More Wolf Moon

in the begining

adding glass and wire

TA DA 

Introducing Kimberly Kostal an extraordinary woman works in lamp work,wire (loves wire twirling,wrapping swirling shapes) and more while helping raise twins and assorted other beebees and more 

Here is Kimberly"s original inspiration

    

    

 

Wolf Moon 1/26/13

I am busy finishing off my long to-do list for both corporate and personal agendas while assembling my inspirations for my first little altar spot.

The photos have begun to arrive from my companions on this shared artful experience. Oh OH OH. You can see that is me howling in delight

You will notice the star in the reverse "L" shape compartment This is the beginning.

Oh the possibilities and brain wracking that is going on right now, can you hear the howling  'OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO How can I pick just one thing? or do I have to .........................brain wheels spinning....

Happy January to  everyone.

 2013 has begun rather nicely for me and it’s time to get back to making Art. Last year is finished and I am one happy woman to see it in the past.

 In late December I was struck by a muse and got another “wild hair” about shared inspiration and I created the “The Little Altars” Art Project 2013 a yearlong exchange with the following  11 artists.

 Lynn Vernon, Lou Hearnesberger, Kathy Dannerbeck, Nancy Strahle,

 Kimberly Kostal, Marilynn Rich ,Gwen Gyldenege, 

Cynthia Bicker, Lynn Hranac, Beth Drobny,  and my self

 I am very inspired by the wee things that make up everyday life. I have been creating little altars from the small bits and pieces I find myself picking up as I am inspired by objects in the driveway, at the beach, in the produce aisle, color combinations  in a heap of laundry or the sun light caressing the fabric of the sofa. Creating the little altars my objects represent  the tiny glimpses of color, form, texture placement and other qualities that can be captured  to lead me on to fresh ideas in my work,

I often find myself making wee altars when I have been out in the garden and come across a dried seed pod or a feather. Gathered together and arranged in a spot that catches my eye as I am performing tasks of daily living these little altars inspire my work and thoughts.

 Also in my studio when “cleaning” and reorganizing I am often waylaid by two or three colors accidently colliding on my put away pile that send me off into the what if??...???...

…So I got to wondering how would other artists inspirations spark and invite each other to dream and play.  I have also been watching the moon and all of her phases and keeping track of myself as well as people around me. Watching and recording energy levels and moods as the moon constantly changes.  A very interesting study indeed if I do say so myself.

So you are invited to sit back and enjoy the process with us as we explore Little Altars.

 We are all starting out with a “7 gypsies  printer drawer with 13 sections. ”(Which we purchased at Joggles.com)

 Each little Altar is due on the full moon of each month. This month January each artist is responsible for creating the home or heart spot altar. The photos are due on Saturday January 26, 2013.

Each artist starting in Feb will be creating an altar in an assigned space for a different artist the spaces are lettered A thru K.  Then these will be mailed to the assigned artist who will install then in the assigned spot.

I have worked long and hard creating a schedule so each artist and each spot are in a random order. It was several days and many sheets of paper to come up with the order that worked. But success at last!

Stay tuned for more information and photos as the project moves forward.

Andrew Thornton's 2012 February Reveal

A few weeks ago late in the evening I was merrily surfing the web when I chanced upon Andrew Thornton's announcement of his February Challenge. Before you could blink 3 times I had purchased one of the 10 surprise bead sets available. Unseen going only by a brief description I found myself the proud owner of one of the mystery beads collections.

Still not sure what possessed me to buy the beads but today I can tell you my muse was twisting my arm and Yelling " Create damn it Create".

I love creating in many different mediums and materials. I have spent the last 12 years in Metals and glass. Bead weaving has always been a great love of my and I had the pleasure and honor of being a part of" The best of Beadwork 2000" and showing my work in The Dairy Barn.

I have quite a collection of seed beads and on a grey day find myself refreshing my soul in the joyful colors of tubes filling a large cabinet. I have tried over the years to challenge myself to use all colors and change the combinations to see what new delights I can create.

