Wednesday, June 26, 2013

"Plastics....There's a great future in plastics." The Graduate (1967)

Back in the January 2010, I started designing some new ornaments.  A friend’s company had purchased an industrial laser, and having had access in the past to one, I knew what it could be used for.  I had seen lots of 3-dimensional ornaments made with wood, paper, fabric and glass which had been joined together.  We had talked about the possibilities and I had even gone so far as going through the drops looking at the different types of materials I could get out of their recycling bins.  During January and February I designed over 24 ornaments which I called “vaned” ornaments.  The ornament would be made up of 6 or 8 vanes which were secured around two cogs with either 6 or 8 cut-outs.  The vanes would be notched as well so alignment would be fairly easy.



Mainly geometric shapes: globes, penta-, hexa-, octo-gons, with a couple of star shapes and ovids, all designed around a central axis.  There were several ‘fanciful’ shapes as well.  After converting to the laser CAD program and cleaning the designs on any extraneous lines, the parts were cut and I received 2 heavy boxes with roughly 16 of each design in clear and translucent blue, then a couple months later, I received a couple more boxes with parts cut in opaque orange, white, ‘glo-edge’ yellow and opaque yellow.









The ornaments are somewhat cost-prohibitive as the laser time itself is measured in seconds.  The cost to cut an ornament is more than the acrylic used.  Although I did receive enough parts that I will have a nice collection of modern ornaments.  As long as I don’t request too often, my friend said he would cut more for me when they are not using the laser even to the point of allowing me to run the machine to cut more as long as I also help with their product (which I have done in the past).  The initial boxes are still being used and I have unique ornaments for several friends.  One a year in a color combination, after several years a collection on the tree.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Earrings or Ornaments?

When looking for ornaments to go on a tree, I had created ornaments which have been inspired by jewelry.  There are times when I have purchased pieces of jewelry to use as ornaments.  A crystal necklace can be used as a swag between branches, or ‘floating’ pearl necklaces linked together with chain can create a garland.  More than once I have used large shiny, dangly earrings as ornaments.  The miniature tree can easily be decorated with earrings, especially these with french-hooks instead of posts or clip-ons.

When I belonged to a group where miniature ornaments would be exchanged, many months I fell back on my years of making costume jewelry and made ornaments which could easily be worn as earrings if you had a pair and a couple of french-hook style ear wires.
 


 Some are made from an earring base such as these larger  ornaments.  Using Delicas® as spacer beads, I was able to fill the space between the chain lengths and the faceted glass beads.  With the wide variety of glass colors, the combinations were almost endless.

The drawback to these being earrings are the weight.  These ornaments were easily 2 to 3 ounces, which most people think is very little weight until they are hung from a single thin wire and have a tendency to swing when you walk and smack your head when you turn your too quickly.




Others are made from a mixture of bead caps and earring findings.  This group of 5 are all under 2.5" in height.  And are limited only to the colors of the accent beads or the finish of the findings themselves.


 


Monday, June 24, 2013

Designing with constraints

One of the exchange groups I belonged to would send out an item which everyone who choose to participate had to use in making an ornament.  I enjoyed these challenges as there were times I would never had used the item(s).  I had in the past done similar challenges in jewelry where everyone would receive a bag of beads which had to be used.  The first came in the school year of 1977-8, when Rezunit® came out with the cone shaped air freshener.  They had a national contest open to high school students to use the cone to create something “Christmassy”.  The design which I submitted was turned the cone into a tree but using seeds, pods and spices.  The final piece had anise stars, cloves, cinnamon bark, sweet-gum balls, cardamom and cumin seeds.  Various shades of browns, but smelled of cookies and pies.  It took First Place.  Being limited to what you can and cannot use can be liberating, forcing you to think outside the normal,

In 2012, one of the challenges was to create and ornament using a compact disc.  I thought several days when I was looking through a scroll saw magazine and found some scroll saw ornaments.  Using one of the patterns as inspiration I called a friend and asked if I could send him a design to cut on his industrial laser.  I knew I wanted to ‘sandwich’ a piece of color between 2 CDs to create a ‘stained-glass window’.  After cutting the surface, I turned the next CD over to cut from the reverse.  I cut several pieces as I wasn’t sure how the final piece would look.
Two CDs are glued together with a piece of red lighting film sandwiched between.  To continue with the dilver reflectiveness, a silver-toned chain and jump-ring were used as a hanger.

