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Saturday, April 5, 2014

Should You Encourage An Artist, The SRAJD Jewelry Design Challenges, Salvaging a Design Error, and The EtsyMetal Charm Swap Bracelet



Follow Up to Encouraging Artists to Feel Good About Their Work

One of my last blog posts was encouraging and all about feeling confident and whatnot.  But here’s the flip side.

Many years ago I heard a story, one of those motivational things.  But this one resonated with me for some reason and I’ve called it into play on more than one occasion.  I am now going to do my usual job of butchering my paraphrased version of it because I have no idea where the story originated and I only have my memory to go off of.

So there was this student of the violin and he played at a recital one day.  Afterward, he met a violin maestro (is that what they’re called?).  The young violinist asked the master for his opinion of the performance.

“Do I have what it takes to be a professional violinist someday?” he asked the master.

The master looked at him and said, “I’m sorry, son, you don’t.”

The young violinist left and the master’s friend came up to him and said, “That young boy was brilliant.  He has amazing talent.  Why did you tell him he doesn’t have what it takes?”

“Because”, answer the master, “If he has what it takes to be great, he will not care about my opinion.  He will continue to do what he loves and become a master at it.  If he lets my opinion of his talent change the course of his life, he is not passionate enough to become a master in the first place.”

While I don’t agree with everything this story represents, I do get the point of it and ponder on it occasionally.

There’s something to be said for the person who can put his head down and forge ahead without needing the encouragement of others. 


SRAJD Jewelry Challenges
 
If you want to see some cool jewelry designs check out the weekly jewelry design challenges of the SRAJD members.  On the SRAJD blog, every Friday, we’re posting the entries for the weekly design challenges. 

March’s theme was “geometric” and the weeks were:


And here are a few random photos from the first month with the theme of "geometric" jewelry design...
 
 
 
 


April’s theme is the elements.


Etsy Metal Charm Swap Bracelet

Last year I took part in EtsyMetal's charm swap. 19 members of EtsyMetal all make 21 identical charms and every member gets one charm from every other member, then the 2 leftover go into the EtsyMetal shop (one to be sold along, the other to be added to the Charm Swap bracelet). Awhile ago I showed you the charm I made for the swap, but the bracelet just got listed recently and I'd love to share it with you.

And just this week I’m mailing off my group of charms again for swap #13.  Will show you a pic of my charm after I have it photographed.


This is NOT What I Had Planned

I was trying to finally work on making signatures for my work.  So my idea was to etch the logo into copper then I could use that as a mold template for the metal clay.
So I make the thing and didn't realize until I was all finish that it's great to remember to "flip" your image when you're etching onto copper... if you're end product is the copper.  Ha ha ha!  Yep, I remembered to flip my image.  What I hadn't taken into consideration, however, was that by pressing my metal clay into the copper, I was then reversing the direction again.  D'oh!

So I turned lemons into lemonade by giving the logo template a patina, then cutting out the tiny rectangles and punching a hole in the corner.  Now this wasted project can be used as hang tags.

Back to the drawing board with making my metal clay template though.

My Recent Jewelry

Here’s a piece I made at Hadar’s workshop.  It’s reverse construction.  I like the idea and want to explore the technique more in the future.
http://www.brackendesigns.com/servlet/Detail?no=1461

Same thing with this… reverse construction.
http://www.brackendesigns.com/servlet/Detail?no=1463


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