I'm excited are you exicted? You should be excited, why aren't you excited? If you can't tell, its time to unveil another theme for the semester! This time it's Noisemakers. And I don't mean these:
I mean it more in the literal sense of objects making noise. This probably means that most of this semester's stuff will focus on rattling things, but perhaps a flute might be made or something. The theme did largely come about because of the inherent playfulness in making an item make a sound, and because the Click Clack earrings I made to sell are so named for the noise they make swinging around.
I'll admit I haven't thought about the theme much beyond rain sticks and jingle bells and poking around on Wikipedia has just turned up wierd instruments like the Vibraslap. I blame the alternative materials project and the six trips to the craft stores it caused as a distraction. When we last left it I had finished this:
and obtained Legos to make jewelry of instead. Also, please enjoy the above poorly cropped photo of the foam flower in action.
And here's that finished piece. I can't decide on a title for it; I go between something like "Up and At 'em" or "Into the Blue" (obscure movie reference ahoy!) since there's a fighter jet at the bottom.
Look! You can even tilt the plane up slightly... Okay I'm still annoyed that I had to pay for a brand new Batman Lego set just to get the traffic light colored pieces for the earrings and the compliment I got on them was when I was buying my third shot at beads from A.C. Moore.
It's the set in question! can you guess how much it cost because of licensing?
I tried salvaging some of them into this poorly thought out necklace with the car. Now that I think about it I wish I had access to a drill this weekend so I could have drilled some of the houses and hotels from Monopoly in order to make it seem like the car is on a street around your neck, but alas. A project for another day...
Since concluding these things is a bit of a bear, for the semester I'll just post some songs and sounds I like, starting with my current favorite song from OCRemix.org.
Here is the page where you can download it for free. I have always liked upbeat video game music and this is no exception.It's also the chief reason I bought F-Zero for my SNES. Expect many songs from here and a few video game and other sound effects. Not much that it has to do with making noise, but it is a noise I like. And everyone knows listening to music while working in the studio is perhaps the most essential element! In the meantime We can sit back and reflect on how programmers got catchy tunes out of five or so available channels on the circuit board.
and make it even weirder! New semesters always start out in such a way... Right off the bat we've got an alternative materials project. I was expecting it to be a full project, and thus designed a big old piece for it:
It's this thing right here1
But it turned out that we were to be given a mystery packet of materials to use for the project, and it would be due next class (in two days) and all we had to do was make some sort of body adornment, no rings.
I wound up with this foam stuff and thought it would be alright until I tried to scrunch the red sheet into an abstract flower. It was too thick to do it so I wound up cutting petals and sewing it together. That wasnt enough so I added a yellow center out of some other foam I had, and a greenish plastic flower I found on the ground somewhere. There still wasn't enough pouf to it so after flying to the craft store,
I got some ridiculous(ly expensive) green mesh ribbon to make it completly obnoxious. The piece is about a foot or so long, and sadly unloved in our peer rating/jurying thing. Perhaps I'll use it as a Christmas ornament this year, it uses magnets to pinch a shirt between it when wearing it on the shoulder, and therefore also sticks to any metallic surface. Just don't put any electronics near it.
For our next and last go at making alternative material body adornment we got to see what was in the next set of packets, and the majority of them were Lego based. This pic has some of them in it, while the others are arranged into this:
I am liking this necklace so far, but it is so hard to not just mash the Legos together and call it a day. Similarly I'm having trouble working up the urge to ruin the little Micro Machines car, though I have no idea where I'd work it into the piece. The long Legos that make up the drop of the pendant will be spray painted light blue but beyond that who knows? I feel bad that I cannot come up with ways to use more of the materials, like I'm supposed to. Maybe matching earrings? Nothing to do but get back to it, I guess...
Dull post title but accurate! For those of you interested in owning a piece of jewelry I've got prices listed below on those ready to go. All earring posts and hooks are made of sterling silver, and the entire piece is sterling for the tube and curve designs. If there was something else you wanted from the original post showing off the pieces, don't hesitate to email me, the link for which is in my profile. And if you're not interested in these, there's a small preview after the price list of what I'm developing next.
Tube Earrings $35
Tube Necklace: $100
Triangle Earrings: $20
"Reverse" Earrings: $10
Click Clack Earrings: $15
Curve Pendant: $40
Curve Earrings: $30
For the grand preview, I have finally learned how to drill seaglass! As you can see the ear wires got quite experimental, and because of that these aren't quite ready for sale yet, but they will be soon.
The other things I am looking at for production is a few older designs to improve upon and as always using alternative materials and recycling/upcycling. Not pictured are some ideas involving the square studs from studded belts which im still working out, among other things. Stay tuned!
Despite being slammed to the wall with daily life, I was able to crank out these single earrings as samples for production.
Since I foolishly said I banged these out over the weekend I now have been set to making ten more earring samples and five pins which will be interesting as real life theatens to take over this week as well.
On the upside in the pre-critique for these pieces they were greeted favorably which naturally means I hated them. Still I wanted to further explore combining acrylic with metal and of course started coming up with a boat load of interesting designs after the critique. Side note: everyone liked the leaf earring even though I think its the most boring thing ever but, I have redesigned the earwire for it so stay tuned I guess?
Somehow in all this I remembered records are made of vinyl which is a plastic and that there are tons of them to be had for dirt cheap at thrift stores so new material ahoy!
I'm pleased to announce cutting a record is easier than acrylic, even factoring in how thin it is, and quite fun actually! Im also glad it didn't shatter even when drilling it to start making these earrings:
I wussed out and didn't use silver sheet for the overlaying tear drop pieces because the sheet I do have of sterling is a lot smaller than I thought which is why these look a little like roads, but oh well. The next step is to ball up some silver wire for ear wires on my fancy home soldering system:
Also work mates are awesome and everyone should have at least one, go to Sears now and buy one, I command it!
For the other earrings I'm going to attempt to make an image dump post with the finished projects as the sketches aren't much to look at and make little sense to anyone but me. And as for other alternative materials to explore there's always laser discs.
