A Sassy Conspiracy

Figured I might as well give the Overtones a little plug here (since I’m now an official member, yay me!). The Sexual Overtones are a very cool non-profit burlesque troupe in Ottawa: check them out at www.sexualovertones.ca. Our group will be performing our silent film act at this event, which should be lots of fun :) We’ll also be performing the same act at the Snowblower closing party on February 20, 2010 with LADYTRON! How cool is that? Very cool, I says.
And just so this post isn’t entirely un-craft-related, I made the poster! woo woo! I’m [not so] secretly excited to see them up around town!. :)

The very last of the Christmas present posts, I promise. Well, actually, that’s not true… now I have a bunch of awesome handmade goodies that were gifted to me by my talented friends, so I’ll be posting photos of those soon. But at least its the end of the Christmas crafts made by ME :)

Aeramel really liked the family pendent I made for the boy’s mom, so I decided to do something similar, with the names of her own new family. The cherry blossom is about 1.25″ wide, and is hand cut from sterling silver. I forgot to lubricate my bit before starting the holes and the damn thing seized in the silver, nearly taking my fingernail off. Won’t make that mistake again! I added a small green Swarovski crystal to the baby’s leaf, just to help emphasize that they’re leaves, not petals. Overall I think the design turned out quite well, and it hangs very nicely. Its not the most flattering shot of the leaves - you’ll just have to trust me that they are shiny :)

Here is a series of paintings I made as Christmas gifts for some of the girls. The cherry blossom branch and goldfish were drawn on printed paper (apparently a Japanese children’s story), then inked, painted with acrylics and cut out with an exacto knife. The wood canvases (6″x6″) were treated with acrylic washes and different textures, then the images were sealed on with gel medium and finished with a thick coat of resin. The moon was painted on a sheet of Nick Cave lyrics (whom the recipients are huuuge fans of), then cut out and sealed onto the canvas with gel medium. The tree, owl, rabbit and hill silhouettes were painted with black acrylics (each of the recipients associate with one of the animals). The canvas (8″x10″) is finished with a thick coat of resin.

Goldfish

Cherry Blossoms

By the light of the pale moon

Pretty happy with how they all turned out - just enough of the text shows through the paintings that I think it adds a neat texture to it. I also added a touch of metallic paint to each (gold on the fish’s scales, bronze on the cherry blossom branch, and sliver highlights on the tree) that I’m really happy still show through the resin. I really love how the resin makes all the colours seem to pop more :D

Gift for Erika’s birthday. Hand cut, hammered and polished sterling silver goldfish, with removable “bubble” accents (rhodium-plated Swarovski crystal chain, and apatite/sterling chain). The goldfish is approx. 2″ wide.

So here’s my pride and joy - the gift I made for my guy for Christmas. This took no less than 14 hours to do, and even then I was rushing it by the end (hehe yes I know, I double struck a few of the letters, but I still think its a cute effect!) I’m reeeaally pleased with how it turned out. Both dog tags are cut from 22 gauge sterling silver, and the heart pieces from 20 gauge sterling. I was pretty nervous about making him jewelry since I haven’t really done mens jewelry before and was rather overwhelmed by the whole thing. I decided to only polish the heart on the front dog tag and left the background distressed. I like the sort of water stain look the patina has around the heart though, and i think it helped make it look a little more grungy. The back tag is very shiny and has a love poem stamped into it. Alas, I did not compose the poem myself (and cannot credit it as it’s anonymous), but I though it was really touching and suited the piece perfectly. I used my super awesome new flex shaft to polish this piece and wow.  it’s AMAZING. The tags are hung on an 18″ sterling ball chain.

I made these as Christmas gifts for Erika last year, but never got photos before they were packed away for the year.  They’re ornaments made from 3″ watchmaker’s tins. The little presents and teddy bear I made with sculpy.

This was made for a previous jewelry sale and somehow never made it on to my website. It’s a water themed bracelet featuring sterling silver seashell charms and beads, Swarovski crystals, fresh water pearls, semi-precious stones, and glass beads. It is constructed on a base of Tiffany-style sterling silver chain and fastens with a sterling toggle clasp. All headpins are hand made from sterling silver. Approximate length is 8.5″.

Thanks to the efforts of the lovely Pookzilla, A Sassy Conspiracy now has its very own online store! You can access it on the top menu under Sassy Shop. You’ll have to bear with me while I get all the little details sorted out and populate the shop, but I’m pretty excited with how its coming along. I’m on the fence about whether or not I’ll be keeping my Etsy shop (its currently on vacation), mostly because I’m not terribly happy with the service. My main peeve about Etsy is that you have to set your prices in US$, and I find this really frustrating from a pricing point of view. Anyway, it’s nice to have everything on the one site.  This may mean that I’ll have to make some changes to the layout of my website, but we’ll see what happens.

Some personalized jewelry for my guy’s parents.

The ring for his dad has all four of their names on it (stamped after the ring was forged). I brushed the ring a bit with steel wool to keep it more “manly” looking, and I think it turned out pretty nice. The necklace for his mom has four hand cut disks, each with one of their names on it. I forgot to get a picture of it, but amour is stamped on the back of the biggest disk. Both projects are sterling silver.

There, now that I’m all caught up on the jewelry sale stuff, I can start showing off some of the Christmas crafts :) This will be ongoing throughout the month since we only celebrate with our friends at the end of January.

I made this for mom - I’ve dubbed it the Caribbean Princess (a nod to the lovely ship we were on earlier in December). It has a bunch of objects I found while in the Caribbean - a blue shell, a piece of conch shell, a Bajan dollar, an East Caribbean quarter, a piece of sea glass and a piece of coral. I’m the first to admit I’m rubbish at wire wrapping larger objects, but I don’t think I did too badly with the glass and the coral. The little pineapple I picked up at an antique sale a while back (sterling).  The rest is sterling silver, Swarovski crystal and pearls, peridot, turquoise and fresh water pearls. I played a little with the Caribbean colour scheme I’m so obsessed with - the blues down there are unreal. Drilling the coins was the very first thing I did with my new flex shaft. It is so awesome I can’t even express it - it whipped through those coins like they were, well, something not metal.

Hmm just remembered I haven’t posted any Halloween crafts yet… yeesh.