Thank you one and all

I always feel uplifted and a deep sense of gratitude when I share the personal side of my life and you respond with such heartfelt support and love. It has been a difficult week coming to terms in my own way with my Mum's health. Grief takes many forms and what I feel is difficult to explain even to myself.

What I do is retreat to the studio because in the silence of making I find the space in my mind to come to terms with the things I have no control over. I can let go. This week I made boxes out of sheet brass. Each was created with a specific person in mind. Each are reflections of what I feel for them. All people I love. Each a person that has made a difference in my life. Little acts of making ground me to the here and now, and pull me out of the conflict of emotions I feel around my mother's last days.

Mum is doing well. She is comfortable. She has said that she is at peace, that she is ready. We have no idea how long she has. But that she is ready is something that gives me great comfort.

Once again, thank you all for your very kind support and well wishes. It's not all sadness here. While I look at closing one door, I look at the future too. We've got wonderful plans for the holiday, welcoming our newest members into the family and building new traditions on the foundation of our old ones.

Finished! well almost

Remember the little peek from back here?  Well I am almost finished with the batch. Now I am testing out my patience waiting for the resin the porcelain pieces are set in. You know, watching resin cure is even more interesting than watching paint dry. Obviously, I had a little trouble in the patience department because I could not resist making one of the pendants up into a necklace.

Do you see what I see up there? There is one bead that does not match the others. I was sure I had 4 glass beads that matched. I'm leaving it. I'm calling it design perogative. The lesson here is match beads twice, wire wrap once.

This one is going off to someone special. It's not really a surprise so I can show it to you here. I'm pretty fond of this one. In fact I'm pretty fond of this whole idea but I've got a few things that I want to work out yet. Not the least of which is beefing up my patience with resin.

I really like the etched backs on these pendants. It's like a little surprise. I had a ceramics instructor once who insisted that the bottom of a pot should be just as special as the top. He did all of these amazing designs inside the foot ring of his pots. His thinking was that as you are washing up, you should enjoy looking at the bottom of a bowl or plate just as much as you enjoy the top. I think that's a sort of sweet idea.

Happy Weekend!!!!!

Playing with patina and Miss Fickle Media

OK, I haven't been playing with Miss Fickle Media. She lives to far away. Dang. But I've been playing with patina on etched brass and copper over the last couple of days. Many thanks to Shannon of Miss Fickle Media for publishing an ebook that leads you through the process. She's been experimenting with patinas for nearly two years, and this book of hers, Colour Drenched Metal, is well worth it if you want to a great resource for patina on metal. She guides you through the types of patinas, application, safety, and everything you might need to set up a patina station in your studio. What can I say? It is just a fantastic book! Shannon even has patina solutions in her Etsy shop.

I decided to jump right in and start layering patinas. My preferance at this time was to go with transparent patinas and I gotta say it's a steep learning curve. Look at those pieces up there. They've got their patina on but they are kind of dry and crusty looking. Not really what I was after, except for colour.

Here are those pieces with sealer on. Whew, much better. And they feel good too. One of the things I'm finding is that I want to go after this process like a mad scientist. I can just see myself opening a whole new note book of tests. A lot like I do with glazing ceramics. This could become addictive.

I'm off to First Friday now. It's been a long time since I've gone on First Friday rather than 'done' First Friday. I'm very excited because I'm going to see glass art at the gallery where I do my monthly art market. There's a new hot glass studio opening there and I just can not wait to see the glass furnace. I love fire! I love hot glass!

Have a lovely weekend!

Big Pile of Brass

Finally, today I got around to finishing up some brass pieces I etched a while ago. That whole wedding planning frenzy has played havoc with my work schedule. I confess, the real reason I didn't get these pieces finished is that I lack discipline. But the wedding planning is just too much fun to give up to polish brass pieces. I do love brass. There is just something about that warm glow of brass that has a patina that makes my little heart sing. It's good to see these little pieces go from almost black with tarnish to soft and glowing. Most of these are going off with me to the Austin Beads Society show this weekend.