When I received my beads in the mail I was very excited and rushed in to open them. I was taken aback there was a pile of pink and white and fuchsia colored beads. This was really going to be a challenge. I grew up in a house that was pink every outfit my mother owned was pink or red and I was always lacking an enthusiastic response in her quest to rosy up my world.

But I pulled on my big girl pants and went to work. I couldn't decide on just one project so here is what I present to you.

The crystals caught my eye first and I happened to have some of the same color in my stash. I wanted to something to wear with jeans or for dressier occasions, while com binding my two favorite metals copper and sterling. Adding the Moon buttons and the black heart balances the bling of the crystals for me.

My next project the twigs bracelet was inspired but the bare branches in my garden. I sorted out a collection of beads from the original group and picked out several tubes of seed beads to see what would pull everything together. I found the perfect color and set to work, I let my muse guide me and meandered my way from one end to the other, adding this taking out something else and switching from one bead stitch to another, a bit of peyote, some right angle weave and a dash of brick stitch. I am over the moon with the finished piece. I love the wee bits surrounded strands of  woven  seed beads.

I hope you enjoy my work please leave a comment.
 I would love to hear from you

Below you will find the rest of the gang who participated  in Andrew Thornton's Bead Challenge
Here are links to each artists blog as well as Andrew's http://andrew-thornton.blogspot.com/
   be sure to check them all out.

Shannon Chomanczuk

Kari Asburty 

Suzette Bentley

Peg Gyldenege

Therese Frank

Patti Vanderbloemen

Kari Wilson

Shannon Chomanczuk http://www.formysweetdaughter.blogspot.com

Kari Asburty http://hippiechickdesign.blogspot.com

Suzette Bentley http://elliesbijoux.blogspot.com/

Peg Gyldenege http://wildhairstudio.blogspot.com/

Therese Frank http://www.theresestreasures59.blogspot.com

Patti Vanderbloemen http://myaddictionshandcrafted.blogspot.com/

Kari Wilson http://creationsbykari.blogspot.com/

The Art of Business

Seattle Metals Guild workshop committee is offering a series of 3 classes for developing your online presence. Here is an interview with the workshop instruct

rThe Business of Art with Gwen Gyldenege

A three-workshop series. Learn to increase your online visibility, share your art, and find new customer bases.

to register go to Tickets: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/224489.

Are you pondering how your business is going and what you might do to increase sales or just understand a bit more of the internet hubbub. SMG workshop committee has received many requests in the past to offer workshops to help understand and As an Artist be recognized on the internet. It is a great mystery to many of us and "WHY DO I NEED TO DO THIS"' so in that vein of thought we present

The Art of Business interview with Gwen Gyldenege February 2012

Why get online?

Having a professional presence as an artist online is not about sharing what you ate for lunch or how angry you are at the customer who jilted you. It's about sharing your art, what inspires you and connecting to your patrons. It's a way to catalog your work into a portfolio and to make it easy for people to find you and learn about, then buy your work.

Let's say you create jewelry that has a distinctly modern aesthetic and is inspired by the Texas Hill Country. Many people today will search online for things they like first, before they even consider going to a store. Then, there are other patrons who, after seeing your work in a gallery, want to be able to look at all the other amazing works of art you create online and extend the joy of browsing and discovering your art. Because of examples like the previous two, it is becoming increasingly more important for artists to have at least a simple presence online. You can keep it as small as a brief, single page website or a facebook business page. Or, you can be as ellaborate as existing on a website, blog, facebook, twitter, pinterest, email newsletter and more.

If there are so many people online. How do potential patrons people find me?

Let's continue with the same example of aesthetically modern, Texas Hill country inspired jewelry. When someone is searching on Google for "modern hill country jewelry" you want them to be able to find you, look at what you have to offer, and then decide that they want to buy a piece of your work. In the past, they had to stumble upon you at a gallery, a show or festival, through a friend or another patron. It was very heavily dependent upon who knew about you.

