Ears!

I dont think. I got a chance to show off my fairy ears, and ear wraps. I was intent on making them, I forgot to post them every place!

Facebook give away

Hi my name is Laura, I'm an artist and this is my pitiful plea to increase my fans on my Facebook page. On my Laura Medeiros-Art stuff fb page you will witness my trials and tribulations, and experimentations, and successes with my jewelry art. I use art clays: polymer clay and metal clays to make sculptural art jewelry.  I am not above transparent ploys such as bribery to increase my views. As a matter of fact I embrace bribery, but instead we will call it a "promotional give away".

So go over to my Facebook page (pleeeezzz): http://www.facebook.com/pages/Laura-Medeiros-Art-stuff/147377941945717 and like it.

On August 1, 2012 I will throw all the names of my "fans" into a hat and pull two winners.

I have two wonderful promotional giveaways:



The steampunk give away: a copper metal clay heart and gear pendant, and a tentacle pendant from polymerclay in pink and green with peachy colored suckers



Under the Sea give away: A copper pendant featuring a sea horse and an olivine cubic zirconia, and an acorn fairy house for a beach loving fairy.

Lent Thing-a-day

In a discussion about Lent with a group on non-Catholics one lady determined anyone participating (in this specific group) was really using Lent as an excuse to better themselves for a healthier lifestyle. Nothing wrong with that. She also wondered since it wasn't for religious reasons why deprive yourself, why not add something for improvement: like smile at your neighbor who is a %^&, or add an apple a day. And then in the world of Universal Manifestation you want to use positive phrase-ology.
Since I do pay more attention to Universal Manifestation than I do to Lent I will be adopting actions for lent:

I am embracing positive and empowering beliefs, exercising regularly, and creating something creatively every day.

I missed Thing-a-day for February, so I have created my own thing-a-day for lent.

Day One

I recently fell in love with resin. I absolutely needed it for one specific project. never used it before but needed it. So I braved forth into the resin world, and boy-oh-boy is it easy, and the results cool beens.
I started toying with what to fill, and started to make frames for use with resin. Last night I wanted to use up this lump of leather brown clay. I played with frame shapes. And single color (to be enhanced after curing) versus multi color.

Starting of the year right!

Thought for the New Year ... if you are not living your passion ... Use the Blue Moon energy to help you with a new beginning.... "Find your passion. Look into the volcano-the fire, the lava of your Soul. The part that burns insistently and urges you to look at it. It is there that you find your answers and your true joy."

I can hardly believe I haven't had any artistic worthy posts since September--ouch.

Well I am starting off 2010 with the mojo focused in the right direction. I began this year prototyping!

Back in May I had these Easter egg ornaments and had no idea what to do with them. Stumble and trip and I ended up turning them into acorns.

Of course I thought these were the bees knees as it were. I ended up converting all of my glass egg shaped ornaments into acorns. I then took a back of styrofoam Easter egg shapes and turned all of them into  acorns. My colors began to deviate from "natural" acorn colors into fun fantasy colors, purples and pinks.

During the curing process I discovered that the styrofoam shrank. And caused the acorns with this as a base to crack. Hubby too k a purple cracked acorn and began to play with it, mostly trying to get the styrofoam out at first, then he thought this would make a great fairy house.

I have mentally been trying to figure out a good acorn base to make houses. You see the styrofoam really wasn't a smart thing to cook in the oven, and I only learned about that after the fact. That and I didn't want to constantly have to fix cracked acorns, because I used the wrong materials.

The first acorn fairy house, 

this one had the styrofoam base.

I thought about using that potato starch packing material, after all its potato starch it should be ok to cook, and it dissolves. 

I tried to mold and egg shape by hand. Ok that was a mess. Then I tried to use a plastic easter egg as a mold. It took a lot more of the packing material than I thought it would, it was very dense and heavy. And it did not keep its shape. In the end it required too much polymer clay, and the acorn turned out distorted and too heavy. And yes it does dissolve, but not before creating a gooey mess.

potato starch base acorn

Then I thought well, if I can used the plastic egg as a mold why not use the plastic egg as base. After all I use it as the base for other projects. So I tried that. and it worked beautifully. It actually cut easier that the thick wall of polymer I had created for the the potato starch based acorn.

The next step is to develop a tutorial for the fairy houses. I have worked one up for the plain acorn. Debating if I should submit it to Polymer Cafe, or go direct to online tutorial down load with claylessons.com.

Turquoise fairy on pile of beads

turquoise fairy on pile of beads
Originally uploaded by Zoeowyn

My personal challenge this year is to finish what I have started. All of those projects I have thought worthy of starting, are they worthy of finishing? If they aren't Im not too sure what I will end up doing with them, possibly just seeing if I can sell them to someone else to finish--i seem to actually have success at doing that.
Of course that falls into me as catalyst.
I am. With out actually working too hard at it, I manage to get other people going.

This fairy or muse face was actually done as a quick sample. I mostly used scrap clay and what ever beads were out when I "slapped" her together. It wasn't until later that i noticed she matched a back of turquoise I got in New Mexico. At that point I knew she was going to be strung on those beads. Now that was over 1 year and a half ago.

I am very pleased with how she did end up turning out. And Im on a roll just finishing things. I have only one item left in the big things to finish box!!! Of course it feels like there are a million things in the box of little things to finish, but Im starting some place!

She won!

Im so excited to announce that my Spiderwick Fairy tied for second place in the monthly PCAGOE challenge. She tied with an adorable little Phantom of the Opera robot by ittybittiesforyou, who I look at and think its a mini metal Gerard Butler! (he played the roll in the movie)
A great Harry Potter movie poster by ametista won first place.
I would have voted for it myself.
Wining entries can be found at
http://www.pcagoe.com

PCAGOE monthly challenge

spiderwick face
Originally uploaded by Zoeowyn

"Its Show Time"
This months challenge was based on TV or Movies we love.
This months challenge for me was time and space related.
I have entirely too many movies that I LOVE I couldn't think of anything that I could do in a timely fashion. I kept thinking what what what.
ideas that surfaced included Highlander, 1001 Arabian Nights, 300, The Mummy, Eragon. All the ideas that stemmed from these were all very time consuming.
My art table is currently in a state of disaster, and the floor space leading up to it is also a bit of a mine field. How was I even going to find the space to work, let alone the time to clean to get to the work surface.
The deadline ticked closer. This morning a post said midnight tonight.
I thought ooohhhh, I've participated every month since joining Id hate to miss, but I have no ideas.
Well the kids are listening to Arthur and the Invisibles, the little boy actor is the same kid in Spiderwick.
and I love those flower fairies in Spiderwick. I thought gee I can't make one of those and have it do them justice. Then I realized this isn't about copying something from a movie, its about being inspired.
I just happened to have bright yellow, pink and spring green in the top of my clay bag.
I decided to make a flower fairy inspired by the movie Spiderwick in my style of my muse pieces.
I will have this flower face up on etsy very soon, if not by the time you have read this.

Spiderwick face on etsy

PCAGOE monthly challenge, Voting starts August 1