erulisse.com

So I moved to etsy. You can find my shop here:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/erulissejewelry

You can now buy my jewelry through my Zibbet shop at http://www.zibbet.com/erulisse.

A little preview of what you’ll find:

I’ve been getting reading for the show in March and I’ve got to say I am so excited. I decided I needed some new business cards so I bought some beautiful paper and these lovely creatures are the result- all handwritten.

I will be having a booth at Sacred Journey Fellowship’s 2nd Annual Magickal Bazaar March 26th from 11am to 6pm. The address for the event is 1215 Main Street in Garland, Texas. This will be my first independent show and I look forward to seeing you there.

I’ve been spending some time lately playing ‘mad scientist’.

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a copy of Enchanted Adornments: Creating Mixed-Media Jewelry with Metal, Clay, Wire, Resin & More. Several of the projects inside intrigued me- including the fairy wing earrings- but one of the things I found most interesting was a project that uses shrink plastic pendant components. I gnawed on the idea for a while, did some research, and finally went and bought a pack containing an assortment of five different types of sheets- frosted (which is pre-sanded to accept colored pencils), opaque white, almond, chocolate brown, and black.

So far I have mostly used the frosted but I have also experimented with the white.

I started out with the frosted and shrunk the first batch one or two at time on a baking sheet in the oven. This worked fairly well but did lead to my one experience with a piece getting stuck to itself in the midst of the shrinking process. In that batch I tried markers (which worked fairly well but at first I did not realize how much the lines themselves would shrink and did not compensate very well for that), colored pencils, and rubber stamps as ways to add color. I also discovered that a standard-sized hole punch works fairly well if you want the end product to have a hole suitable for jewelry.

I ended up not liking the lack of control over the process that I felt with shrinking the pieces in the oven so I went out and bought a heat gun. This has worked much better overall than the oven- although I did learn the importance of being able to restrain the piece during shrinking (having hot plastic flying across the room is not particularly productive). I also discovered that the same large ceramic tile I use for woodburning projects makes a very good heat-resistant surface for this process as well- and I wonder whether its tendency to hold heat tends to make the process a little more efficient than using the oven.

So far I am fairly satisfied with the results of my experimentation- although the thickness of the shrunk plastic has presented some challenges when adding ear wires or jump rings. My next task is to find a satisfying sealant solution for the pieces I used color pencils on (they pencil marks tend to smudge eventually otherwise). I am in the process of testing gold shimmer mod podge as a first coat on some components I made out of the frosted plastic- I expect since it’s a nonporous surface I’ll need to follow that with an acrylic spray seal or somesuch.

I’ll get back to you on that one.

A little seed being blown on the wind… Who knows where it will land.

just a quick sketch this morning in preparation for a larger work

Mirror, mirror, on the wall- did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed?

A photomanipulation piece I did a couple of years ago.

Just doing some warm-ups today…

A simple photoshop piece inspired by this tutorial.