tether

For all the thinking, the problems, the lucky choices, and the moments of panic, there are more complete notes over at Flickr. Click on thumbnails below, see the photoset, or if you just want the overview check out the slideshow.

note: there are just too many photos of possible configurations of the pieces to include thumbnails here. Head over to Flickr and follow the photostream to see them all. Also, more notes, including which pieces are used in each configuration will eventually over there as well.

In summation:

Materials purchased:

• a deck of cards, which very handily had an image of an engraved pattern on the back, composed of several motifs
• a roll of magnetic sheeting, that stuff that super flat, thin promotional refrigerator magnets are made of, with a remove-able backing over self-stick adhesive
• thirteen donut shaped O-magnets (buy twelve of anything, get a thirteenth free!)
• eight rubber grommets, bought thinking about a back-up idea for joining pieces
• magic metallic design art kit: contained cardstock (which came in very handy), a glue pen, and sheets of metallic foil (would’ve been used more if I’d had more time to make extra add-on motifs and ‘jewels’

Total spent: $9.55

Materials actually used in final product: cards, magnetic sheeting, O-magnets, cardstock, just a bit of glue and foil

Tools used: exact-o knife, scissors, glue stick, books (to press things flat), pencil

Things I learned?

• don’t cut things out twice when you can cut them out once
• it’s a good thing to have extra glue sticks on hand (exact-o blades too!)
• buying cardstock even if you don’t know what you’ll use it for is never a bad thing
• having a back-up idea is good
• but sticking with your favorite idea is good too
• being brave enough not to buy the colored string as a safety net can produce unexpectedly satisfying results!

What was the idea behind the grommets?: Even when buying it, I was nervous that the magnetic sheeting wasn’t charged enough to stick to itself strongly enough. I bought the O-magnets as a back up, but didn’t really like the look of them against the card images. (I hadn’t thought of using smaller motifs as cover-ups for the O-magnets at that point.) So I wanted to have some sort of more reliable method of fastening the pieces together if the whole magnetic thing didn’t work out. I really wanted something that would work as a rivet, but I just didn’t find anything. (It’s really easy to get swallowed up and distracted at Ax-man!) So I grabbed the grommets thinking that I could cut holes in the card pieces at aesthetically pleasing spots and pop the pieces together with the grommets as a fastener. Don’t know if it would have worked. Might make the system a little more wearable, but the possible configurations would probably be more limited.

Things I did poorly:

• stupidly cut out each piece in detail both after mounting on cardstock and after applying to magnetic sheeting (should’ve just mounted all layers and cut out all layers just once)
• buying more O-magnets would’ve given me more possibilities
• I’m not happy with the edges, perhaps a different adhesive would keep the layers better laminated, and more time would allow me to cut more accurately
• didn’t finish as many add-on motifs and ‘jewels’ as I would’ve liked

Things I think I did well:

• identified a workable idea at the store and budgeted pretty well
• used time earlier in the week when I wasn’t able to work directly to brainstorm and play with the materials
• persevered in the face of illness
• managed my time pretty efficiently (a first!)
• predicted well how material could be manipulated
• recognized that I had a runway ready piece two hours before deadline (ironically, if I hadn’t changed the deadline time after last week, I still would’ve been done in time )
• realized, finally, that I was cutting things out twice instead of just once after the pieces were composed
• didn’t have to resort to using the grommets or any non-surplus store items
• got a chance to finesse my idea a little more than in previous weeks
• got very inspired about a this idea

Evaluation of final piece:

• wearable?: yes, though I have to be honest, stronger magnets would be better. You couldn’t wear it in any very active situation, and many folks wouldn’t have the patience to futz with getting it put on. However, I was surprised at how quickly I was able to change and put on the different configurations when taking the photos.
• durable?: yes, the individual pieces are pretty durable, especially with the cardstock layer to compensate for the brittle nature of the magnetic sheeting. Extra waterproofing wouldn’t hurt.
• visual appeal?: I’m loving it right now! I’ve realized that these last two weeks I’ve produced pieces which were much more feminine than the glass work which I’d been doing in recent years. I’m feeling like my voracious interest in the entire range of jewelry history is really coming out with these challenges. ANY INPUT ON THIS POINT WOULD BE WELCOMED!
• concept?: I think it works! As I said it would be good to have stronger magnets and stronger magnetic sheeting. I could easily see myself continuing to make more pieces and more motifs and ‘jewels.’ ANY INPUT ON THIS POINT WOULD BE WELCOMED!