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Another media is heard from

I have worked primarily with beads, but other media has been used to create ornaments as well.  I have created several 3-dimensional designs from plastic canvas.  Being able to customize the ornament by changing the fibre can change not only the color but the texture of the finished product.  I enjoy working with plastic canvas for its ability to hold its shape and the variety of stitches which can be incorporated into the design.  So far I have been using a simply cross-stitch for most of the ornaments.  The last ornament was done in pink and purple and was constructed from three squares of plastic canvas.  I have also done the same shape but in a fleur-de-lis pattern.






I have also used rings of the plastic canvas to create chandeliers.  The first was completed in the late 1990s using fringe, 3 concentric rings of plastic canvas, chain, a bead cap and trim to hide the stitches.  One month the theme in the exchange group was fuzzy, so I used eye-lash yarn to create an ornament.  I always create 2 copies of the ornament for exchanges so I can send one to my partner and can keep one for myself.  I decided to “gild the lily” for mine by adding chain and beaded drops.























October 2011 the theme was “Pink” in honoring “Breast Cancer Awareness Month” and that month I used plastic canvas to create an “Awareness Ribbon” ornament, as well as the miniature for the month.


Monday, June 17, 2013

'Wings' theme inspires butterflies on icy floral branch

April 2013's Theme ornament for one of the exchanges was “Wings”.  I had been wanting to do some wraps for branches and this gave me the opportunity to practice.  I had picked up a beaded floral twist and a couple of scrapbook butterflies a few months earlier.  Both items were in the “reduced for clearance” section of one of the national craft stores.  I took the butterflies and using 20 gauge craft wire, fashioned some holders, gluing the bottom of the butterflies to the craft and then securing the wire on the floral stem.  I then affixing some “snow” to the floral branch with polycarbonate saw-dust and glitter.


Thursday, June 13, 2013

Going further down the “Miniature Rabbit Hole”

Several weekends ago, I went to my favorite wholesale show for gem and jewelry.  I found several strands of beads which reminded me of some of the beads I used on the miniature trees I made in 2012.  If you are trying to make the tree “to scale”, beads make great ornaments.  Many of the beads I use are 6mm (1/4") to 20mm (5/8"), which if you are wanting the 2 foot tree to be scaled to an 8 foot tree, then these beads would appear to be 24mm (about 1") to 80mm (3-1/4").  Since I also add at least two additional 3mm beads to almost every miniature ornament, you can add an additional inch to the apparent scaled size.




While glass beads have an inner ‘glow’ or ‘life’ to them, they also have weight.  The finishes available to the glass beads are much more vibrant, reflex light and have a wider range.  For the most part, a glass bead and a plastic (sometimes known as acrylic) the same size, the glass will weight considerably more.  When you will be adding almost 200 ornaments, weight should come into consideration.




Some of the beads I use have larger holes.  Solutions to this can be as simple as using a bead cap and additional beads inside to fill the hole.  I have several beads which have made great ornaments but the hole was larger than 1mm.  I usually use a 3mm beads on the bottom and top of the ornaments and when you have a larger hole the bead will sit down on the 3mm, or even won’t even stop to notice and fall off the headpin.  With beads with 1-4 mm holes, on the headpin I will put the traditional 3mm bead, a bead cap, then put on several smaller beads which will slide inside the hole of the larger bead.  Using these extra beads take up some of the room in the hole, thereby stabilizing the bead.  If the beads are transparent, I have used clear silver lined Delicas®, silver 2.5mm beads, or clear silver line bugle beads.  If the beads are hollow like the corrugated metal beads, I use the soft plastic ear nuts at the top and bottom to act as stabilizers and help center the bead on the head pin.  I prefer using the ones that look like little hats as I can cut the excess off.



I went browsing through one of the local bead store at the beginning of June and the store had a “bargain bin” of beads that they were trying to clear out.  I knew I shouldn’t have browsed, but I did and ended up buying a few packets (13) of beads.  Almost everyone of these will be used in making miniature ornaments.  Some will be finished just by adding some chain, or maybe a linked gold bead if I can find a gold which matches.  The bead shop had more of these beads, and I will most likely be heading back soon to ‘clean them out’ of certain beads.  I have found over the years, that if you find a limited quantity, better to buy as many as you can afford, as you will find the next time someone has beat you to it and you will never find them again.  This has been learned from experience.
The black and white squares are ½”, ¼” and ⅛”, the entire block is 2" x 3".  Most likely the spikes or daggers will be used as icicles, attach a piece of chain and maybe a beaded link for the small spike.

