Second life for a bunch of enamelled arrowheads.

Fresh out of the studio are these bunch of pendants. These enamelled pendants started out life as arrow heads for a sculpture I was working on. Over the years though that project kind of died and I had these beautiful arrowheads on hand and figured I had to do something to make them wearable. Here they are as pendants with a copper accent designed for each one :) I already sold the one shaped like a pipal leaf and the one with the copper half moon ! Still have a couple left and will be posting those soon .

How to give your studio a makeover in the existing space

Losing a studio or a workspace can be extremely devastating to any artist ( trust me I know) so when I lost my studio last year in August I thought I was doomed :( For months I tried to work out of my room with barely any space to move around. Every time I turned around I either scraped my elbow on my bench vise or bumped my knee on my bench. Eventually I lost the will to work on my jewelry. I figured what was the point every tool either dropped and broke ( my soldering torch) or fell on my foot almost breaking it ( my forming block) . My mind kept going over ways to find cheap rental places or day dreaming about if only I was rich ( I know sounds terrible ) . Soon I too realized that it was time to get practical and accept facts that my old room was the only space I had and I was unwilling to take over the living room since I still wanted to keep my home looking normal. So one fine day I had this epiphany what if I  only had this space but empty minus all of my bulky studio furniture ( See half of my studio furniture were hand me down tables that I had modified and the rest haphazardly bought ) It struck me that if I completely redesigned my tables to my exact specifications I could actually be saving a lot of space so after a week of measuring,  drawing and redrawing I came up with a sketch and called my carpenter over for a quote. He of course had to make quite a few modifications and this is what I finally had made

I do not have the 'before' shots unfortunately but as you can see there is quite a bit of open space in the foreground even with a chair kept in front of my bench on the right. The multi drawered table on the right actually holds all of my tools, metal, scrap and wires. 

Its not all done yet as you can see my tool board isn't up yet and will be going above my bench and hold all my precious hammers and mallets. Plus I only just figured out a great way to neatly store all my wire roles. Most copper and brass wires are sold by the running length and not rolled onto a spool but merely twisted into a roll, that stays neat for a grand total of about 3 projects by which time finding a free end is a nightmare. So here is what I did I bought cheap pvc pipes and cut them up into 5 inch pieces cut notches with my trusty saw on either ends, then simply stuck in one end of the wire into a notch rolled the wire onto the pipe and stuck the other end into the opposite notch and voila mess free wire roles.

So now that the tables are here guess its time to get back to work :P 

Movie mania !

       I often have people ask me what I do for a living and the minute I explain that I am a metal artist who also loves to paint I get a response "Oh Wow So Exciting !! you're an artist!!" Well I hate to burst their bubble and tell them that while I am lucky enough to be doing what I love for a living it still is a lot of hard work! From coming up with new designs (I actually love that the most) to working out techniques to taking great images of my work and coming up with content for blogs, newsletters Facebook fan pages, Networking, organizing the umpteen details of an exhibition to .... well you get the picture :) So while it is fun in some parts in others its just plain old work.

Recent exhibition featuring my work 

            Today I got to see the other side and by that I mean the hard work side of another glamorous and exciting profession - Movies, motion pictures, films call it what you will its what really excites most of us. Me I get completely gobsmacked when I see animation films and special effects. The sheer brilliance always has me staring open mouthed at the screen. Well today I had the most amazing experience of getting a behind the scenes glimpse of things. A friend of mine is a film maker and is working on her very first independent film Its a children's film and while I am not allowed to give out any more details I can say this : A brilliant piece of work and I will be sharing details once it releases :) ( sneaky huh? ) Well anyways its been shot in a remote village and it has some scenes involving village women talking, laughing and such and my friend wanted me and a few of her friends to pitch in with these'extra' voices. Some of us jumped at the idea and yours truly was a bit skeptical about being able to help. So what was required you ask? well we were to dub the voices of the women in the background, village women to be specific . In certain scenes it was women talking or laughing or giggling ( oh  yes it gets very specific) women fighting at the water tap!
           Thing is it just looks so easy but when you get down to it I realized there is so much attention to detail in voice pitch, volume, language, tone ....  I mean have you ever fought at a water tap? I certainly hadn't and getting the correct tone of indignation at another woman shoving her water pot under the tap was impossible for me to get! What completely amazed me was the sheer amount f patience these people have,there was a guy who was actually directing all the dubbing and he analyzed every hmm , haw , laugh, giggle word or tone that went out and each time it was recorded with every little change and then this guy, the recording artist and my friend get together at a later date and design the sounds ! Whew now I know why a film costs as much as it does and takes as much time .
All in all though it was an amazing experience and sure am glad I went :) So what new and fun experience have you had recently?