky the internets is a great resource for info about it now and I missed adding to my already mammoth HECS bill!
They have a new collection out right now, called Bones. Check it out!

Resin Jewellery company of the Week

I stumbled upon Shanka designs site when trawling for images for other people's resin bangles. I looooove the massivity of the jade and the grey piece. I'd already been fooling around with making what I call 'sander jewellery' (see below) using the sander to create irregular flat planes but found the use of form in these pieces very enticing.

There seems to be a kind of revival of very geometric forms, in the vein of neo-80s fashion that still reigns (sigh...). Gotta admit though, this cool, angular Tron style is much more appealing than skinny jeans and ra-ra skirts....
Follow them on Facebook!

Beautiful resin pieces that are not mine #2

This is a piece from Dinosaur Designs Bowerbird series I think. It's just freaking amazing. I looooved this series, it took me a little while to figure out exactly what was going on with this necklace but (I think) it has lots of specimens of rocks etc all encased in blobs of water clear resin threaded onto this one amazing necklace. There's rings with the same effect and they did a similar thing later with a necklace that had butterfly wings encased in resin beads. Stunning visually but I was tickled by such an amazing using of embedments in a piece. You normally think of embedding as being those lurvely spider gear stick knobs or other such tack-o-rama. To use what is essentially a cool technique, to such amazing effect without the tack is kinda cool in my book

The other (and perhaps best) creation

Killian Alan Prendergast. Pretty cute I reckon, considerably more painful to make than other pieces and still a work in progress....

Resin Jewellery company of the Week

Been meaning to do this for awhile to. There's some super amazing stuff out there happening in resin jewellery making land, so intending to feature a few here in these humble pages. Solrojo which means red sun i think? Are a company from Brazil which make some quite interesting structural type resin jewellery. They tend to do tonal pieces rather than the riotous combination of colours Sobral does, which I like as it can make the forms a lot more prominent. And what forms. Love the brooches with the flower shapes. Not much of a girly girl myself but for some reason these really appeal. Probably because they are a combination of quite clean organic shapes in that sandblasted beach glass type resin that they use. Loooooove those jelly bean like earrings, not sure why, have used kidney shapes myself for a long time in my work, but as soon as I saw them I was like *love*! And I'm not very into earrings. They do another lovely piece which I couldn't find a pic of which uses spherical resin beads tied into an organza style ribbon, very simple but somehow reminded me of seaweed or something. Anyway, check em out!

Beautiful resin pieces that are not mine #1

I collect a heap of images all the time, jewelery related and otherwise to get the ol noggin moving and ideas coming and decided it might be time to share some from the archives. Love love love this. love the geometric pattern, love the sculptural quality, love the predominance of magenta, love the stripes revealed by the carving/mould/spines/whatever. Not sure who did it, or if it is indeed from resin, but it is awesome!

How in Christ's name do they do that?

So people ask me on a semi-regular basis how to make things. They've seen something on the internet and want to have a go themselves and haven't been able to work out themselves and so try so other silly sod for the answers and sometimes, that's me. I can help with some stuff, I have enough knowledge of the basics to do most simple things in resin, but bubbles, bubbles escape me....
I saw these beautiful Sobral pieces early on in my resin adventures and loooooved them. Hey, what's not to like, they're playful and pretty and colourful and awesome. I also just loved the bubble pattern, I have a bit of a thing for dots and nubbles and other ball like adornments on some days. I was able to work out how he made his lurvely stripey pieces (see top) by either layering colours in your mould, or casting a chunk of layered resin in a big tray and then cutting out your bangle (to get vertical stripes rather than horizontal you'd need to put your chunk, or your mould on the side), but no bubbles. Couldn't find tutes on how to.... nothing
Then I came across this picture on the Sobral website where it looks like a squeezy bottle of liquid resin is being squirted into... clear resin? Water? Boiling water? Not sure kids and herein lies the problem. I actually had a stab at this with resin and water and no luck for me. I got a mess and that's about it.
Not sure if the technique perhaps lies in the fact that many resin companies use acrylic and have to heat set it somehow to cure it or what, pretty sure they aint using stinky polyester resin.
But, dear non-readers and random people who stumble here, if you reckon you've got it sussed, let me know in the comments below!