new painting

The hospital my aunt works for is having their annual auction, so she asked me to donate some art. I had no idea what to give them and after a lot of pestering they at least gave me a theme of something for a kids room. easy peezy. so i donated a print of a previous painting and i did an original of a stegosaurus. i miss him being on my desk. Easy peezy only explains the creating part. Mailing was another story. The stegosaurus wasn't huge, but ups said packing supplies along would cost $75. $75 you gotta be joking. So I had to go and track a box down. I went to staples (i had already been there earlier that day getting ink to print the keen to be clean one) and they didn't have one i could buy so i managed to convince the manager to let me take some scraps! :) THANK YOU STAPLES!!

oddities

David found this one for me today. The research has been difficult. I know it is a woodblock print by a man named Giovanni Battista Nazari, born 1533, who wrote Tre sogni della tramutatione metallica (Three Dreams on Metallic Transmutation) and some other pieces. Tre sogni della tramutatione metallica is about the pursuit of the secrets of alchemy. Interesting...

c is for covet

I created this treasury on etsy in treasury west! come take a look!

even more wax carvings

Five new wax pieces! The first photo shows the pieces inspired by the mandrake botanical illustrations I wrote about below! I can't wait to take them to get cast. i have one more pendant i would like to work on, and i have another bracelet and ring set that i would like to make but i think i need a larger piece of wax! bummer.

twins

This is not two eggs! This is what came out when David cracked open one egg to make me some breakfast!

wax pieces

I just completed two new pieces of wax to cast. I'm not casting until I complete all the pieces I've drawn up. Three bracelets, three rings, four necklaces! Not bad right? Here are two of the three bracelets.

new hobbie

This past Sunday I went to a hoopilates class! It's the love child of pilates and hoop dancing. It was so much fun. Small group setting which was perfect since we all most likely looked ridiculous trying to keep the hoops up. I'm going to keep going and I'm hoping to find some hoop dancing classes as well...another story. However, I bought my own hula hoop made by circlecandy. Check it out!

oddities

This image I recently found while researching more antiquated science texts like the gessner book i blogged about earlier, which inspired my first sterling silver piece of jewelry. This illustration is from The Naples Dioscorides circa 625 a Greek herbal text! Crazy! I had no idea that illustrated texts dated so far back. This is a mandrake.

the hydra

So I finally finished my piece from the jewelry class I was taking!! I wore it all weekend and have to admit that I am incredibly proud of myself!

and the pic below is of the mold I had made. I am hoping to sell these in my shop eventually, but the plan is to make more sterling silver pieces before I list them all!

I've also been thinking about having an illustration for each piece of jewelry that I make, you know like the illustration that inspired it! So perhaps i need to work on a hydra illustration, which is kind of perfect because I am suppose to be creating a new piece of art for a child's room to donate to my aunt's work's auction. Julia, my cousin (whose mom's auction it is) has a toddler, who is hilarious and apparently loves dinosaurs! He calls them (spelled how it sounds) guy+no+cores= ginocaurs. Hydras pretty close right?? :/