Linda's Magic Workshop - Linda Britt Design

It's September and I'm really not ready for the fall season!  I'm still wanting those warm days with the  hot sun, a good book on my ipad and the quiet afternoons on my deck with the birds and lizards.  I've started looking in my closet for summer things that I haven't worn! And I'm thinking of things that I want to do before the first snow in late October.  In the meantime there are beautiful places to visit and help ease the transition into fall. Visiting the lakes and taking a walk are things we love to do on a glorious day here in Prescott AZ. Wednesday's are 'free park' days and Peter and I will start making our weekly trips to all the lakes checking on the birds in the area.  We went to Watson Lake and found some Cormorants, Canadian Geese, and local Mallards.  It was too early for the ducks to return andI got excited about the lines of plants with a Cormorant tucked in the center. The sky was blue with lovely billowy white clouds an

Recently I purchased Jeanette Kandray’s tutorial ‘Magnificent Mokume Gane’.  The pictures were so enticing that I just had to see and try her technique.  Mokume Gane is a metal working technique (Japanese) that fuses several layers of different colored precious metals together to form a sandwich of alloys.  The term is now used in many other mediums where different colors of materials such as polymer clay or metal clays are sandwiched.  In the case of polymer clay, we stack sheets of colored clay, make a design in them with tools or texture sheets, and carefully slice some of the top color away exposing the stacked colors beneath. Jeanette Kandray tutorial shares a technique that shortens the process considerably and produces varied effects depending on the choice of colors and texture sheets used.  The tutorial is well written and clearly illustrated.  In my opinion well worth the price of $12.00.     https://www.etsy.com/listing/457367494/magnificent-mokume-gane?ga_order

Each morning my goal is to have a beautiful day.  I remind myself that I am the one that makes my day a good one.  Most of the time I am successful.  This past month my ‘having a beautiful day’ system had a stress test.  A good friend died and in supporting his wife (also a good friend) a lot of memories surfaced from 14 years ago when my husband, my best friend, died and I worked through the grief.    A few years later I met Peter who became my ‘significant other’ (surely there is a better term!).  We’ve been together for 11 years.  I was surprised when I started feeling depressed following my friend’s death.  I expected to be sad – not depressed.   Staying positive, happy and focused on the good around me became difficult.  It took a few days for me to understand why I felt the way I did.   I needed to remind myself of a piece I wrote 5 years after my husband died.  It is still true for me. My Multi-Faceted Box By Linda Britt It’s there-all the time.  This mu

White satin handmade beads, turquoise, ages old granite beads This week I finished the white satin bead necklace and thought it only fair to share the pictures with you.  If you missed seeing the design phase, please look at the previous post. The white satin beads could have been polished to a brighter silver color but I wanted this to look earthy and from an archeology dig! I wore it one day and found it comfortable and not heavy.  People noticed, asked questions and liked it!  The final design works for me.  What's your opinion?  I'd love to hear from you.

Polished beads with satin finish Designing beads with Hadar's White Satin Clay and then deciding how to use them in a necklace is my latest project.  I wanted my white satin beads to look old like I went on an archeology dig and found them buried in the sand.  There are holes and slits as you can see in the picture above. Each bead is formed on  Microsphere (Noble Clays)  wrapped with a single thickness of clay.  I received the Microsphere at a workshop a couple of years ago and made the forms for the beads with it.  The beads are dried and kiln fired.  When they are cool, the sand like particles of Microsphere come out of the centers leaving hollow beads.   Before firing in the kiln After firing - the beads on the left are just out of the kiln and the ones on the right have the first sanding. I tried several combinations of  beads to go with my 'ancient' beads.  I thought it would be fun to share the process with you! Pewter lentil beads separa

Finished Conceptual Drawing This is one time when the finished product is true to the original drawing and exactly what I pictured. As you scroll  down you will see the entire set - necklace, earrings, bracelet!      There were several challenges and slight adjustments to directions as there are in any journey.  Every design seems to be a journey - sometimes in finding my unique path, sometimes in discovering new twists and turns of materials and sometimes learning or inventing new techniques to achieve the destination.  With each piece of jewelry I design comes a new adventure in creating something special for the end user.  "Wear your individuality" becomes more than a slogan for me and for my company. Taking the 3 strands through the steel tube where they become one strand. Focal I decided to make several earrings of various lengths to go with the necklace. And then I decided to add a bracelet!

  As often happens, the picture in my head is more difficult to construct in real life than to create in my mind.  In the previous post I left you thinking I would just make a replacement steel bead for the one that collapsed in the kiln.  I tried!  The replacement was much more ragged than the first one and unusable for this project.  I think I'll be able to create an interesting bead using it but not for this post.  Rather than go through the process of making a third bead, I decided to try to reshape the original.  A long metal rod was inserted and I hammered and after several tries it worked!   Time to decide what beads I would use with the steel ones I made.  I started with the ones in the picture.  And I added and rearranged and added and played with the shapes and colors.  When I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to use I started stringing.   At some point I realized I needed to make the center dangle/focal part or the necklace first.  The dangle had t

  A necklace design with components made from steel clay has been in my mind for quite a while now.  This week I decided to make a sketch so I could move the project along.  I want to use the long orange bead with a Middle Eastern theme as a focal (purchased it at the last Tucson Gem and Mineral Show.) Prima in Saran after pulling it out of the tube  I also want to use some of the basic techniques I learned in Hadar Jacobson’s class.  I bought a large block of Prima (a professional grade plastilina) that has wax and is great for forming a shape, wrapping it in saran and in this design, wrapping steel textured clay around it.  Then when the bead is dry, I will carefully pull out the saran with the Prima in it.  Works great as long as the ends are open enough for the Prima to exit.  I broke one tube doing this.  You also don't want to get the Prima warm as the wax will melt and there will be a mess! Sanding the tube I mix up Hadar’s steel clay, roll it out, texture

It’s been a while since my last post and while I missed writing them, I hope you also missed sharing my adventures!  Between a road trip to Berkeley and having painful (very painful) shoulder tendonitis my activities really slowed down.  Now I’M BACK!  Ready to explore new techniques and have fun. When I see a good tutorial about something new that catches my fancy, I buy it and eventually the day comes when I just have to try it.  Staci Louise Smith wrote a tutorial “Gold Rush: The Rustic Crackle Technique” for Craft Art Edu.  I loved the pictures of her necklaces and wanted to see what I could do.  If you like the crackle effect  on my pieces or want to try something new, check out her tutorial on   www.CraftArtEdu.com    They have good classes on many subjects. When I started following tutorials, I expected my pieces to look like the instructors.  That just did not happen and it is not the fault of the tutorial or the instructor.  It is that my mind and hands take the