Writing on the Window

Breathing on the Glass

Posts tagged jewelry

3 notes

Why do the super amazing things have to be so expensive?! I would love this necklace but $54 is a little much for me. Not that she doesn’t deserve it! This is a fantastic design! So I’m throwing it out there just in case someone tin TumblrLand would like to give this artist some much deserved money for her Red Dot Number 3 necklace. (Click through to get to her shop.)

Why do the super amazing things have to be so expensive?! I would love this necklace but $54 is a little much for me. Not that she doesn’t deserve it! This is a fantastic design! So I’m throwing it out there just in case someone tin TumblrLand would like to give this artist some much deserved money for her Red Dot Number 3 necklace. (Click through to get to her shop.)

Filed under crochet crafts etsy jewelry yarn necklace red dot three 3 modern minimalist

7 notes

If anyone is looking for Christmas gifts for me, here’s a hint! Seriously though, someone needs these. Mostly me. But you guys would look great in them too. (Click through. Her whole shop is buy two get one free, as long as the free item is under $20 and with the great prices she already has, everyone seriously needs to check it out. And she doesn’t just have jewelry either!)

If anyone is looking for Christmas gifts for me, here’s a hint! Seriously though, someone needs these. Mostly me. But you guys would look great in them too. (Click through. Her whole shop is buy two get one free, as long as the free item is under $20 and with the great prices she already has, everyone seriously needs to check it out. And she doesn’t just have jewelry either!)

Filed under etsy jewelry http://www.etsy.com/shop/Azilenire fashion vintage

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How cool is this ring, or should I say, set of rings?! Only $12 too! Click through to buy it. (They have a ton of cool jewelry actually. Check em out!)

How cool is this ring, or should I say, set of rings?! Only $12 too! Click through to buy it. (They have a ton of cool jewelry actually. Check em out!)

Filed under etsy rings jewelry

17 notes

I decided to search for ‘button crafts’ and then ‘button jewelry’ because I have a ridiculous amount of buttons, and this is what you give me, google? You give me belly button jewelry? Shame on you. I thought we were friends.

I decided to search for ‘button crafts’ and then ‘button jewelry’ because I have a ridiculous amount of buttons, and this is what you give me, google? You give me belly button jewelry?

Shame on you.

I thought we were friends.

Filed under buttons crafts jewelry google belly button

11 notes

I found this book at Barnes and Noble the other day when we went to the mall (after Toys R Us!) and I wanted to get it but I knew that Borders was going out of business so when I came home I searched on their site to see if they had it. Of course, they didn’t. We ended up going to Borders yesterday anyway and while I was looking at the metalworking books, I found it there! The discount on it (10%) was crap but I got it anyway. On a side note, Eric talked to two workers there any they were both really bitchy. I understand you’re losing your job but you don’t have to be nasty to us just because we couldn’t find the “Just For Fun” section where your site said you had Where’s Waldo books. Anyway, I highly recommend it! The author kind of pushes the “Faux Bone” he developed a little too much but to be fair, it does sound like an amazing material. According to the book and his site, “Faux Bone™ is a new, user friendly, inexpensive and extremely versatile material. Faux Bone™ can be cut, and carved, sawn and sanded. It can be filed, hammered, polished, drilled, stamped, riveted, inlayed, dyed, and painted. It can look like ivory, have the patina of aged ceramic, be polished to a pure white, or, of course, look like bone. You can heat and bend it with nothing more than a small embossing heat-gun. It is so strong you can rivet on it, die form right into it, or hammer metal around it.” He sells signed copies of the book here, along with the faux bone and a bunch of other materials and tools. Amazon (click through the image) sells it much cheaper if you don’t care if it’s signed. I really do what to give this weird material a shot but I’m going to get past how much I hate the hard sell of it. It sounds cool as hell though.  Is there anyone out there who’s tried working with Faux Bone?

I found this book at Barnes and Noble the other day when we went to the mall (after Toys R Us!) and I wanted to get it but I knew that Borders was going out of business so when I came home I searched on their site to see if they had it. Of course, they didn’t. We ended up going to Borders yesterday anyway and while I was looking at the metalworking books, I found it there! The discount on it (10%) was crap but I got it anyway. On a side note, Eric talked to two workers there any they were both really bitchy. I understand you’re losing your job but you don’t have to be nasty to us just because we couldn’t find the “Just For Fun” section where your site said you had Where’s Waldo books.

Anyway, I highly recommend it! The author kind of pushes the “Faux Bone” he developed a little too much but to be fair, it does sound like an amazing material. According to the book and his site, “Faux Bone™ is a new, user friendly, inexpensive and extremely versatile material. Faux Bone™ can be cut, and carved, sawn and sanded. It can be filed, hammered, polished, drilled, stamped, riveted, inlayed, dyed, and painted. It can look like ivory, have the patina of aged ceramic, be polished to a pure white, or, of course, look like bone. You can heat and bend it with nothing more than a small embossing heat-gun. It is so strong you can rivet on it, die form right into it, or hammer metal around it.”