I think that’s it! Good lordy, these wrap-ups are getting long!

Alisa’s deadline is monday 5pm, so keeping checking on what she’s got going on here and here. I’m so excited, I love the suspense!

If anybody has felt drawn in to the fun, next weeks challenge is posted here. Who’s in?

For more on the challenge, see this weeks photoset
or all the One-a-Week Four posts here

I want to get this up even though I’m not finished documenting week four, in part because it involves getting something over the weekend.

Last week’s challenged was picked in a bit of a rush, so I headed back over to imdb to brush up on the PR challenges and try to find something different from what we’ve done so far. It seems to me that the challenges fall into a few different categories:

1. limited choice of materials (grocery store, flower shop, Hershey’s store, Levi’s)
2. random source of inspiration (photo walk, museum challenge)
3. theme inspiration (envy, fashion icon, out of date trends)
4. situational (swim wear into evening wear, jet-setter, red carpet)
5. group challenges (lots of examples)
6. for a specific client (model/bride, Sarah Hudson, my-scene Barbie, prom, WWE divas)

So we’ve done the first three types. The group challenges, I’m not sure how we could do those, but I’d love it if anyone had any ideas. So that leaves situational, which has me a bit stumped for now, and specific client. Since we don’t all have access to a person who can give us feedback, it has to be some sort of public or fictional person. So here goes…

• go to this weeks NYTimes, either online or in print (You might need to register online, but it’s free)
• pick a person which is specifically photographed or mentioned by name
• make a piece of jewelry with that person in mind.

That’s it! Remember, the person can be fictional (don’t forget the book review section). The person does not have to be both photographed and named, just one or the other.

Beginning of the week I’ll post a few ideas of people that jumped out at me, which will be up for grabs if anyone wants to use them.

I was definitely worried about the wear-ability and structural integrity of my modular system. But at 3pm, I had something which would at least make it down the runway and back, (i.e. I walked from one end of my apartment to the other with no upset).

So rather than trying to come up with a more stable system in two hours, (which would’ve meant giving up the variability of the ways of wearing the pieces,) I decided to play around with different configurations and some add-on motifs.

Here’s the longest configuration, which uses all thirteen O-magnets that I had.

More play-by-play photos to follow at Flickr. More possible necklace configurations and on-the-model photos tomorrow. Wrap-up to follow back here.

See here for this weeks challenge.

For more on the challenge, see individual photos in this weeks photoset
or all the One-a-Week Four posts.

One-a-Week Four: grey rush hour friday, originally uploaded by kaitschott.

Since I really have no idea if my ideas about how to create structural stability are going to work or not, this may be the last post before 5pm. There are more notes over at Flickr that you could catch up on in the meantime.

Since I’m still recovering from this upper respiratory thing, I will stop at 5. So I’ll at least post an image of where things are at then. Thank goodness I can’t actually get kicked off for not finishing. No disappointed looks from Tim or frowns from Nina, Michael, and Heidi. I have high hopes that I’m far enough along, but you never know….

I have already composed Week Five’s challenge, so that too will be posted at 5pm at the latest.

Annie’s back in and Alisa has started a blog. Because of my late posting of the challenge last week and Annie having a sale this weekend, they might be going with a monday to monday week. Stop over to their blogs and see….

Stay tuned….

See here for this weeks challenge.

For more on the challenge, see individual photos in this weeks photoset
or all the One-a-Week Four posts.

