Last week's winner is Theresa Buchle/Bead-Mused ! Congratulations! You have won a set of Lynn's pewter charms Send an email to Lynn and she will get them right out to you.
Welcome to the Studio of Cindy Gimbrone!
Step a little closer to my workbench. I've got alot to show you today! This week I blogged about picking up the pastels and drawing. I didn't have any real drawing tools and I wanted to sketch out a design using a set of the Turquoise glass links and double dips. I took my new pastel pencils and charcoal and got to work.
Take a virtual look over my shoulder and see how my design began and ended.
Voila! My completed necklace entitled, "Smokey Blues." I can't tell you how much I enjoyed drawing and coloring the design! The investment in my first set of drawing tools was worth every penny! So that leads me to today's question:
Have you re-discovered a skill, talent or simply something you used to enjoy? Share your story with me and you'll be entered to win a set of the transparent Turquoise Links and Double Dips.
I look forward to reading what YOU'VE rediscovered!
27 comments:
Funny you should ask. I love to draw, and when I began making jewelry I sketched my designs. But gradually I moved away from sketches and let the beads tell me where they fit best.
Just last night I had a vision and sat down to sketch it out before it was lost. I just used a regular #2 pencil, but really enjoyed the process. I think it combines two of my loves, drawing and beading. I'm going to dig out my colored pencils today!
I just love the combination of black with the lovely blues of your glass links and Double Dips.
I have a couple old hobbies i sometimes go back to once in a while. Nothing i really 'rediscovered' per say, but i do enjoy occasionally going back to an old hobby and making some Artist Trading Cards.
I really like what you did with the turquoise link and the double dips, I have only tried sketching out my designs a few times, I seem to do better flying by the seat of my pants though, although I suppose I would do less ripping apart if I planned things out more
I love power tools. I refuse to be afraid of powerful or hot tools. I had purchased a big propane torch to make creme brulee and merangues because I didn't want one of those wimpy little torches. Well I never did make creme brulee, but when Lynn Davis posted about making her rosy copper headpins with a big torch. I had one ready. I went right out to my studio and cooked some up. Creme Brulee is fattening anyway.
I am a graphic designer, and back in the day before computers (seriously dating myself) I loved to work with typography. Recently I began making some multi-media pendants with words on them, and I found myself once again drawn to type treatments and how different letters and fonts fit together. Love those glass rings!
Erin
Yes,Cindy,I have.And it's odd that you ask this question.I used to be in stain glass big time,sometimes mosaics.Maybe it's the weather,but I've picked up a very good little bench,and plan on putting tiles on it.First I have to sand the whole thing and get it ready to hold the grout and tiles,refine my pattern,I'm thinking sunflowers.And that's my plan.Today is a great day to be outside,I think I'll go do some of that now.Great question,Cindy!
Hi Cindy,
Love the glass rings and double-dips! I was thinking just the other day that, in jewelry designing, I have returned to something I love. I can remember when I was in jr or Sr Hign shcool going to a funky bead shop and picking out a cool set of agate beads and making a necklace -- beautiful but very heavy! Also, I had a piece of my grandmother's filigree jewelry that I took apart and re-assembled with pearls and ribbon into something entirely different.
Now, put my name in the hat for those cool turquoise rings and double-dips!
Emanda
I used to make miniature dollhouse food when I worked at a dollhouse store many years ago (my most favorite job to date!), and now I make jewelry. I recently pulled out my huge stock of polymer clay and started playing around with it making bezels and various components for jewelry. I forgot how fun it is!
And I LOVE your glass rings!!
Lisa
When I was working on a 2nd degree, one of our assignments was to paint tiny watercolor paintings of an object. I hated watercolor when I first tried it in high school, but this was totally different. Instead of working with wide washes of color, we used very little water and worked with very small brushes to get realistic details. It was revelatory! I have not stopped since!
Ann
www.mycriticaleye.com
Hi Cindy,
Beautiful stuff! I actually do a lot of drawing myself, but recently rediscovered sewing. I used to sew alot when I was younger and had forgotten how much I enjoyed the feel of a needle and thread in my hand. Fun stuff!
Carol
I was knitting when I was a kid. My mom was really addicted to all things wool, and I probably have started 180 pullovers since my childhood and never finished one. Last year I had a baby girl and I finished the very first sweater of my life (ok it is smaller, but...). I am working on a crocheted dress right now.
But nothing has ever devoured me like beading.
Lovely work, Cindy!
Last year we adopted a 7-month old black lab. Even at a year and a half, he's still so much a puppy! With this beautiful bundle of energy, I'm re-learning the spontaneous art of play. I can't tell you how much fun it is! If you have children, grandchildren, pets, or a sense of adventure, you may well know what I'm talking about.
It's such a shame that as we grow up, we often get the idea that we also outgrow playtime.
It is so much fun to re-claim playtime as an adult! I do this with my dog, with my nieces and nephews, and with my art.
Perhaps this is why we so love the act of creativity: the unabashed opportunity to play - gray hairs and all. :)
I have rediscovered photography in a big way. I use it a lot to blog my progress on designs and colors and life. I recently invested in a slightly more serious camera and it has paid off, for me.
Rediscovering older talents is a sublime side effect of aging.
Elizabeth
riotgrl1953@yahoo.com
Actually, I use to bead when I was young. I would use a loom and I would also make endless daisy flowers. Now that my kids have grown I am back to beading again.
