Sparkly little things..

The first apartment my husband and I moved into was in the Short North, the little Arts District of Columbus, Ohio. I was still an art student, and I used to love strolling up and down High Street, peeking in the galleries and cute little shops.

I was always drawn into this wonderful beading store called Byzantium, by the wall of sparkly seed beads and Japanese Delicas visible through the window. I loved to stare at the glittering tubes in all colors of the rainbow covering the wall. Occassionally, I would bring a few tubes home and store them in my secret stash of pretty art stuff.

The only problem with this is that I hate to string beads. I tried it for a little while, but it just wasn't aggressive enough for me. I didn't have enough patience for it. So, years later, I still have a box full of sparkly beads. A few weeks ago I pulled them out and stared at them again, thinking about what alternate uses I could find for them.

In my recent experiments with metal clay I have a small collection of fine silver charms and shapes that I sculpted and fired by hand. I've been trying to find the perfect way to finish them. So I decided to bring these two little groups together; setting the sparkly Delicas in Fine Silver.

It was super difficult to work on such tiny surfaces; I wanted to use the silver like a canvas and "paint" with the Delicas, setting them with transparent colors or clear epoxy. After attaching pins to the back so that they became brooches, I built tiny little mounds out of cork clay to help me grip onto the tiny charms, sticking the pin side into the clay mound.

I painted the tiny little pins in shiny, sparkly colors. It took hours and by the time I was done my vision was blurry and I'm pretty sure I was looking a little cross-eyed, but I finished them! In the end most of the pins remind my of a post-post modern version of enameling work; classy but funky and whimsical at the same time. I'll be putting a few in my shop over the next couple of days. Check them out! :)