The mesh beads will have a clear earnut inserted into each end and covered with a bead cap.  The last time the store also had several different sizes of the mesh beads available in different anodized colors: pink, light blue, dark blue, silver, red, bright green, bronze and purple.









Monday, June 10, 2013

Producing new from a mixture of old and new

A couple of years ago, one of the exchange groups I was a member of had a “theme” of “Victorian” for that month’s exchange.  I was looking through a couple of reference books and the two ornaments I came up with were:





 















Using chenille stems, vintage glass beads, faux pearls, some wire and pressed Czech glass beads, I designed these.  Since then I have formed additional images and will most likely continue creating ornaments along a similar vein.  I had several strands of vintage garland that had several broken beads in them so I decided to cut the strands and use individual beads.  Since then I have found more strands of re-produced garlands incorporating additional colors, as well as finding a few new designs.


One of the problems I encountered was the tensile strength of the chenille stems.  Casual brushing against the ornament resulted in deforming.  As the white and gold illustrates, even the hanging to photograph resulted in the arms becoming mis-aligned.  Each time I have exhibited these, tweaking of the stem was necessary.  But the ornaments made during the late 1800s most likely suffered the same problems..

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Ideas, Transformations and Getting the Most From One Item


I have been asked how I come up with ideas for the ornaments I create.  A lot of them are inspired by jewelry and some from architectural features, less from nature.  However, what I see and what the ornament looks like when finished may look totally different.  For the most part, differences in appearance can come from the supplies I have to work with.  Many of the findings I use are purchased on the wholesale level.  Buying by the gross (144 items), it can take several months, if not years, to use all of them.  While bulk buying works great for parts I will use in many of the ornaments such as the small 3mm gold-plated metal beads, various sizes and shapes of pearls, and the 2-inch head-pins.  Bulk buying of others just leaves me with lots of parts that I have to store.  I have bought certain components in the past because they were on sale.  The perforated disks, round and teardrop earring components being three.  There were several months (if not years) between purchase and usage, but once I started using them the ideas would keep coming.  An idea may be sparked just by turning the item from vertical to horizontal or rotating it 90 or 180 degrees.  For the perforated disks I had thought to use them as medallions for the tree.  I had seen several disks used in brooches, and had even bought several at yard sales or in bargain bins, but didn’t think of using them as tassel armatures until I casually tossed one of the brooches onto my workspace and it landed on some fringe.

I was placing an order with one of the companies I use, when the customer service operator asked if I would like to hear about their specials.  I agreed and she told me about some round and teardrop shaped parts for earrings.  The earring components were purchased and sat until I could figure out how to keep the chains and focal components separated.  One day I realized you could use any bead as a spacer bead and reached for my Delicas®.  I went through and added all the faceted beads I wanted, added the number of chain segments I wanted, and then added the Delicas® to fill the earring.  Once I knew how many Delicas® I needed, I could evenly space them out.  Since I wished the ornaments to be symmetrical, I started with the bottom-most chain and started dividing the beads between the 2 sides.  I use this technique in many of my ornaments where I have a determined length of wire.  I will start with the segment and ‘string’ the components I want on, them fill the wire segment with the spacer beads.  Many times, I will use 2 colors of spacers alternating every 5 or 10 beads for ease in counting.


 
 I designed these two from the earring hoops for a program at the Greensboro Gem & Mineral Club.  Jewelry and beading were also included in the clubs programs and I was asked to teach a program on Christmas ornaments.













Other times, I will focus on one of the findings I use, such as a bead-cap, and try to think different ways I can use the part.  I originally purchased one finding for use in a beaded tassel, then I needed a central bead while forming a traditional chandelier shape, so I use the bead-cap in the original shape and then flattened out.  Later I needed something to cover the ends of some cording and I used the same bead-cap.  Years pass and I use the same bead-cap to serve as a connection point in holding the ends of wire to form the globes.  I also look at the bead-cap flattened out and use to make a snowflake drop.  A year or two pass when I am making a miniature ornament and decide to use the same bead-cap, along with the un-folded aspect of the bead-cap.  Six different ornaments from essentially the same metal finding.

I count both the upholstered ornaments and the globes, both large and small, as one ornament since the major difference is shape of the base form or size.  Just a re-calculation of materials needed.  Whereas when looking at the ornaments there are totally different designs.