Painting with FIRE!

This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending an enameling workshop taught by Barbara Lewis of Painting with Fire. Her work is stunning and what a great teacher too! She supplied us with everything we needed to make lots of pretty enameled beads. We were a rowdy group of ladies working with some serious heat!

I learned so many techniques with Barbara and quickly lost my fear of having a torch sitting right in front of me.

I have taken one other class in metal jewelry before this and it was also with a fantastic teacher, Stephanie Lee of Homesteaders Metalsmithing. I think by using what I have learned in both classes I will be able to come up with some cute gifts for friends and family, you know its never too early to prepare for the holidays;)!

Barbara Lewis has a great blog with fabulous pictures and tutorials. She also sells all of the materials necessary to get you started on enameling. Also her book will be out soon, you can preview some of it on her site or at amazon.

A sample of Barbara's work from her book:

My workstation:

Here's a picture of the studio:

My beads:

I hope you all have a safe and wonderful 4th of July!!!!!

Rosanna

PMC and a New Work Space

I hope everyone has had a great January so far!

This past week I had my first experience working on Silver PMC, Precious Metal Clay.

To me it's a combination of pottery clay, paper clay and polymer clay because it is sticky and needs to air dry, it can be formed and stamped and baked but it takes a much higher temperature to cure, were talkin' kiln here.

I made myself a dog tag and it was a lot of fun! I really liked that you can play with the color of the silver with chemicals.

Also-This week I decided that I would take over one more place in the house to work privately.

The space I work in now is great but I share it with everyone including our three dogs. If you search my blog you will see exactly what my work space looks like. Its very IKEA.

The new space is quite small but it has a large window for natural light and a door that I can close and work uninterrupted(or so I tell myself). Since the room will be only inhabited by myself I am going to put some of my Fractured Fairytale touches into it.

Some dingy color on the walls, artwork, a handful of crystals, a stack of old books, some tarnished silver and colors and textures that inspire me.

As a challenge to myself( and my budget) the majority of this will be put together from discount stores, flea market and thrift store finds.

Here are some of the finds from my first trip

I will keep you posted as the room progresses and of my next projects.

Have a great weekend!!

Rosanna