Sunday, July 22, 2012

A showcase of shawl pins

I've been making shawl pins using every technique I can think of.  Here are some examples:
This is a "Bend it Yourself" safety pin with silver zinc beads, silver-plated wire swirls and red glass beads.

This pin was made from black, white and gray layers of clay, imprinted with different texture sheets, and then the high spots shaved off.  Sanded and buffed so it is completely smooth.

Imprint mokume gane using Dan Cormier's wide peeler,

Mica shift with gold clay.  Imprinted with Helen Breil's texture sheet and then high spots shaved off.  Sanded and buffed so it is completely smooth.  It really looks 3-dimensional in real life.

From the cane I made in Carol Simmon's Kaleidoscope Cane class.

Design made in raw clay using various implements.  Antiqued after baking.

Imprinted with Helen Breil's texture sheet and then highlighted with Perfect Pearls while raw.  Wondering if I need to seal it.

Made using Wendy Orlowski's Feather Boa texture sheet.

Button, button, who's got the button?

I've got the buttons.  Lots of them.  I've been working flat out for the past couple of months building inventory for my very first show, a Knitters Festival.  After that, I'm doing a Fleece Festival.  In both shows I will be selling my shawl pins, buttons and knitting-themed jewelry.  I've also been creating a booth for the shows, making tables and table coverings, making pegboards, and buying grid walls, lamps and other accessories for the booth.  So these are my excuses for not blogging for over a month!

Here are some photos of my booth.  It is set up in my basement so the backgrounds are a bit messy.
Tall revolving Pegboard with bags of buttons.

Big buttons in containers and square buttons on the pegboard.  An Ott Lite for color matching.

The big buttons

Table with shawl pins

Examples of using the shawl pins hanging on the grid wall.
An attempt to get around the "But I don't have a shawl" problem.
My homemade fitted table covering.  I made three of these.