Think of being online like listing yourself in those printed phone books still arriving at your doorstep. You make a website and then enable it to be found by search engines. This is like putting up an ad in the yellow pages. Then, search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo allow people to search everywhere on the web for whatever they want. This is like when you flip through the yellow pages in the "jewelers" section or "art galleries" in "Seattle" and scour the pages for something that looks "modern" to your eye. This scouring action is what search engines do - they are smart enough to match words on your website page to words that someone is searching. Then, the search engine presents them with a list of pages to view.

The closest way a printed phone book could give you a custom tailored list of results is with an index, and even that leaves something to be desired if you're seeking to find "Texas Hill Modern" jewelry. In printed media, it's up to the the person reading the phone book to interpret the results. Now, with search engines, we can describe what we are so that we are more easily found. People can now search on your name, where you sell, what you sell, a description of the piece, etc. It all depends on how descriptive you get and how well you know your customers interests and their buying process (what, why & when do they buy).

Why do I have to share my story?

You share to create interest. You share photos of your work or links to things that interest you to build connections and build relationships with your patrons. You give things, like knowledge, away so that people begin to recognize you as an expert in your field.

When you are working away in your studio and you have an Einstein discovery moment, where you come upon an amazing new technique, aren't you excited by that? Haven't you then shown a friend or shared it with another artist who got just as excited? By using things like Facebook, twitter, or a blog post to share this exciting new thing, you are now putting the word out for others who share in the same interests to find you.

What kind of guidelines would you suggest for sharing?

Personally, I only write or share things I would feel comfortable saying to someone in-person. When we don't have someone in front of us as we write, post, tweet, etc. we have a tendency to over share or get very unpleasant. If you wouldn't want your kids, employer, archenemy, or friends to know your thoughts, techniques, or art, then don't share it. Moral of the story: Be polite, be considerate and be wise.

Why do you need to "know your customers"?

In the past, we all had marketing people who would understand what drives consumers to buy and they wrote ads that targeted those types of people. Unless you are writing books or you have work in a gallery (and even then), very rarely does an artist ever have someone who just goes out and advertises or talks up their work.

Why? Because it hasn't been affordable for a small business. Often, by the time an artist pays for all the services they need, they have very little profit left over. Now, we have the power to do it ourselves. We can augment our fantastic in-person presence with an online presence and now begin to learn about how to build our sales and increase our customers.

There's a Fire Burning in my Crystals

 Can you tell I have been enjoying Adele's 21, her newest release? Love it love it love it.
Meanwhile back to my life.. and my precious vintage crystals.

I have loved the sparkle of crystal since I was a wee child snooping in my Mother's jewelry box. I love the glamour of old Hollywood Jean Harlow, Mae West, Cary Grant (He was great as an arm ornament  without sparkle) Well you get the idea. I loved black and white movies with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and many more I adore.

The crystals I have been collecting for the last dozen years or so started out with just a few beauties I found at different antique fairs. I would hold them in my hand and drool slightly without damaging my outer worldly cool exterior and just manage to say " How much?"  Then one or two were not enough.  Soon I had to have the whole box, and then the box they were in became a set of drawers. The drawers became 2 sets of drawers. Crystals were spilling out into all the rooms of my house. I suspect they were having wild parties in the night while I was sleeping and perhaps reproducing. Of course I have no proof of this.  No teeny tiny liquor bottles flung about, or other signs of orgies. But they keep increasing in volume.

At last I made the decision that I could part with them and needed to find good creative folks to adopt their wee points and death defing sparkling color.  And so they can now become a complete new design in this century.

I spent some time combinding colors to create some unique  crystal collections. And I am shameless plugging my new Etsy Store open right now!!!  http://etsy.com/shop/wildhairstudio  If you see my ad on facebook there is a code for a 20% discount for a limited time. 

When you purchase a collection if you comment you saw my this blog post I will add another 10% off (please reference the title of this post "There's a Fire Burning in my Crystals"). After you submit your order on Etsy and send your paypal payment, I will adjust your invoice and send you a revised PayPal invoice with the new lower price. 

But you best get to gettin, because this offer only lasts until August 12th and only as long as supplies last.