In a little wedding planning news, which of course I can't resist, much got done during my quick trip to Wichita. The bride has a dress, the brides maids have dresses, we have a place. Look at those flowers up there in front of the building where the reception will be held. It makes it so easy to decorate for the wedding because mother nature is doing the best stage setting we could ever get. Why mess with that? I'd love to show you photos of the bride and her wedding dress but a certain groom is known to lurk on my blog from time to time. It just wouldn't do to let him have a preview of the big day. And Cole, if you out there lurking, just don't even think about trying to get any top secret information out of us.

Where did the week go?

This week flew by with me in bed most of the time with allergy related migraines. Doesn't happen often, but when it does, I am completely useless. Yesterday, I spent a little time transferring some drawings to copper and brass in an ugly process I will never use again. But I did get to try out the etchant formula that Barbara Lewis posted on her blog some time ago. Its great stuff and I think I like it even better than the Radio Shack  environmentally nasty stuff. Best thing about this formula is it is easy to get the ingredients and easy to store.

We are off to the wilds of far far north Wisconsin tomorrow. Did I really think that a 6 am flight to Minneapolis was a good idea?  It's a quick weekend trip for a family reunion and a memorial service for my husband's uncle. He died some months ago but the family decided to do the memorial service this summer up where he grew up and where they have a cabin. It's kind of a bittersweet trip. We'll see family that we haven't seen for a long time but saying good bye to Uncle Stan is a little hard. On the other hand I can't think of a more special place to celebrate his life. So many beautiful family memories have been gathered up at that cabin on the lake.

We'll be back early Tuesday. See you then!

Small Things, Tiny Moments

I worked a lot this weekend. I etched, cut, domed, drilled and made many small things. Work is what I do when I have things that I need to work out in my mind. If my hands are busy I don't become overwhelmed with difficult things.

A couple of weeks ago, the FRG from Fort Cambell called, really just to let me know they are there if I had questions. They also told me that the 5 soldiers who died when their truck was hit by an IED were not from my son's unit. He was OK. I knew he was OK because one of the things you get used to when you have a family member deployed is that the first people to know about death of a soldier is the immediate next of kin. And you know that between 10pm and 6am, there will be no knock on the door. So you can relax then.

I'm always relieved when I know my son is alright but at the same time I have terrible feelings of guilt that he is alright but a mother, wife, child is greiving the loss of their loved one. I know this is normal. I work through it. I've been through this before, many times.

My son phoned early Saturday morning. I had only just gotten out of bed. We chatted about normal mundane daily life. How's the chow? How are the dogs? What's your new duty assignment? He's a medic and does evacuation. I'm relieved at this point that he's not doing dismounted patrol this time around. I mentioned the call from the FRG and that we knew the 5 soldiers were not from his unit. It's so hard to get news out of Afghanistan. But it's not true. My son evacuated the bodies and they lost another soldier last week.

One month on the ground in Kunar province and they've lost 6 already. As a family we've been through this before. You cope. You live with the fear. You look forward to those few precious moments when you can chat. I know the toll being a medic in a war zone took on my son. I also know how strong he is and that he will get through this time too.

But as I got off the phone, all I could think of was the last time I saw my son. He said, Mummy, let me give you a hug in case I don't see you again. He meant before I left for home early the next day. But still, that hug lingers there in my memory. I cherish it.

As I worked through my thoughts and emotions this weekend, it became important to me to make some sort of sense out of the little scraps of metal in my tray. I started making smaller and smaller pendants with tiny little glass beads. I was making order out of a chaos of conflicting thoughts and emotions. I saw life as a series of moments and the little pieces I made were a tiny testimonial to how special those moments are. Each moment is unique but added together they make a life.

This one is on a silver chain around my neck right now. A reminder to embrace the tiny moments that are life.