New 'Things'

The last couple of days I have been working on my bookkeeping which is due by thursday. It is not really a 'thing', so I can't show it of here, and so I took a few days off from the 'thing'.
I did get a couple of hours of torchtime in on sunday though, and here is some of what I made.

A goddess, nice and slender, and big! It's been a while since I made one last, and I were surprised to see that she is very close to the size of my largest ever goddess. Which is nice since I want to go bigger.


A purple leaf pendant bead, like the one I sold at Valdemar Slot Christmas Market.


And two tops for plantsticks. They would be lovely pendants, but they are huge!


Then I decided to end the day with another goddess. Unfortunately I forgot to keep her heated while fiddling with the neck and shoulder area, and she exploded :/ If you can use a broken goddess do let me know and I'll send her to you. Something mosaic perhaps? She is complete except that she has no nipples. It is the very last thing I do when making a goddess, and the only thing undone on her. And she is not annealed. (ETA: the broken Goddess is on her way to a good home)



P~

Nipsenåle

Nipsenåle is an antique toy, that was given to little girls in Denmark during the first half of the 1900s. It is a purely Danish phenomenon of playing with pins with a glass head.

Some pins were short and with a simple single coloured drop of glass, those were for playing. Others were more interesting and were for collecting and admirering. Those were longer pins and had glass figures at the end. Many were of birds and other animals, and different series like 'People of the World' or 'Animals from Africa'.

The needles were stuck into little pillows, often made form expensive fabric, and were arranged and rearranged over and over by the little girls.

Today these fascinating little treasures are still collected, and since I have always loved miniatures of almost any kind, I have decided to try my hand at making nipsenåle. These are my test needles.




It really does take some practice to work at this size, but I am very happy with these. Especially the tiny cute elephant who is about 1 cm tall, and the robot who unfortunately has cracks from getting too cold while getting the details done.
I have gotten hold of a bunch of long pins and I look forward to decorating each one with a little piece of nostalgic treasure.

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Thing-a-day 2011

Today is the first day of this years Thing-a-day.
Last year I joined up and had a lot of fun making different things for the 28 days of february (although some days it would end up being an emergency haiku). At the end I proclaimed that I would do it again this year, but ... It seems I am already good at giving myself projects to take care of, and I will have plenty to do without the added stress of having to blog every day. So I have decided to not join up, but to do my own thing and blog it frequently.

The first thing I'd like to present was made during the last days of december. I needed a gift for my mother for christmas, and after a bit of thinking I decided to make something myself, and that I would be making plant sticks. I have been making a new (to me) type of pendants lately, so I figured: 'Make a large one, turn it upside down and glue it to a stick', voilá, a nice and fancy plant stick.
I sacrificed a couple of my less worn mandrels, and this is what I came up with.




They look great, catching the sun among the greenery on her windowsill :)

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Goodness is raining upon me

2011 is starting out very nicely and I have high hopes of a wonderful year :)
I have had a couple of nice sales, a couple of nice mentionings, and most wonderful of all - my goddesses are now in an actual Gallery! Yay!

Firstly, thank you to Dorit, not only for mentioning my Amio shop as a favourite in her frontpage interview, but also blogging about the goddesspendant and facebead she got from me back in august. Dorit lives in Greenland and has a shop of her own at Amio: DOOit Design She sews, felts, paints, she works in sealskin. I find these earrings especially interesting, made from earstones from the fish she is holding in the last picture.

Secondly - Major thanks to Karin Castens for taking in my godesses. She is a fabulous jeweler living here in Copenhagen, and has just opened her own gallery of jewellery.


It's such a lovely place and you can read all about it in her blog this month. Here is the lady herself, working on a new pendant.


I love what she can do with metal, and visiting her gallery makes me want to work in silver again. It's been about 15-20 years since I did any silverwork last, and I never took it much of anywhere then. It's no wonder I hardly remember how, but I'm getting ideas all over again, so who knows? :) I will definately keep it in mind for when I get my basement renovated.

In any case, she is not only incredibly talented, she is also very nice, and this is where she put my Godesses. I'm so happy! :)


Go see her jewellery at Amio, or if you are in Copenhagen, live in the gallery!

Yay for 2011!

P~

Christmas Market at Valdemar Castle 2010

As I said a few weeks ago, my friend Lenette had invited me to share her boothspace at Valdemar Castle this passed weekend. The last couple of days before saturday presented us with a lot of snow, and I were worried that perhaps I shouldn't go since there were no time to get the summertires changed to fit the season :/

It all went smoothly though, and I had a great weekend. It was cold, it was snowy, it was beautiful. Lots of people came over the two days, and I had a great time with Lenette and the other sellers.

Here is Lenette demoing a bit of lampwork



here is my table



here the entire booth



and here is a fresh new pendant I sold. I only just made it and I am quite proud of it.
I'll have to see if I can make another :)



Happy Holidays!

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Kivanniversary!

Today is my second anniversary as a lender at Kiva, and I'd like to celebrate by sharing the Kiva site with you.

I am very happy to have been introduced to Kiva (Thank you Hanne!) those 2 years ago. On their site they state: 'Kiva's mission is to connect people, through lending, for the sake of alleviating poverty'. Sounds good, doesn't it? They have made it so easy for us to microlend across the globe, and as your entrepreneurs repay their loans you kind of get 'free money' to relend.

It's a fabulous concept I think, and I love that you get to choose who to lend to yourself. I always have much fun looking through the loan requests.

If you'd like to join in or just check it out, go to their site and sign up, or let me send you an invite :)
I'll need you email address to invite you, so don't hesitate to let me know in the comments or at bindweed*@*gmail.com (no * of course).

Happy Lending!
Lene :)

Christmas Market at Valdemar Castle!

Yes! on December 4'th and 5'th I will attend/sell at the Christmas Market at Valdmar Castle.
My lampwork-friend Lenette has kindly offered to share her booth with me, and she has been allowed to set up her torch to be able to do live demos. It will be great!

I've never been there before and I am looking very much forward to the experience, not to mention seeing what the other sellers are bringing. I can see from the event website that there were 72 booths last year, and this year they have doubled the market to last 2 weekends of wich we will attend the second.

Anyway - I really need to have some fresh new work when I go there (just for my own pleasure), so I made these:


They will be pendants on sterling bails, and I am very pleased with the patterns, both the frit'ed ones and the deliberately dotted ones. The purplish frit'ed one ended up with a bit of a pearshape, and I love it! Just a touch more organic than the marvered drops, Brilliant! And the pattern on it looks like a fierce thunderstorm at sunset, so Yup, that is my favourite :)
More of both types will definately follow :)

Merry Christmas! (a bit early perhaps?)
P~