Cheers Peg

 http://etsy.com/shop/wildhairstudio

And the winners are

The winners are drumroll please..............
Cynthia Bicker
Esse Lyle,
Julz Either,
Kathy Jansen-Bellamy
Lavinia Kaleleiki,
Heidi Schuler

Thanks so much for your participation in my glass pin giveaway.
 I hope you have as much fun  wearing them as I did creating them.
And thanks for taking the time to be a part of my social media group. I appreciate your friendship. It is so cool to connect with people from all over through the magic of the internet.
 Cheers

Cyn Bicker

Esse Lyle

Lavinia Kaleleiki



Julz Either




Heidi Schuler



Kathy Jensen-Bellamy

Happy Glass

there's no place like mine

 Here is my
"Help me celebrate I turned 60 and want to thank my fans and friends"
 social media  giveaway.
  Created in my studio with glass, cutters, resins  and kilns.
 One of my favorite mediums to work with is glass. I love all processes involved. Color plays such an important role in my daily life.
and the qualities of glass really bring me such joy.
 I like to cut ,clean and assemble in the afternoon Fire then anneal so I can pop out to the studio in a early morning with a mug of coffee and my robe and slippers to crack open the kiln and see the wonders that fire and basic elements have created along with a wee bit of my imagination.


Oh the possibilities.

There are still a few more days left in June to add your name to  my give away list.
And a big Thank you to those of you who left such nice responses.

winter garden

over here

ruby forest

  my sunny day

green days

Only a Few More Days

   This is a repeat of my earlier blog to encourage new readers and fans. There are only a few more days left in June 7 to be exact as of today 6/23/11 for you to be a part of my glass pin giveaway. I am really grateful for your friendship and encouragement in my artful journey.
This has been a busy and interesting  six months in 2011. I have been arting allover the place and have had the privilege to meet and spend time with some delightful folks in many different art areas including metal,paint,beads,glass and more.  I just started my 60th decade as well and I intend to create my way thru humor and joy and "what would happen if I ...?" into a one woman show of Peg's possibilities cause I am the ****ing Queen. 
 So please

Won't You Be My Neighbor?


I've been elbow deep in my kiln lately creating some delightful fused glass pieces. Some of these pieces I made for the SNAG conference this last weekend and traded with other artists (You should see the amazing art I got in exchange). While the rest of the fused pieces I'm creating as part of my 2011 collection.



I'm in the process of building my art business and expanding my on-line presence. You can find me on Facebook, Etsy, Blogger, and Wildhairstudio.com. In celebration of turning the big six-oh this year and in an effort to better connect with you (well, and...really to shamelessly plug myself ), I'm having a contest during the whole month of June. For every one of the following things you do to engage with me online, you will be entered into the drawing.



leave a comment on my blog

subscribe to my blog

"like" my facebook page

leave a comment on my facebook page

favorite one of my items on etsy

Then, at the end of June 2011, I will select 6 winners. "What will I win?" you ask. The 6 winners will receive an original fused glass pendant by peg. To entice you, I will be posting photos of these pendants as they pop their heads out of the kiln.





here's my heart in my hand




I love to glass..



mermaid's treasures

In Song: "Oh won't you please .... be ....my neighbor?" -- Mr. Rogers

Leaving a comment

I have received several emails about being unable to leave a comment for my giveaway this month. So I went to my guru of social media Gwen and pleaded for help . IN bold are instructions for leaving comments. I had open comments when I first began blogging but a group of evil spammer toads decided to use the comment to leave nasty remarks and spam out from this blog so I closed it to the way it is now.

Thanks for being a reader and joining in my contest. I am waiting anxiously for my kilns to heat up to fire my Spring kimono for the second firing adding enamel to the flower blooming at the hemline.

I am adding my prayers to the fire goddess for a perfect firing between the silver and the enamel.

Meanwhile, here are some pics of my mystical mosaics I have been working on since last summer. They passed the endless rain of last winter and I will be adding to them as the weather warms up. I have yet to post the pics of the dragon who is in the middle of my creation. Coming soon...