He sells signed copies of the book here, along with the faux bone and a bunch of other materials and tools. Amazon (click through the image) sells it much cheaper if you don’t care if it’s signed. I really do what to give this weird material a shot but I’m going to get past how much I hate the hard sell of it. It sounds cool as hell though. 

Is there anyone out there who’s tried working with Faux Bone?

Filed under DIY crafts jewelry Amulets and Talismans book

6 notes

This new photo layout option is badass. I got the package I’ve been bitching about today but I was in a bad (read depressed as hell) kind of mood today so I haven’t been able to enjoy it until now.

This jewelers saw is awesome. It’s made so well and I only paid $12.50 for it on Amazon. I would have easily spend triple and still been happy with it. I’m so excited that I can do some of the cool DIYs I see online all the time now. I’ve never had a saw before and Eric was into metal working on a large scale so he never had a need for a hacksaw either. I got a gross of extra blades because I know I’m going to break a bunch of them. Look at how skinny that blade is! And that’s not even the smallest one.

I got diamond tip bits for my dremel too and my mind is having a great time thinking of all the cool things I’ll be able to grind holes into now.

The end.

Filed under random crap saw jewelry metal metal working hacksaw tools dremel DIY

18 notes

Evie has been such a nut

These past two days and it’s exhausting. She’s been going out of her way to accomplish everything I tell her not to do and she’s been telling me ‘no’ on a constant basis. She’s testing her boundaries like it’s going out of style and I want to pull my own hair out. On top of that, she keeps waking up earlier and earlier, adding to my stress because with every half hour of sleep I lose, the bitchier I become. (Apparently spell check recognizes ‘bitchier’ as a word.)

The good news is, she’s only had one accident with the potty and it wasn’t even her fault. My mother-in-law took Evie to her nephew’s house so she could play with his daughters while Eric and I went to the Allentown Art Festival and she had her accident there. Evie’s not about using the big potty yet so she brought the little one with them but she never took it out of the trunk! She thought Evie would tell her when she had to go and she’d be able to go out and get it but Evie doesn’t have that much time in between saying she has to go and going. Fail on her part. I think she should have known better. She’d only been using the potty for 3 days (I think). She should have given the little one a little more slack there. Evie gets so embarrassed when she has an accident. It’s heartbreaking, really. Even before she was using the potty, like if she was wearing a bathing suit outside even as far back as last summer, she’d get so upset she’d almost cry. 

It was all good though. The kids she was playing with happened to be in the basement and Marylou got her all cleaned up before anyone noticed.

Oh! That same day, when we went to pick her up, I got on a trampoline for the first time since I hurt my knee (I think it was in 2006)! They have a huge one in the backyard and Evie was bouncing around on it, and she wanted me to come up there and play, so I did. It was better than standing on the side, waiting for something to snap in the wrong direction on her. It was so much fun and it helped me to get over that fear of her hurting herself. I was very proud of myself. 

On an unrelated note, I really wish I could take naps during the day while Evie is up. I’m so friggin tired and I don’t want to waste the quiet time while she’s napping because it’s when I get most of my work done. So sleepy.

Speaking of getting work done, is there anyone out there that knows of any ways to harden copper? At first I thought annealing would work but apparently that just makes copper softer. I made something out of a descently thin copper sheet and I can’t use it as a piece of jewelry if it’s too easy to bend, obviously. I don’t know if there’s anything I can really do short of making it all over again out of a thicker sheet, but I thought I’d ask. Maybe there’s something I can put on the back of the pieces to strengthen them? I don’t know. I follow some pretty smart people so I thought some of you might have dabbled in metallurgy at some point. Thanks in advance if you do know! If there is a way, I’ll be a super happy girl!