I move back and forth between deep immersion in several things - sewing, dyeing, freeform crochet. My newest foray is into polymer clay, and I'm really enjoying the spontaneous interjection of one into the other. Like beads on bias strips of hand-dyed silk, asymmetrical (aka "the wonky ones" beads crocheted into necklaces or bracelets; alcohol inks into resin...... I always have way more ideas when I'm away from my supplies than I do when I'm sitting down with them, though!
I drew and photographed everything as a child and teenager. Somewhere at the end of my teens I got into jewelrymaking and later polymer clay bead making and put aside my pencils and my camera except for taking work related pictures.
This year I got a fancier camera that has no excuse for being except that it makes nice pictures. And I've begun mixing my drawing with my clay the last two years or so, working on transfer and drawing techniques to work with my millefiori.
Such a good question, we don't want to let those skills we formerly honed to go dormant. However! I guess that I'm just moving on through the myriad of new things I need to learn to keep the jewelry-making fresh. Some of the things I used to enjoy aren't agreeable to my knee and fingers, you see. I still have quilts to finish, that could be re-discovered sometime.
My rediscovery actually came a few years ago, when I stopped doing technical drawing as part of my job and started doing my own drawings again. Of course I had to go out an invest in a whole new set of pens to feed my new habit. I had drawn a lot when I was a child, and one of my fondest memories is of sitting at the kitchen table with my Mom, both of us drawing away (she was a very talented artist). :-)
What I was in elementary school I loved to macrame - think owls perched on sticks and bracelets with one large bead in the middle. Lately I've been playing around with micromacrame to make beaded cords for pendants, nothing fancy, just a way to get in a little texture.
I love the contrast between the regularity of the faceted smoky quartz and the bright roundish turquoise links.
I was on a collage kick for a long time...mostly ATC-sized. Then one day, I just stopped doing them. Last year I returned to making collage including incorporating small ones into jewelry since there are so many new resin products on the market.
Hi Cindy, I love your "Smokey Blues" necklace especially the double dips and irregular ring bead. I really like your photographs with the sketch as a background also.
I made a very difficult choice in High School- Major in Art or Music. I ended up choosing music which I will never regret but oh how I wished I could do both! My whole life has changed since I moved to Las Vegas and quit teaching music in the schools. It has all been about rediscovering my love of art. My husband is amazed and actually has encouraged me because it is something he can relate to better. I started with an Art Quilt group here in town and I have been experimenting with quilts, dolls, fabric sculptures, polymer clay, painting silk, beading, jewelry and I have also revived my drawing skills. My house is filled with art supplies,fabric, beads, found objects to cover in clay, metal, yarn,...And I have a library of books I have been so fortunate to acquire for inspiration. I feel like I died and went to heaven already. My only fear is that I won't have enough time to create all the things in my imagination so I keep several journals with sketches for it is true when that inspiration comes it can be lost if I don't document it.
If I don't win those blue beads I am going to have to purchase some. They are fabulous!
I've rediscovered many things, I guess. One very good example is crochet, which I enjoyed as a kid: nowadays I like doing chain stitch bead crochet.
I believe I've partially rediscovered drawing and painting, both for doing sketches and for adding my own pictures to jewellery.
Last but not least I've rediscovered the other sections of the craft store and realised how much of the things I like to look at could actually be used in jewellery: paints, brads, papers, inks, tools etc.
And enamels: I haven't touched them since we worked with it in school (woodshop), but since I read of torch-fired enamels and how to torch-fire enamelled copper beads I've been so wanting to give it a try. Still haven't, though...
Cindy,
i love the new design. i really like the combination,it just makes the necklace "POP". and, the questionis an excellent one,
especially for someone like myself.
my answer to it is yes i have.BUT, there is a story behind why i have,
at 36, i carried and had my last child,but during the pregnancy,
things began occurring that no-one
even myself could explain. i was having periods of time where it was a complete blank for me,or i
would fall down for no reason,i had
episodes where it felt as though my brain was going a hundred miles an hour.but,they just said you're pregnant.2 yrs. after my son was born i finally got a diagnosis, of narcolepsy with severe cataplexy.
so to make a long story short,it took over 11yrs. to win disability,
while fighting,i lost everything.i
found my children and i homeless,i fought to keep working but this disease makes you a prisoner within your own body,so the doc's tell me i have zero quality of life now. so, i found a disease counselor and together with her help,i am finding new thing that i am capable of doing.two are ones i did when i was young,i am keeping a journal again,and i have beganto do abstract painting again. i am also trying to teach myself how to bead...well,that's my answer. thanks for a chance to win,and for sharing your gift with us.
barbara aka nannie
nanniespiperdayle@yahoo.com
Wow! What amazing stories! I'm so glad you've all re-discovered or discovered something you love! I've read each and every one of your comments and I'm happy to know we share this experience.
Thank you for sharing!
Cindy
Oh wow! You're such a talented sketcher. I love drawing too, and recently got my husband to climb over our boxes in the garage to fetch my art supplies. I'm back to drawing and never enjoyed it this much before. My dream is to complete a children's book some day.
That necklace is wonderful - it just jumps out at you!I love the turquoise rings too. I have gone back to working with more wire - I use to many years ago, then again when I got into beading but kind of got side tracked and now I am trying to spend more time with the wire
I have recently rediscovered my love of crocheting. I put it aside for years but I find that since I don't have to concentrate on it, it frees my mind to design.
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