Mermaid with child

undersea garden

King Merman off to greet the dragon

Leaving a comment:

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Out of my dreams



Fall Kimono



Success at last. I have had the idea for creating these wee silver kimonos for over 5 years I created a small book several years ago with kimonos on the covers and used moss and twigs and leaves from my garden to create texture plates allowing me to transfer my beloved garden into the silver and carry the feel of peacefulness my garden offers me. But I was not finished and have mulled around many different ideas in the last few years....never quite coming up to that jump for joy feeling I get in the pit of my stomach when I get a wild hair idea.   Well the wild hair hit hard a few weeks ago and  after sketching out my designs I stayed up into the wee hours working on one after an other till my eyes refused to stay open. So I relented slept for a while and continued. Here are 3 of the 4  kimonos

Spring is taking her time and is not quite ready for prime time but stay tuned she will arrive soon.

 ENJOY



Summer Kimono




Winter Kimono

 Put a bird on it!!

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

I've been elbow deep in my kiln lately creating some delightful fused glass pieces.  Some of these pieces I made for the SNAG conference this last weekend and traded with other artists (You should see the amazing art I got in exchange).  While the rest of the fused pieces I'm creating as part of my 2011 collection.

I'm in the process of building my art business and expanding my on-line presence.  You can find me on Facebook, Etsy, Blogger, and Wildhairstudio.com.  In celebration of turning the big six-oh this year and in an effort to better connect with you (well, and...really to shamelessly plug myself ), I'm having a contest during the whole month of June.  For every one of the following things you do to engage with me online, you will be entered into the drawing. 

• leave a comment on my blog
• subscribe to my blog
• "like" my facebook page
• leave a comment on my facebook page
• favorite one of my items on etsy

Then, at the end of June 2011, I will select 6 winners.  "What will I win?" you ask.  The 6 winners will receive an original fused glass pendant by peg.  To entice you, I will be posting photos of these pendants as they pop their heads out of the kiln.

In Song: "Oh won't you please .... be ....my neighbor?"  -- Mr. Rogers

Luminous leaves from my garden

 I am lucky enough to have created an enchanted place filled with very old plants who return each year to stun me with their beauty and scents.
  This has been quite a year so far.We have had a long and I do mean long bout of rain so many things have been delayed in their normal growth cycle. The weather has been the biggest influence in my usual garden duties. One of my duties was to get blogging about my class offerings

 I am so excited to announce I will be teaching 3 classes at Art & Soul  in Portland this September.

 As you can see I love leaves and my first class offering is Luminous Leaves. This is a unique way to make an organic casting of  leaves, after we create and fire them in Fine silver, day 2 will be adding enamel to envelope  the leaves with rich color. I have been enameling for around 15 years and I love the magic that happens when you add fire and powdered enamel on precious metal.

stay tuned for more pictures and news and check out the classes at Art & Soul it is an experience not to be missed and welcome to my garden

 

Leaf collage gingko, sage fused glass,sapahire

blackberry

clematis

ginkgo leaves

New Classes at Art & Soul

4 Seasons Kimono Book

Hi all


Just a note to let you know if you are considering going to Portlands Art and Soul, you should sign up quickly!!!  I will be teaching 3 classes there:

• P1235 Luminous Leaves - Mon Eve & Tues  (Enamling on Fine Silver Leaves)

• P1236 4 Seasons Kimono Book Amulet - Wed Sept 28  (making organic texture plates and organic mono prints for book pages)

• P1237 Under the Sea - Sun Oct 2 (or here fishey fishey, bezel setting stones)

Sep t26th thru October 2nd. There is a chance to get a 5 night free stay info below.  In just 20 days Glenny will be announcing the winner of the free 5 nights at the Embassy Suites Portland for our Sept. 2011 retreat!

Is your name in the hat?

It is if you have signed up for 4 or more day time classes and it's not too late to register now to get your name in too!

Ready ......set ....... SIGN UP !

http://www.artandsoulretreat.com

Organic leaf casting Flutterby