Please stop spamming my Pinterest

You may have noticed my lack of posting lately. The main reason for this is that my day job has been incredibly, mind killingly busy lately. When I get home I hardly want to even look at a computer. So, in the few spare minutes when I do want to peruse some internet fluff, what I don't want to see is my Pinterest homepage filled with a zillion variations of one thing. Example:

Now, this particular grouping was spammed by a scrapbook supplies company I follow. I chose it so as not to offend a specific person. However, this is not the only time this has happened. Sometimes it cards... page after page of cards, or tattoos, or earrings, or 200 year old jewelry... wait, those were kind of cool.

Anyway, I know that many of us (myself included) tend to think of Pinterest as our own personal picture bookmarks. We pin whatever is amusing us right now, and sometimes we pin a lot of it. I am pretty sure I did it to people the other day when I was pinning cameos. My point is, remember that you have people following you. When you pin 27 of nearly the same thing within a few minutes, they see 27 of nearly the same thing all at once. So, vary what you pin, or spread it out. Remember, if you are just going through other pins you don't have to repin - you can like it instead. This will still allow you to find it later, but won't spam your followers.

Thank you for pinning courteously. P.S. Keep your recipes off your craft boards, I am trying to diet here...

Monday Weigh In: 297

Down 4.4 lbs from 2 weeks ago! Woo!

Last week was a little crazy and I skipped the weigh in... not on purpose, I just kept getting distracted in the morning and forgetting to do it before I left the house. But, it was a good week for me. The Friday before I saw a new doctor, an orthopedic specialist, who did more cortisone shots - both knees at once this time. Hurt like you would not believe! But, a week later my knees are feeling almost like the did a year ago. Almost. The new doctor also prescribed physical therapy which I started last week. They have me doing exercises in a pool. Since I love swimming and being in the water, this is awesome!

So, last week was so busy I even forgot it was the first Friday of the month and forgot to post the new Zodiac ring pattern... this will be rectified later today.

I want to thank all of you who comment on these posts and offer me encouragement and support. It means the world to me.

Exploring Jewelry: Works of fiction

Remember back when I used to end each post with a quote? Yeah, me neither.

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction. Oscar Wilde

So, I have recently become obsessed with cameos. For those of you who don't know, cameo is actually a method of carving. Specifically, it is carving a raised image into a multilayer material. I am told the opposite of cameo is intaglio. In the jewelry world, when you say cameo most of us think of a carving of a Victorian woman's head. But, it can actually be any carving - even large scale such as vases or art installations.

Now, I can't carve to save my life so when I wanted to create my own cameos I had to cheat. Step one was to borrow a cameo from a friend (strangely not a true cameo as it is all one solid material).



Loved (and love) this piece, but because it is solid black, it is very difficult to see the details. So, step two was to make a mold.



An early foray of mine into moldmaking, you can see I used way to much material - my container was too big. I have since learned better.



My next step was to use resin to fake a cameo - multilayered, but definitely NOT carved. Did you notice that I chose not to cast the frame? By leaving this out I can go with a simpler look, or I could choose to add a different frame in a new style.



I loved it so I made another - and several more since. The face on this cameo is so deep/thick that it just really stands out beautifully in the two tones. And the color possibilities are endless. I added a simple glue on bale to this one to make a minimalist pendant. Oh, and I used silver Sharpie to color the outside edge to make it look like it has a metal bezel.



Next up was a couple of commercial cameo molds. I have to admit, I was spoiled by how deep the mold I made was. Getting that first layer of resin to be just in the head area of the new molds was hard! The shoulders especially tended to spill over. The other commercial mold I got(not shown) had a pony tail - OH MY GOSH WAS THAT A PAIN!



Before you decide I have gone totally off my rocker in posting a picture of a silver earring in a post about cameos, stay with me for a sec...









Take a thrift store earring with no mate (which is actually sterling - score!), add an oval bead picked up in a bag of seconds, and suddenly (or actually about a week and a half later after the pouring, curing, gluing, more pouring, more curing...) you have a flower cameo! And again, since I am making these myself, I can do any color combination I want to match my jewelry design!

I am planning for my next foray into cameos to be one I actually carve myself in wax. Then I will make a mold and make lots and lots out of resin! MWAHAHAHAHAHA!

Exploring Jewelry: The forest for the trees

So, you ever hear the phrase "Can't see the forest for the trees"? It basically means that you are so focused on the individual that you can't see the whole. Today we are going to explore the opposite - combining many little things to make one big whole.



I came across this necklace laying on a friends desk. I have no idea where she got it, so I don't know if it is commercially made or hand made. I noticed right off what appeared to be links of mesh chain between the pearls. But then I looked closer.



It wasn't chain at all! It was tiny daisy spacers strung in a series. What would barely be noticed individually had a wonderful presence as a bunch! I love this as it reminds me of making ropes with seedbeads (I do love my seeds!)where unless you look close you can't tell it's individual beads.

I did find one drawback to this technique. Tiny beads are easy to get hair tangled up in.



Still, something to thing about...