Arte Y Pico Blog Award

     Today I was bestowed the honor of receiving an  Arte y Pico (Peak of the art) award for my blog.  Thank you, Markia, for bestowing this award upon my humble blog. 

     Naturally, this leads the reader to ask ‘What is this award?”  The answer to this question follows;

     When your blog is bestowed the Arte Y Pico award, you are asked to pay it forward by bestowing the award to five other blogs whom you feel deserve some recognition for their interesting content.  The following rules apply:
The rules for passing the award on are (you can copy&paste):

1) You have to pick 5 blogs that you feel deserve this award for creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributes to the blogging community, no matter of language.

2) Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.

3) Each award-winning blog has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has bestowed the award upon their site.

4) Both the site receiving the Award and the name of the person and their blog who has received and passed on the award on must show the link of “Arte y pico”blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.

5) Show these rules.

Given this criteria, I have selected the following five blogs to receive the Arte Y Pico award from me. 

Something Sublime (Deryn Mentock)
Pink Zinnias (Melissa Meman) 
Nomadic Creations (Stacie Florer)  
Dragonfly Enchantment (Dinah Powers)
God Drinks Beer (Jay Moody)

Thank you again, Markia, for the kind acknowledgement of my humble blog.  I am happy to pass the award on to five other deserving bloggers who share interesting content with us as well.

Delia Stone
DeliaStone.com

Green Corn Feather

    This past weekend my family and I were out on the Porch Creek Indian reservation for the annual Green Corn celebration.  Because I was on my moon cycle, I was not able to participate fully.  When it is your ‘time’ as a woman, you cannot touch the other people on the grounds because your body is in the process of purifying.  You also are not able to touch the food, not even for preparation purposes. This left a great burden on the shoulders of my MIL because she was left with the task of preparing for the new fire from the ceremonial square AND doing all of the cooking and preparation for the men in our camp (for three out of four days).  I was feeling rather guilty about leaving her with all of this work, but it was not like I had much choice in the matter.  Thank goodness that her son Mark came down from New York and brought his girls.  Kristen, Mark’s oldest daughter did a lot of women’s work to make up for my inability to work.  She was a tremendous help to Mimi (my MIL) and I cannot imagine Mimi having had to do it all alone.  Thank goodness for Kristen!

    

     I found myself trying to think of an appropriate award for Kristen (and her sister Anna – who helped a great deal with my one year old daughter – a MUCH appreciated task)  and of course my mind went to jewelry, because I can make that. 🙂  As I struggled to think of something that would really resonate with their memories of the weekend, I remembered that sometimes as a reward to the male children and the men for contributions to their community (usually in the form of labor and/or performing certain tasks imperative to ceremonial functions), they might be given a feather.  This is a special acknowledgement and a great honor.  This gave me the brilliant idea of presenting Kristen and Anna with FEATHER pendants to acknowledge them for their contributions in the family camp.  This is the first of two feathers. This one is for Kristen.  Kristen also went through Green Corn this year.  She danced around the fire all night right along side everyone else.  This is no easy task and I know that everyone, including myself, is very proud of her for this accomplishment.  She is on her way to becoming a woman. 

    I decided not to oxidize this piece because I am only putting it on a cord and I assume that she will likely switch it to a sterling chain later down the line.  I would not want the feather to look ‘dirty’ next to the bright silver of a new chain, so I opted to leave the feather bright for her.

     I have chosen to have Mimi present it to her rather than giving it to her myself.  I think it will mean more to her to have Mimi, as the camp mother, present it to her.

You can read more about Green Corn on my blog, and find more pictures of our weekend – soon to come.  Meanwhile, I just have to catch my breath and recover from the weekend first.  We are all incredibly exhuasted!

Preparing for Green Corn on the Rez

Green Corn is coming up this weekend and me and the family have been busy preparing.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Creek or Cherokee traditions of Green Corn, you may find the following article of interest: Green Corn Ceremony.  This is a wikipedia article on the Creek New Year festival.  Don’t let the blood letting scare you, it’s really just scratches. 🙂

     We are very excited about this year, because it is the first year that we have our own camp house.  Well, they’re more like shanties than houses really, but to own one is an honor.   We have been under the camp of one of the head Ladies up until this year.  But now we own our own little piece of the grounds and we will be receiving our own fire to nurture this year for our family camp.   We have family coming in from Tennessee and possibly New York to join us, so it should be a very full weekend.  

     Some of you will notice my absence for the next several days.  I will probably not be back on the computer until Monday because we’ll be up all night Saturday night and will not be able to sleep until noon on Sunday.  For more information, check out the link to the wikipedia article above.