Filed under parenting metal annealing copper jewelry crafts help harden

4 notes

Eric and I went to the Allentown Art Festival yesterday and it was great. It was just the two of us, looking at art, and it felt like we became better friends while we were there. It wasn’t sweltering out and we only got stuck in one traffic jam of people on the main drag of the festival, which was annoying but when 300,000 people go within a 2 day span, you kind of have to expect that. As far as the art show went, I wasn’t as impressed as I’ve been in previous years. There seemed to be less artists and the artists that were there seemed to all be doing the same thing: beaded jewelry or jewelry made from dichroic glass. Neither one of those things are bad in and of themselves but after the 20th tent of the stuff, it kind of gets boring. Inside of all those tents, I maybe found 5 rings on top of it. Plus, it was all SO expensive! I understand pricing your work high because it takes a lot of work and time to create but of you’re asking $100 for a glass pendant, I think you’re reaching a little beyond the bounds of sanity.  I didn’t even see many paintings. There was one painter I absolutely loved though. His name is Erik Laffer and he was showing his Cartographers series. I just fell in love with all of his work and if I would have had $200, one of his smaller pieces would have been mine. Maybe sure you check out his work! The woodworking booths were fantastic, especially David Levy Creations. His site doesn’t do his work justice at all. There was a crazy embroidery artist there too. Her work was less sewing work than painting with thread. Just amazing stuff. Sadly, her site is one of the suckiest I’ve ever come across. You can’t see the detain she pays to her work, and there’s glare from the glass blowing out the already blurry pictures. If you ever get to see Nguyen’s Chi Art at a festival, make sure you stop. The detail is out of this world! It’s really like she treats her needle and thread like a paint brush. My favorite work was by Melanie Moore. Her jewelry was straight up art you get to wear. It looked like it should be in a museum and the prices weren’t bad, even though they were out of my price range. If I’d had $100 to spend on a ring (which aren’t pictured on her site, sadly), I’d be wearing it now and I wouldn’t have even felt guilty about spending it. Her work was fantastic. It was very industrial and found material. Lots of steel and stainless steel. I’ve always been a fan of all things industrial, from the Bechers to the Eiffel Tower to power lines, so this was right up my alley. I guess I have good taste too because she had a line at Macy’s for a while but they wanted her to cheapen her process and she didn’t want to do that. The best part of the show (next to the deep fried Oreos), was Eric telling me I needed to get a booth next year. Honestly, I really do think my work would stand out and I think a lot of people would like it. I’m going to have to make a poster and put it up near my desk to remind myself to enter in January because I never think about it until summer time. I hope I can come up with the $250 entrance fee and booth rental, but I’m not too worried about it. It would definitely be worth the money. I’d have to come up with a lot more designs by then though. **I didn’t take this photo. Click through for the source.**

Eric and I went to the Allentown Art Festival yesterday and it was great. It was just the two of us, looking at art, and it felt like we became better friends while we were there. It wasn’t sweltering out and we only got stuck in one traffic jam of people on the main drag of the festival, which was annoying but when 300,000 people go within a 2 day span, you kind of have to expect that.

As far as the art show went, I wasn’t as impressed as I’ve been in previous years. There seemed to be less artists and the artists that were there seemed to all be doing the same thing: beaded jewelry or jewelry made from dichroic glass. Neither one of those things are bad in and of themselves but after the 20th tent of the stuff, it kind of gets boring. Inside of all those tents, I maybe found 5 rings on top of it. Plus, it was all SO expensive! I understand pricing your work high because it takes a lot of work and time to create but of you’re asking $100 for a glass pendant, I think you’re reaching a little beyond the bounds of sanity. 

I didn’t even see many paintings. There was one painter I absolutely loved though. His name is Erik Laffer and he was showing his Cartographers series. I just fell in love with all of his work and if I would have had $200, one of his smaller pieces would have been mine. Maybe sure you check out his work!

The woodworking booths were fantastic, especially David Levy Creations. His site doesn’t do his work justice at all.

There was a crazy embroidery artist there too. Her work was less sewing work than painting with thread. Just amazing stuff. Sadly, her site is one of the suckiest I’ve ever come across. You can’t see the detain she pays to her work, and there’s glare from the glass blowing out the already blurry pictures. If you ever get to see Nguyen’s Chi Art at a festival, make sure you stop. The detail is out of this world! It’s really like she treats her needle and thread like a paint brush.

My favorite work was by Melanie Moore. Her jewelry was straight up art you get to wear. It looked like it should be in a museum and the prices weren’t bad, even though they were out of my price range. If I’d had $100 to spend on a ring (which aren’t pictured on her site, sadly), I’d be wearing it now and I wouldn’t have even felt guilty about spending it. Her work was fantastic. It was very industrial and found material. Lots of steel and stainless steel. I’ve always been a fan of all things industrial, from the Bechers to the Eiffel Tower to power lines, so this was right up my alley. I guess I have good taste too because she had a line at Macy’s for a while but they wanted her to cheapen her process and she didn’t want to do that.

The best part of the show (next to the deep fried Oreos), was Eric telling me I needed to get a booth next year. Honestly, I really do think my work would stand out and I think a lot of people would like it. I’m going to have to make a poster and put it up near my desk to remind myself to enter in January because I never think about it until summer time. I hope I can come up with the $250 entrance fee and booth rental, but I’m not too worried about it. It would definitely be worth the money. I’d have to come up with a lot more designs by then though.

**I didn’t take this photo. Click through for the source.**

Filed under allentown art art festival allentown art festival photography ceramic painting jewelry fashion Buffalo Buffalo NY western NY elmwood allen