Nicolette’s Design Diary

I was planning on spending Sunday afternoon working on my new website for my Handmade Birthstone Jewelry series, when my husband reminded me that the Stockely Gardens Arts Festival was taking place this weekend. The was mostly because I like going to these event, but when you’re working from home, you sometimes have to remind yourself (or someone else has to remind you) to leave the house on occasion.

The Stockley Gardens Arts Festival is a twice-yearly show that takes place in the Ghent Area of Norfolk, Virginia. The show held by the Hope House Foundation, a local non-profit that provides independent living support to adults with developmental disabilities, as a way to support local and regional artists. The Stockley Gardens Art Festival has been held at the historic Stockley Gardens Park for over 25 years with a Spring show held in May and a Fall show held in October. There’s usually about 150 artists in each show ranging from painters, photographers, glass artists, sculptors, and jewelers.

With music and food and visitors bringing family and friends, both the two and four legged kind, this is a pretty fun show to attend and/or participate in. Fortunately for this year’s spring show the weather was sunny and bright and not too terribly humid and hot. There was a pretty big crowd by the time I arrived on Sunday afternoon and looked like there was a lot of art buying too.

At every show, you either see a piece of art that wows you or meet an artist that wows you. Turns out that I encountered both this time.

The piece of work that made me smile was from artists Shandi Berls and Casey McConnell from Creative Works Pottery and Tile. As the name of the company suggests, they are a pair of ceramic artists from Wilmington, North Carolina that create a variety of ceramic artwork including jewelry, pottery, and wall pieces and frames. There were two pieces in particular that I was dying to get my hands on. One piece was a three dimensional wall piece built just like a dandelion gone to seed. Wires were inserted to a ceramic semi-spherical base and at each end of the wire were small colorful ceramic flowers. There was also a version with a full sphere that could be used as a chandelier. I so wished that I could have gotten a picture to display on the blog, but out of respect to the artists, I do not take pictures of individual work when I’m at a show. But, the artists do have a website and you can see examples of their work here. The picture shown here are wall pieces displayed on their website and you can visit their Etsy store here.

The artist that wowed me at Stockley Gardens was actually an artist from my hometown of Richmond, Virginia, photographer, Kenneth Smiegowski. He’s was one of the last booths I visited during the show, but it was the once that I had the most fun in. He takes lovely pictures of nature, landscapes, and still lifes of flowers, vegetables and fruit. There’s a lovely photograph of Chinese lanterns that I’m claiming pretty soon. But in addition to being a great photographer, he’s also a great character and conversationalist. I spent a good 20 minutes in his booth talking about Richmond, politics, and art. He had me laughing and smiling the whole time and was a great way to end out my tour of the show.

In addition to selling photography, he also does one-on-one photography lessons for those who wish individual instruction on how to improve their photography. If his teaching is as entertaining as his conversation, then the lesson should be well worth it. You can check out Kenneth’s website here.

Etsy seller DawnCorrespondence has included my Pink Clouds Book Earrings in her Sweet Springtime Etsy Treasury! Based around spring-like items and the color pink, this treasury is loaded with some really cute items…my favorites being the Breezy Cherry Blossoms change purse, the lovely white Porcelain Bud Vase, and the Fly Away Home Ring. You can take a look at these items and more at the Treasury page here.

Actually, this particular Treasury is part of the Etsy’s beta Treasury program called Treasury East. Apparently Treasury East doesn’t have many of the limits that the original Etsy treasuries had (item number limits, time limits, etc) and it is the testing ground for what Treasuries will become in the future for Etsy. You can learn more about Treasury East Beta here.

Be sure to visit DawnCorrespondence’s Etsy store. She has some really wonderful note cards, customized announcements, and stationary, including bridal stationary…and she’s also from my hometown of Richmond, Virginia!

My mother was a computer programmer when I was growing up. When I was a little girl, Mom would often take me to work with her and I got to see these huge computers that would fill up entire rooms that were freezing cold because the air conditioning had run constantly to keep those massive machines from overheating. It’s funny to think that the MacBook Pro I’m typing on now is more powerful and has more memory than those gigantic computers I grew up with. Along with those computers, there were other interesting things in those computer rooms like big bins of colorful used computer punch cards, and large stack of dot matrix computer sheets, and big containers of data and cable wire which I use to play with when I got bored. I like to think that I got my interest in wirework because of those early days of playing with data wire.

