Dangly earrings

A gift for my sister (who has un-pierced ears) last Christmas. She wanted something "dangly" and was having a hard time finding options. Though I found "dangly" to be a vague descriptor, I aimed for something that would hang almost to the shoulder and had multiple points of articulation so that the earrings would flow when the wearer moves their head rather than move as one rigid piece.
The earrings are composed of thick jeweler's wire for the main swoop, thin wire for the attachments, and super sculpey for the twists. The twists were painted with acrylics as were the fronts of the clasps so that the color would match. Not only is it hard to find earrings for those without pierced ears, but it's also hard to find a diversity of means to make them from scratch. . . but it's nothing a little paint can't fix  :-)

A nice tip I got from craft-master Steve Bylsma involves using gloves or latex finger tippers when painting to avoid leaving finger prints on painted surfaces that need to be handled. I got that piece of advice after having finished these, but I'll know for the future if I ever want to make more pieces similar to these.

A letter home.

Today's piece is a Father's day card I "wrote" for my dad last year. It's an image of my parents' Victorian home in California where I grew up and was inked using an old typewriter. It was inspired by other works of typewriter created art, though I must say my finished product looks quite primitive compared to what other people are able to accomplish with the same tools. However, this was my first attempt at such things, I didn't sketch it out before hand which I should have, and I had limited control over where I could put characters. The page could be set to any position on the vertical axis but not the horizontal so, as you may note, the image is separated into delimited columns.

All critique (and typos) aside, I was quite proud of the result. I learned a lot in the process about positioning, character choice, and how much pressure to apply to yield the desired level of "shading."
If you have experience with other forms of 2D art and have access to a typewriter, I would highly recommend trying to draw with one; it's a wonderful exercise.

Music Monday!

I do have a handful of song recordings I've been meaning to share so I figured, "What better way to present them than by kicking off each week with a different song?"

After a rocking weekend spent reconnecting with old roommates and meandering the streets of San Francisco, I dedicate this post to Remy Chan, the song's composer.

Here's "Staying Out All Night":


Remy wrote the lyrics, melody, and guitar parts and plays guitar on the track, I'm on vocals, and our good buddy Erik Spickard laid down the saxophone unrehearsed on the first take. That's right: every note of sweet sax you hear is 100% improvised. For me the song really evokes the late-night streets full of weathered hedonistic individuals steeped in guilt from their weekend bender. . . in a good way. The track is almost three years old and still gives me little goosebumps when I put it on. The piece represents one of Remy's first solo-lyrical compositions and is a part of a project entitled "Once Upon a Greatest Story." The album was essentially a venue to lump any musical tidbits Remy and I had cobbled together while living in Davis.

Stay tuned to future Music Mondays for more tracks off that album, and newer musical ventures since the acquisition of my Concertina!