An Expert Guide by Elaine Luther

Do you know there’s a blog of missed photographs? Where photographers write about great shots that they missed. I recently committed to taking more pictures, carrying a camera with me more often and just taking the time to stop and take a picture when I see something.

My “missed photograph,” I saw it again, 10 years later! Thrilled, I pulled over, yanked my cell phone out of my pocket — oh, no camera, that was right after my cell phone was stolen and I was using an inexpensive replacement.

Another shot that I’d like to get is a train load of tractors, on a bridge, over the freeway, with the Chicago skyline behind it. I’ve seen it a few times, but the freeway isn’t a great place to take pictures. So when I saw this parked train, I pulled right over and took a picture with my cell phone. (Next step: get a small camera I can carry around all the time.)

What’s this have to do with making jewelry? Just nurturing creativity wherever I can.

My other next step is to actually buy prints and glue them down into a book of some kind. And then… just see what happens.

How about you? Do you use photography at all? How? What’s your missed photograph? Do you have another medium besides jewelry or photography that you use to cross-pollinate with your jewelry?

This little cell phone photo is (c) Elaine Luther 2009 All Rights Reserved.

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Angela, aka the Crafty Goat, has helpful tips on “Productivity for Polymer Clay Mommies,” that apply to other media and busy folks as well.

Read it here: http://blog.craftygoat.com

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The two have teamed up for a contest/challenge. Send off for the kit, sold by Metal Clay Findings, at a reduced price, then use some of those in your piece. One entry per person, winners featured in the magazine.

Details here: http://www.metalclayfindings.com

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Do you know Print Gocco? It’s this super cool Japanese thermal silkscreen machine that I talked about in this previous post: The Business Benefits of Silkscreen.

Sadly, the Riso Gocco Corporation has discontinued the Print Gocco in the US, and supplies will dry up soon. For Gocco fans everywhere, the choices were: stockpile those screens and flashbulbs, or give up. I searched for an alternate source of flashbulbs, but couldn’t find one.

I pondered buying a Thermofax machine, or it’s modern equivalent. A used Thermofax runs about $400.00, last time I checked. It makes screens, like the Gocco does, but does not use flash bulbs, it has re-usable bulbs that last a while but are expensive.

Now there’s a new choice out there: the Yudu. Now, the Yudu is primarily a T-shirt printer, while the Gocco is primarily a card printer that can also be used to print fabric.

The screen making process is not as simple as with the Gocco, but then nothing is. Given the options out there though — including (gasp) learning to silkscreen the old fashioned way — it seems easy, clean and affordable. Yudu uses re-usable lightbulbs and costs $299.00 for the machine.

The screens cost more than the Gocco screens, but they’re larger and it says, reusable.

Check out their site for loads of video and text tutorials, you can really get a sense of the machine and how it works. http://www.whatdoyudu.com

Thanks to CRAFT, which mentioned Yudu in a post.

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Have you been to SOFA Chicago? It’s pretty cool, it’s exciting to see so much great work in one place, including plenty of jewelry — and be sure to stop by the SNAG booth while you’re there.

Details here: http://www.sofaexpo.com

Lecture series info. here: http://www.sofaexpo.com/chicago

If you go, please come back here and tell us all about it in the comments! Thanks!

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For a link to instructions on polymer clay candy corn earrings, click here:

http://www.cutoutandkeep.net (via CRAFT)

And here’s a link to a how-to on a nice looking adjustable length knotted cord choker by Emma Ralph: http://www.ejrbeads.co.uk

For links to El Dia de los Muertos exhibits in Chicago and Indianapolis, scroll down to the recent posts below.

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Lorena Angulo is a Mexican metal clay artist living in Texas whose work is influenced by her Mexican heritage. Above is one of her calaveras, or skulls in the style of El Dia de los Muertos. Below, here’s a view of her flickr set of a number of calaveras, including shots of them before they were fired, which is so interesting to see, you really get a sense of how they were made.

Having never seen calaveras done in BronzClay before, or any metal clay for that matter, I was drawn into Lorena’s flickr page, where I felt like I got to know her by touring her studio:

and her work bench:

She wrote on her blog about Dia de Muertos,

“Mexico is a country with a lot of colors, with wonderful traditions and a culture that it is transmitted from generation to generation. I have been out of my country for more than 10 years and my two kids were born in the USA. I have always talked to them about my country and my traditions and we celebrate a lot of them here.

The Day of the dead, Dia de Muertos, is a celebration that brings me to my childhood in Chiapas, Mexico. I remember I was never scare of it because we learned to respect dead and celebrate the continuation of life every day. We celebrate and remember the family members that pass away by honoring them with happiness about the wonderful life they had.

This wonderful tradition is very old in my country, when the Spanish came to my country they tried to convert the native indigenous to a new religion and new ways of living but they could not make them stop celebrating Dia de Muertos.

