productive studio day

A new ring: tiny golden buck mounted on antler.  

 New extra long slices of antler to work with. Not sure if I like the horizontal double ring or extra long lengthwise version better. They are really beautiful cuts. They were cut with a hand saw and much diligence.  

 These bullet earrings are a personal one-off project. They're a memento from my boyfriends birthday, when we accidentally found ourselves at a civil war reenactment.  

 Lastly, another new approach to an antler ring. This one is made completely out of antler. I made it with a new Dremel tool I got for Christmas. 

FawnRay Designs is in a magazine!!!

Check out the recent issue of Rochester Woman Magazine. FawnRay Designs is featured in the Fabulous Finds section! Yay!

Graphic Design

For the past few months I've been doing some freelance graphic design for the gym where I worked in Aquatics over the summer and Housekeeping last winter. Here are a few of the bigger projects I really enjoyed working on. 

Burning Brighter was a yoga master class taught by guest Yogi John Salisbury. He has a lot of photos of himself in urban landscapes doing really challenging poses which were great to work with (including one where he's doing a headstand with nothing but the crown of his head touching the ground!) Check out those photos at www.yogijohn.com.

This is for a bootcamp-style program put on by two personal trainers. 

This is another program put on by two personal trainers. It combines Kinesis and kettlebells. 

Animal Cameos and Winged Walnut Pendant

 I have been ruminating for a long while on how to use the copious amounts of acorn "lids" I've collected. I finally came up with a few ideas. My partner in craft, Maddy Roslow, and I were talking about new projects and the idea of animal cameos came up. First were two owls and a fox. Next I think maybe I'll make a raccoon, turtle, beaver, or cat. The owl has a golden/ copper painted acorn lid. The fox has a natural clear finish. The winged walnut pendant is inspired by a mixture of Native American eagle wing stylization and Egyptian scarab. (Side note- November is Native American heritage month. Thanks for giving us Thanksgiving and sorry for stealing and ruining your land and culture.) The walnut wing pendant will be painted black. All pieces shown have yet to be painted.

 
 
 

Here are the painted pieces.

Making New Earrings

I want to share what it takes to make my bark earrings. First a visit to the forest....

This shows how red pine bark fractures in faceted segments. No trees were harmed in making these earrings. I take a sustainable amount that would soon have fallen off anyway. 

I lay them all out to find pieces with similar color, size, and shape. They are cleaned up and finished with a clear protective coat. 

In pairs with possible feather combinations.

A few finished pairs!

New products!

I'm back from a weekend in Montreal and ready to get back to making. Almost my entire inventory was bought up last week by Shop One2, located at RIT in the new Global Village. It's a boutique gift shop featuring handmade products made by RIT students and faculty. It's really a wonderful thing they're doing so check it out and get some early Christmas gifts. They asked me to make some gloves and I whipped out these 3 pairs of fingerless mittens. The rust colored ones have velcro "buttons" to close the mitten. I'll be making more of these for my etsy but if anyone wants to custom order a pair, please visit my alchemy page on etsy: 

http://www.etsy.com/shop_alchemy.php?user_id=11075777. 

These come in S, M, L and have the option of mitten cover and/or lining. 

My earrings, necklaces, and rings on display at Shop One2.

walnut shell pendants

These are some recent necklaces. The antler necklace has already found a home with my friend Matt Roberts. The antlers are made of sculpy and the shell has a clear enamel finish. I think I want to keep making these type and try to make them more realistic looking. 

The white feather necklace reminds me of an old-timey badminton birdie. The interior and exterior are painted with white enamel and the face with clear enamel. The scale is a little distorted of the exterior photo. It looks a bit larger than it is. The shell is about 3 inches long and about an inch width wise. I'll be posting nicer photos of it on my etsy soon, which by the way, is up and running with select items right now. 

www.FawnRayDesigns.etsy.com