One-a-Week Four: card motifs, originally uploaded by kaitschott.

When playing with the cards, I began by breaking the design down into basic motifs.

I’d hoped that the system could be totally modular, enabling infinite possibilities of combinations.

But the magnetic sheeting doesn’t have that strong of an attraction to itself, especially when weighted down by a layer of card.

So I will have to connect larger pieces with adhesive, use the larger, stronger 0-magnets and/or somehow use the grommets.

So I experimented with some compound motifs which will give me me bigger, more stable pieces to work with.

See here for this weeks challenge.

For more on the challenge, see individual photos in this weeks photoset
or all the One-a-Week Four posts.

Yay! Someone new has taken up the challenge! Check out Alisa’s very intriguing stack of materials over at Flickr.

Speaking of Flickr, maybe I’m just finally finding more of my people over there, but it really seems to be exploding with jewelry and other lovely things these days. Here’s a few:

1. Lichen on Gatepost, 2. Eternal Flame 2, 3. UBO3, 4. Clark Bardsley2, 5. inpetto-design - sabine spangenmacher, 6. Untitled, 7. African seed, 8. Untitled, 9. karin seufert1, 10. ashley vick, 11. Untitled, 12. stitch-outs, 13. april 15 supper, 14. wire, 15. bubble hoops3, 16. Untitled, 17. apothecary drawers, 18. strelizia study 1 oil on paper, 19. IMG_0330, 20. IMG_0203, 21. Untitled, 22. pawel kaczynski, 23. agnieszka maksymiuk, 24. iwaki yu, 25. Candies, 26. Anéis, 27. Mahonia, 28. Veltheimia, 29. collar raiz roja/amarilla, 30. Nepenthes ampullaria, 31. Front shot…, 32. tributaries, 33. DSC02266, 34. IMG_1655, 35. more bead making, 36. Lucio’s Figurines

These are really only a few. I could’ve done about three more mosaics of things I haven’t shared here. There’s more before and since these. Nip over to my favorites and check them all out.

O.k., now I need to take a nap. I’m home sick again, but I don’t intend to give up on the challenge. There’s still tomorrow. For now it’s tea and toast, juice and soup, naps and podcasts. Maybe that will dispel the evil rumble in my chest when I cough….

See here for this weeks challenge.

For more on the challenge, see individual photos in this weeks photoset
or my blog

One-a-Week Four: playing with cards, originally uploaded by kaitschott.

At Axman, I pretty much played the same material consideration questions in my head as during week one.  This time I was less concerned with durability and more interested in what was aesthetically appealing and what sort of structures and attachments were possible with the objects and materials available.

After deciding on the roll of magnetic stuff, I’d thought of doing another drawing-based piece, this time using historical jewelry as a jumping off point. I was thinking of a necklace that could be expanded or contracted through the addition or subtraction of pieces with magnets as the means of attachments.

But then I found these playing cards and I really like the engraved pattern on them. Having fifty two copies of this lovely amalgam of motifs made me think that it could be sort of a modular system, with only one or two components that could be arranged in a variety of ways.

So while I was laid up sick today (nasty respiratory thing came back. bleah.) I played with cards in between naps and cups of tea and soup.

For a close-up of the original cardback and a close-up of a necklace taking shape, visit Flickr.

See here for this weeks challenge.

For more on the challenge, see individual photos in this weeks photoset
or my blog

See here for this weeks challenge.

For more on the challenge, see individual photos in this weeks photoset
or all the Week four posts here.

O.K. This week challenge is a little on the fly, but here it is:

Go to the local surplus, junk, or re-use store. If there isn’t one nearby, how about a dollar, consignment, or antique store. The idea is, someplace where you don’t really know what will be for sale on any given day.

Spend only $10, and make a piece of jewelry with it.

That’s it!

Any one in?

I’m going to go here. They actually have these fun t.v. ads which use the phrase: “late-night artistic bender”….It has been too long since I’ve been.

For more on the challenge, see individual photos in this weeks photoset
or my blog