     I’m off to pack.  I won’t be heading out until tomorrow due to work constraints, but I have MUCH to do to get me and the kids ready to go.  I plan to add some pictures to the blog when I return.  My adorable little girl will be wearing her first ribbon dress this year and my boy has his first ribbon shirt.  I can’t wait to show them off! 🙂

Favorite Jewels Part Two

This is part two of My Favorite Jewels, in which I am sharing a few of my favorite peices over the years.

One of my recent favorites is this lovely blossom necklace.  I created the pendant using a variation of the herringbone technique from Metallique’s tutorial.  The results are stunning!  Very lovely.  I was not pleased initially with my little nest of beads at the blossom’s center but was inspired  to introduce the coils to balance it out.  The inspiration to use the coils came from my friend Shay’s winning entry into the MetalChasers  March ‘Primavera Contest.  The pendant is strung up with faceted peridot ovals and fresh water pearls, making for a really lovely necklace.  I call this piece ‘Tribute to Spring’ because it embodies everything beautiful about spring to me. 

Another one of my favorite pieces is this lovely picture window pendant which I call ‘Blueberry Vines’ because of the beautiful blues and the vining effect.  This pendant suprised me!  I sat down to make something completely different and this emerged instead.  It was as if my hands had mind of their own.  Try as I might to focus on the project that I originally intended, my hands ignored me and went to to create this stunning necklace.  I love it!  It it had not sold as quickly as it did, I might have assimlated it into my private collection.  The sterling frame and vines show off the beautiful blue topaz and bright blue apatite stones so well.  I made a mini version of this too, which also sold right away.  I will certainly be making more of these lovely necklaces considering how popular they seem to be.

This next pendant is probably one of my favorites simply because it is the first project that I have had published.  It will be in Step by Step Wire Magazine in the Summer 2008 issue.  Please note – not the Summer Preview issue!  The regular Summer 2008 issue.  Look for it in stores by August 5th, or your mail box sometime in July if you’re a subscriber.  This is the basics of my needlelace obsession.  Wire lace work is incredibly addictive!  I have done flat work, caged or circular worked pendants and netted bezel pendants with this technique.  Keep an eye out for the Summer Issue.

Well, I suppose that’s enough sharing for part two of My Favorite Jewels.  I’m working on some other projects that I am behind on right now, so hopefully I will have some new jewels to show off to you soon.

New Content

This is just a quick note to let you know that I’ve managed to feed my old blog from my blogger account into my wordpress blog.  That means that a LOT of new content has just been added here for you to enjoy.  My old blog goes all the way back to 2005.  There must be nearly 100 entries to peruse now for your viewing pleasure. 🙂

I’ll be posting some pics of some new pretties soon, but meanwhile, enjoy my journey to improve myself as an artist over the last three years.  It’s all laid out before you, right here on wordpress.

Delia

Friendliest Forum for Jewelry Makers

If you’re on the hunt for a friendly jewelry makers forum, then look no further.  Check out Metalchasers.com.  Our ring leader, Marcy, has provided a wonderfully supportive creative space for jewelry makers of every genre.  Like metal clay, chainmaile, goldsmithing, wire-work, polymer clay?  You’ll find it at Metalchasers.com.  There are forums, group and individual galleries, blogs, a marketplace, monthly contests, specialized groups, tutorials – free and for a fee … you name it!  It’s there!  Not only does it have all of these wonderful features, but it’s set up more like a social networking site … think myspace or facebook with all the bugs worked out and all the great features I’ve mentioned above.  And best of all it’s all provided to us for free.   Check out the links below and take a moment to create an account for yourself.  You will be glad you did!

http://metalchasers.com/
http://metalchasers.com/forums/

Delia
Artisan Jewelry and Tutorials
www.DeliaStone.com

 

YOJ Project: More Sculpted Coils

     My latest entry to the YOJ project – another sculpted coil pendant.  I’m gearing up for some new tutorial releases and this is one of the tuts on the schedule.  I wanted to brush up on my technique for this style of pendant since it’s literally been months since I’ve made one.  The main stone is a lovely piece of Morrisonite Jasper with various shades of deep burgundy, golden yellow and olive toned greenish browns.  The picture to the left here shows off th main stone quite well, while the picture below shows off the wonderful colors of the various Tundra Sapphires (burgundy, pale champagne pink, Khaki greens and golden yellow) worked into the frame.  They add beautiful sparkle to the pendant! 

     This time around I was going for the symmetrical look.  It’s very difficult trying to shape something that’s so organic into a mirror image, but with patience it can be done – at least to a reasonable degree.  Of course, being handmade nothing is machine perfect, but that’s part of the charm of handmade jewelry, isn’t it?

     And of course, if you know me,  you’re wondering if I intend to oxidize the pendant.  My answer?  But of course I do! :::wicked laughter fills the hall:::  I will post an updated picture post LOS and some laborious hand polishing.

     Check back for a new pic of the freshly antiqued pendant soon.  Meanwhile … someone help me come up with a name for this baby, would ya?