Those days of playing with wire came back to my when I was looking at the work of Courtney Watson from Twisted Handmade. She makes fun and colorful jewelry out of twisted data cable and wire. Really cool stuff. You can check out the rest of her work here at the Maker’s Market and on her personal blog. In addition to jewelry, she also makes baskets out of data wire. Check it out!

(via Craftzine)

Just got word that my Peas in a Pod Book Earrings got picked for a book-themed Etsy Treasury by Kids At Heart Designs! It’s always great to be picked for these treasuries, especially since they can be so hard to get. I especially like this one because I love all things that deals with books. The picks by Kids At Heart includes things like Novel Book Purse, a Steampunk Valentine bookmark, and a Hollow Book Safe with a 6oz stainless steel flask to fill with your favorite liquid. Some really cute stuff!

This treasury is going to expire around noon on Monday, so be sure to go check it out before then here. And be sure to check out Kids At Heart Designs Etsy store too. She has some pretty cute vintage paper goods stuff in her store!

My beloved 60GB iPod died a couple months ago and I hadn’t had a chance to get a new one. But this clever iPod Shuffle cover pendent might encourage me to get a Shuffle to tide me over. Very cool!

(via Daily Art Muse)

You guys remember friendship bracelets? I remember this being all the rage when I was in middle school back in the 80’s and I managed to grow quite a big embroidery stash because of it. I suppose things don’t change much throughout the years…

The “How to Make Jewelry Blog” has a whole section on how to make friendship bracelets using the always popular embroidery floss and other materials including hemp and plastic gimp.

Hmm…just looking at these patterns makes me want to break out my embroidery floss stash…

I just got in a new set of paper samples this weekend for my small book earrings and my paper bead earrings and been hard at work experimenting with new designs. This time around I ordered a lot of my favorite kind of paper, Japanese washi.

Japanese washi a medium weight paper made with mulberry fibers. There is a variety of different types of washi, but the kind that most people are familiar with, and the kind I use in my jewelry is Chiyogami or Yuzen washi. This type of washi has a variety of colorful and decorative patterns silk screened on the plain mulberry paper base.  One thing about making jewelry with paper is that you have to pick patterns that will look good on a small scale, otherwise you’ll just get large blocks of color instead a mixture of colors and patterns. Chiyogamil washi is perfect for this purpose.

I got a lot of washi where the dominant color is green to make more green book patterns for my “Wearing o’ the Green promotion on my Etsy shop. So look for

Some of the other papers I’m testing for new jewelry include Pasticcio prints, which are silkscreened cotton rag paper from India.

I’m also intrigued by this new type of paper made of recycled cotton viscose called Stardurst Chiffon. Basically it has a semi-translucent texture that feels similar to fabric.

It has a nice glittery background and is printed with delicate patterns of flowers and vines. What I like about this paper is that fact that it has glitter in the background without it becoming too overpowering like so many other papers that use glitter in the base of the paper. So I’m very interested to see how this paper turns out in my test designs. So keep an eye out!

It’s the Wearing ‘o the Green Time on my Etsy shop! Make sure that you don’t get pinched this year on St. Patrick’s Day! Get free shipping on all my green book earrings in my store from March 1st to March 15th! New green designs are added daily! Check out the “Seasonal” section of my store to see which earrings are eligible for free shipping. For updates on new green designs, be sure to visit my Etsy store daily or follow me on Twitter.

Today’s Wearing ‘o the Green earrings are:

I’ve been doing some paper shopping for some new designs for my Paper Bead Jewelry and for my small book jewelry. With the spring coming, hopefully very soon, I’m doing some freshening up of my online store and my Etsy store. Meanwhile, I’ve been hard at work putting up some designs that had been working on over the winter. I’ve updated my Etsy store with 5 new designs, one of which, the Purple Clover Book Earrings, sold within hours of me putting them up. Fortunately, I had another pair to put up in the shop, so if you like any of these designs, be sure to visit my Etsy store to see my entire selection:

If you want up to the minute updates on when new stuff goes up on my Etsy shop, follow me on Twitter!