Originally Dia de Muertos was celebrated for a whole month in the end of July and beginning of August, when the Catholic priests saw they could not stop them from celebrating this day they decided to moved it to only two days to coincide with their own “All saints and all souls day” in November 1st and 2nd.

All this incredible memories have inspired me to make “Calaveras” in my work. I really enjoy designing them and then making them came alive in silver, bronze or copper.
I love to show my kids my Calaveras and they like them a lot.
They are my biggest fans and this creates an opportunity to talk to them about the day of the dead. Keeping my tradition alive from generation to generation!”

I asked Lorena how she got started in jewelry making. She said:

When I moved to live to San Antonio in 2002 I decided to open my own business promoting hand crafted art from Mexico and various countries.

Having that close of a connection with so much beautiful work made me start looking for a school where I could learn how to make my own designs in metal. I started taking classes at the South West School of Art and Craft in San Antonio in the metals department.

Claire Holliday, a wonderful jeweler and teacher, was in charge of the department and she was my first teacher in metals and she introduced me to metal clay almost a year later and since that day I have not stop making my work mostly with metal clays. I have been making jewelry with metal clay since 2006.

For her fabulous use of flickr as a promotional tool, Lorena’s flickr page is our site of the week winner and can display the award badge on her sites and blog page!

And congrats to her for having work selected for this year’s PMC Annual.

Read Lorena’s blog here: http://blog.lorenaangulo.com

Visit her etsy shop here: PuebloFolkArt

Here’s her website: http://www.lorenaangulo.com where you can see what a great job she’s done integrating social media into her site.

All photographs and work depicted are (c) 2009 Lorena Angulo All Rights Reserved

Reprinted here with permission.

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It’s that time of year, fall is here and time to think about the coming of El Dia de los Muertos. I’m already in that mode, since I just finished a shrine for my grandfather, which will be in the show at the Indianapolis Art Center.

This book, Day of the Dead Crafts, includes a number of jewelry projects, many of them polymer clay, so it’s relevant here!

The book starts with a history of El Dia de los Muertos, which is great, since you want to understand the meaning behind the day before making anything.

The chapters include: Offrendas (alters), Calaveras (skeletons with personality), Masks and Skulls, Jewelry and Home Decor.

Some of the jewelry projects are a little folksy, which is entirely appropriate, since it’s a folk-type holiday, but it’s hard to see a jewelry person doing them without sophisticat-ing things up a bit.

For me, I find the rest of the book more helpful and inspiring, and I’m more likely to do the other projects. If I did do the jewelry projects, I would take them as inspiration and do them a bit differently.

I do think the step by step instructions for the polymer clay projects are clear and helpful. They include forming a skull and forming a skeleton.

Overall I give the book a thumbs up. If you’re interested in doing something with Day of the Dead, but aren’t sure where to start, this book is perfect for you.

The chapters on printmaking and papel picado are also very good. The projects on papel picado show you how to cut them using an Exacto knife. If you’re looking for projects that can be done with scissors, the book, Mexican Papercutting: Simple Techniques for Creating Colorful Cut-Paper Projects has that covered.

If you’re in the Chicago area, be sure to visit the National Museum of Mexican Art’s Largest Annual Day of the Dead Exhibition in the Nation, details here: http://www.nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org.

Be sure to come back tomorrow to see Day of the Dead in metal clay!

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Out of all the pieces you’ve created, which one means the most to you and why?

I ruminated over this question for a while, and the piece that kept coming up was the medal, “The Society of Mothers…” which you may have seen in Studio PMC a few years ago.

That medal is about the death of my daughter, Sophia. The ribbon on the medal is torn, as in the Jewish tradition of the mourning pin.

The piece was probably my first narrative piece, and the first to evoke a strong emotional response in people. Some people really like, others, I don’t know, they’re too polite to say, but I imagine some people really don’t like it. I wrote more about in in the Studio PMC article at the time, about my inspiration, I’m going to go find that copy so I can quote myself. (See back issues of Studio PMC here: http://www.pmcguild.com/print/printindex.html if you’re a member.)

In addition to jewelry, my El Dia de los Muertos shrines and alters have been quite meaningful to me personally. So far I’ve made three large scale ones and one “pocket shrine,” in metal clay (PMC).

More more blog carnival posts on the topic, here are the links for the other posts, including two from new members:

Lora Hart:
http://lorahartjewels.blogspot.com

Lorrene Davis:
http://lorrene-davis-designs.blogspot.com

Marco Fleseri:
http://www.fleseri.com/blog

Tamra Gentry:
http://jewelrydesignchronicles.wordpress.com

Tonya Davidson:
http://www.tonyadavidson.com

Andes Cruz:
http://andescruz.wordpress.com

Vickie Hallmark:
http://fiberartglass.blogspot.com

Angela Crispin:
http://angelacrispin.canalblog.com

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