Time for a Contest

copper, bronze, amethyst, citrine, smokey quartz & apatate wire work necklace

One of the hard parts of being an artist who always has a brain spinning full of ideas (which may or may not turn out to be as creative as they seem) is settling down enough to pick one thing to work on. Okay, I'm pleased with myself if I can even narrow it down to three or four things at once. 

gold-filled, smokey quartz & cat's eye necklace

This week I planned to get all my artwork together for a show that will start as soon as I get back from spring break. I also wanted to get ceramics sorted for a "no jewelry" show that will happen shortly after that. And I need to update my website, and my other website, and my other website, and my social media (oh yeah, and make a list of all my social media for people I meet at shows who want to follow my stuff), and I've got easily two dozen projects that need to be finished. This includes a tray of ceramic jewelry elements that I spent ages making and can't wait to work on. I even have sketches of what I want to do and how amazing everything will be when I'm done. Also, there’s the ever increasing pile of applications for shows and contests I’d like to be part of, though I only get to a tiny fraction of them. And in the midst of these plans a friend invited me to go to a wood shop and learn to turn wood pens on a lathe. Well, who could turn that down! 

druzy & sterling silver wire wrapped necklace

So, today’s Friday and this week I managed to get my work together for the museum show after break, make two rather attractive wood pens and an awful mess of the living room with my pottery. I also got in some applications and entered one contest. When I sat back and looked at my entries I was surprised to see I had a theme. Necklaces that took a really long time to make. But they’re also some of the pieces I’ve enjoyed the most this year. Maybe that’s why I picked them.  Anyway, here they are – I hope you like them!

coral, onyx & forged, dyed copper necklace