Soldering is Not So Scary

Many of you know that for the last four years I've traveled to Portland, Oregon in October to take art classes at Art & Soul Retreat. I'm changing it up a bit this year, and will be attending their New Orleans retreat in July. I'm excited to be traveling with two friends who are new to the retreat scene. We've chosen one class that we'll take together, then we'll take three others. My friend will be taking a soldering class with Sally Jean Alexander. I took one from her my first year, and totally loved it. She's a thorough instructor, and teaches a project-based class. I recently came across the project I did, which I had given to my mom as a gift.


We collaged papers, using color copies, paint, pencils, and sandwiched them between thick beveled glass. I went with an Oregon theme, using postcards, stamps, a photos, and other items from my mom's Oregon relatives. We soldered down the sides to keep the glass sandwich together. All in all, a good first experience with soldering, which is not that hard after all.

Jewelry on Whidbey Island

In my last post, I told how I was heading to Whidbey Island, Washington to take a bead class with Beverly Gilbert. The class was called "Wander with Color," and she had 11 students. We took it in her wonderful house right across from the beach.
We were set up in her back room, spread over two tables. It was quite comfortable, and cozy so you could easily chat with your neighbors while beading.

This was a 2-day class. The first half-day was spent talking about color theory and how that works with beading. Essentially, you can't think of the color wheel in beading the same way you do with painting where you can just mix two colors to make another. With beading, the colors will be side by side. But can you truly make, for example, blue and orange sit side by side and look good? Beverly taught us how to gradually "wander" from one color to the next. So for that example, you might start with blue, then work with lighter blues, to a lighter yellow, to a darker yellow, to orange. Then you might go with red to get back to the blue again. I chose blue, purple, and copper as my colors. We started by piling the beads on a paper to make our own palette. Here's what I came up with.

We used a free-form bead weaving technique called netting. Here's my creation with just a couple rows of beads strung.

And here are some photos of how my necklace progressed to the finished project.





Be sure and stop by tomorrow when I make my 100th post. I'll be giving away one of my necklaces to one lucky reader to celebrate!