Luchador to Order

I thought this was pretty cool.  A very nice person bought one of my Luchador mask necklaces and asked if I could do a purple one.

I came across quite nice one, white with purple edging, belonging to Mil Mascara during the 1960s (he wore quite a variety of masks) and made the necklace as a a custom item.  

I think it turned out pretty well J

As Fine as a Troll's Hoard

I have my jewelry class tonight and I’m thinking of bringing some of my most favorite jewelry to ask the instructor how it was made.

My favorite jewelry store in THE WORLD is in Valle, Norway. It is the home of Hasla.

We found it totally by chance. We had decided to drive through Norway from our home in the West to Oslo. In the wintertime, you have to take the highway that runs around the southern coast, but in summer, you can go through the mountains right across the center.

This is always charming because a good portion is through isolated country without human inhabitants, but lots of sheep. Farmers let the sheep up in the mountain to graze all summer long and then bring sheepdogs to round them up in early Fall to bring them back in for the winter. There are no fences and the sheep roam at will and nap in the road. They know no fear and you frequently have to stop the car and honk the horn until they get out of the way.

Anyway, after a tough morning of sheep-honking, we decided to stop for lunch just on the other side of the pass. This happened to be a tiny village called Valle.

It has a gas station, a city hall, a restaurant, a church, and a church community center. But towering about them is a silversmith in an enormous building built rather like a stabur.

Walk inside and it’s immediately clear there are masters at work. The workshop is visible through glass and the wall lined with sale cases. Hasla makes extraordinary bunad jewelry. Delicate filigree silver work is a trademark. It is beautiful, but I most love their modern pieces.

I have in particular two modern pars of earrings made in bronze. One is an elongated stem ending in four curved petals, known as their tulip design. The other is a bold twist of wires in a design the elves of Middle Earth might have admired.

They also use their bunad skills to other effects creating marvelous confections shaped like butterflies or daisies. Really spectacular.

It’s a shame, in a way. Their traditional pieces are fairly widely available, but the pieces I’ve really fallen in love with only seem available in that funny little valley.

www.hasla.no

Thumb, Can, Ahhh... Memories...

Today is my first wax casting class. I’m a little nervous because I’ve never done any metalwork or jewelry making. I am generally pretty good with tools and small objects (ie, Fimo stuff) but it’s a whole new medium.

The class is actually a birthday present from my lovely sister-in-law and brother. Mina thought the wax casting class would be ideal for me, and is charmingly hoping to recap her investment in my talents :)

I did take wood shop and plastics in junior high, along with a bevy of art classes. I loathed wood shop because we had to do a lot of hand filing and sanding. My kingdom for a power sander! I was the only kid willing to use the grinder because I just hated the boring repetitive sanding.

Our woods teacher came directly from the shop teacher mold. He was a tall sturdy guy who somewhat resembled Pete Postlethwaite. He used the word “can” a lot. As in “You stand on that and you’re gonna slip and fall on your can.” On the first day, he would lift one giant scarred paw and say “You see this? This is where I cut my thumb off the first time. It was on that very saw” and fifteen sets of eyes drifted towards the gleaming blade. “The second time,” he continued “was on a circular saw. YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO BE CAREFUL!!”

Even as a fourteen year old I wondered about that. Anyone who works with power cutting tools could have an accident. You just need to be distracted for a second. However, after you’ve completely cut your thumb off once, don’t you think you would be really really careful? He cut off the same thumb on two separate occasions! I mean, “fool me once…”

This speech then had less of the effect of warning us to be careful of the machine and more of the concern about what we would do if he cut his thumb off again in class. I mean, I presume we’d grab the drafting teacher, but should we look for the thumb? What do we do with it after we find it? Put it in that weird sawdust janitors use to clean up vomit? The only ice would be two flights down the stairs, would that take too long?

Fortunately, it stayed firmly on throughout the trimester, but it was a niggling worry.

Wish me luck on my class! Hopefully it’ll be lots of fun!

Bats!

On Sesame Street, when I was a lass, there was a purple fellow with long incisors named “The Count.” He counted things. One of his key numbers was a song that went “Batty batty bat. Batty batty bat. Batty batty bat. 1. 2. 3. Count!” The chorus was sung by tiny high pitched bat puppets. Thus a love of bats was born.

I even recall making my own bat puppet, probably using my mom’s best wool, complete with googly eyes and little teeth. Funny to think I could make a professional quality one now.

This continued into college. I still carry a trading card from a pack of cigarettes featuring a fruit bat. Someone gave it to me after a night of beer and frollicking. Later, I walked down Lakeshore Path and saw a tiny brown bat clinging to the side of the cement water building. I was admiring it and this freaky beatnik starting talking to me about the wonderousness of nature and the world—everything! I drew his attention to the bat and he said “Yeah, and the bat too!”

The pet guy who used to be on the Martha Stewart show has a pet fruit bat. I am deeply envious. He fed it grapes and explained he had no idea how old it is. It was full grown when it was given to him and that was 30 years ago!

For Halloween, Knut bought me a beautiful little bat skeleton. They truly are amazing. The power of flight, sonar, and snuggly soft fur.

Today, in fact, I am wearing a beautiful hand cast silver bat bracelet. It’s from Marty Magic. It was a princely sum 6 years ago and now even more! I’m glad she’s doing well; she has a very fine hand at minatures. I bought it in college. Perhaps on the same day I met my little bat clinging to the cement wall?

See some lovely bat photo here at National Geographic!

Sepia Tattoo Necklace

I love tattoos.

Love them!

That said, I don’t have any. It’s not any kind of moral issue or anything. I’m just totally incapable of deciding what I would want for more than ten minutes at a time. In fact, I would love to be a tattooist, except that I would have no street cred.

It’s a shame because I usually make tattooists fingers itch. I am of the glow-in-the-dark complexion, so pretty much all shading and colors would show up well on me.

Others are far more brave. My lovely friend Katy Rabbit recently unveiled a gorgeous sepia tinted tattoo. It reminds me a bit of a Norwegian tattooist’s work. She specialized in sepia almost pointillist style images. Like having an exceptionally beautiful birthmark.

Sooo elegant…

So flushed with jealously, I sought to recreate and made a necklace inspired by it. Behold the Sepia Flower Necklace. I really wanted to recreate the look of Katy’s tattoo in a piece that is a little less permadent.

It’s up on etsy, if you’d like a closer look: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=10370660

Cthulhu Dreams... about looking pretty!

I was goofing around thinking of all those rubber bracelets people wear and the novelty ones people have come up with as a result. I particularly liked a gray one with "Apathy" written on it.

Not because I necessarily disagree with the sentiments, but because I think your moral compass is a bit skewed if you need to look at your wrist to decide whether you should flip people off or punch puppies.

So I began to wonder... What Would Cthulhu Do? He wouldn't mind if you ate the last cookie. Heck, he wouldn't mind if you ate the souls of your enemies while you're at it.

Cthulhu is an ancient god who appears in H.P. Lovecraft's horror stories. He described as a hideous tentacled thing that oozes evil. He's a little more snuggly in my version.

Presenting the What Would Cthulhu Do? necklace!