Crafting Earrings

So over the holiday I have been busy in the studio crafting earrings. I loved making them and made loads over the space of about a month so I thought about maybe selling them. I posted them on my facebook and I received a lot of love from them so I created my own etsy site and well I found out its extremely difficult to get enough interest online for people to buy them so I have decided to take them to a craft fete to sell. We have a local one at Christmas and it would be the perfect time for me to sell them. The reason I wanted to make a post about this was because it gave me an insight of how much time, money and energy goes into making and selling them. Firstly you have to buy materials to start like buttons and the stud earrings. I then had a problem with glue, I bought jewelry glue online but when it arrived it wasn't what I wanted a lot and it also said on the packaging that the fumes are very dangerous if breathed in, so I shopped locally and found a good glue which works like a treat. Next there was issues with layout and how I was gonna present them. I experimented with card, cardboard and paper and found what worked best with the earrings and stuck to it. I had to create a logo and then had to price them accordingly to how much i spent on them. I never knew how much trouble went into selling craft items. I just thought "this would be nice to sell my earrings and make a slight profit doing something which I enjoyed". Which made me appreciate craft fairs and items even more. So in the mean time I have been building up a winter/summer collection to sell in the fete. 

All 12 houses

For my subject project I have made 12 houses related to my local area which I will be lighting up using LED’s. Hopefully when lit up the light will flood through the windows and doors of the house and also through the holes on the back forming the constellations. I chose to look at houses in my local area for the houses I was making, this helps relate to me and my surrounding area. I hope this piece would portray the sense of light pollution in a local community and also teach us about constellations and the stars. If the light pollution was reduced we would be able to see these wonderful starts on a clear night. Here are the photos of my card houses along with the photographs I have taken of those places.

           

Imprints of Potholes

This week for my field projects I went into the city and took some imprints of potholes I found using clay and here are the outcomes. Most of the potholes I had found were quite shallow and was full of stones, and these are the outcomes from that. They pattern was very interesting the way the stones indented the clay and formed the bumpy areas. I hope to fire these samples and use these slump molds for my glass puddles.

          

Glass Puddle moving on

I have started making more stencils in which I would test the glass paint on top to see if they would come out clearly but I have been having trouble gaining access to the material and all the resources, earlier this week I went to visit the glass tutor to see if could work on my glass samples but he said I couldn’t do it, as he was busy because of the final show stress. I was annoyed and disappointed. So I will try again this week whilst the show is up but I’m not banking on it. In the mean time I have window glass and plastic around the house so I could test on them but then again I don’t have the right paint to test with. This is difficult now because I don’t have much time left and have been very busy with other projects, visiting places and work, I am finding it difficult to juggle all my projects with everyday life, next time I must remember to get started n samples as soon as I think of them rather than leaving it too late.

Postcard Abstract Ideas

For my postcard samples I added some strength and structure into them by gluing wooden structures in to secure the piece even more and to help the tension and to keep the piece together without it falling apart. I really liked the first two but the last one I added layers and the outcome wasn’t as strong as the others because the layers got lost in the abstract background, I think that probably work better on a larger scale. Here are the results.

Final Photographed houses

I photographed my card houses for the second time last night, only this time I used electrical LED’s lights. I used my Christmas lights as they were the brightest lights I had in the house. This was a much better outcome as the light was much brighter and lit up the houses well. My only issue was that the lights were multicoloured and they were lovely but I wanted to remain with the black and white theme so using a balk and white filter on my camera I adjusted the outcome. Here are the results.

Puddle Idea

Moving on from my glass puddle Idea I have come to realize that I don’t have the time and material to make my initial idea of the glass puddle, so I will be using pvc plastic as a back up. I will be testing some samples on this and hopefully I can continue with the glass in the future and make my final puddle. This benefits me as I have the material and tools to hand to create this and I can trap much more materials between the panels without them burning away in the kiln.

I began to test paints on the pvc to see which ones were the best to paint my stencils on. To see if my stencils were effective I first done a test using blow pens on to paper and here are the results. I think they worked very well I just hope the paints will be as crisp as these outcomes.

    

I tested acrylic paint on the pvc to see how it would work out and to see if it would chip off and it worked rather well. It was easy to apply on to the pvc using the stencil and it didn’t chip of or rub away easy. Also these paints can be mixed to create more colour options. It also captured the texture of the sponge which i used to sponge the paint on top of the stencil.

My next step is to measure up the pvc and cut out matching puddle shapes then test how I could trap materials between them and seal the layers.