Oh hi. What’s up? It’s been a while, yeah? About that. I’m way behind on these brooches. Weird, right? I still have every intention of catching up, but frankly my head’s not been in the game for the last month or so. We’ve had a brutally grey spring in Chicago. It’s just now starting to get nice out, and wow do we need it. Also I ran into some issues with WordPress which kept me from being able to update and made the blog real funky. Excuses. I know.

But I have been working on stuff. I poured a bunch of resin last week. I can knock out five solid brooches once I figure out how to set them. They are: far left, steel shot in resin with copper and brass tubing; top & middle, mesh origami paper; top right, peridot chips; lower right, blue eyeshadow.

 
And I’ve got two finished brooches to share… First is a brooch made from that same steel shot pictured above. Funny story, that material came from the inside of a wrist weight my cat destroyed. Thanks Badger. Below that is the finished brass tubing brooch that I love so much. I need to prefect the pin catch, but I’m thrilled with how it turned out.

In other productivity news, I built a new spray booth this morning. This guy’s a little studier than spray booth 1.0. And the clear plastic lets me see what I’m spraying without needing extra lights. By next weekend I should have a bunch of pieces ready for an afternoon of in-kitchen powder coating. Here’s to a blatant disregard for basic apartment safety!

We got a ton of snow in Chicago yesterday. Relentless, soggy, cold snow-rain falling from the sky. I took the day off to volunteer at Tree House cat shelter for World Spay Day. They spayed or neutered over 50 feral cats for re-release into local feral cat colonies. I moved cages full of angry cats from place to place, saw a lot of shaved cat bellies, and dealt with a lot of cat pee. Right now you’re probably either commending me on my charitable act or retching in between “Amanda is a cat lady” jokes, but I don’t care. Those are 50 cats who will never be on the Maury Povich show, and I feel pretty good about that.
 
Anyway, after a very cold & soggy commute, I made it home around 3pm. I snuggled with Badger and watched some TV and just generally enjoyed an afternoon off. Tuesday nights are my night at Lillstreet, but I was hoping that would be cancelled due to the Class III Killstorm raging outside my window*. Alas, the clock crept towards 6:00 pm with no word of cancellation. At 5:30 pm I peeled myself off my couch and prepared for another slog through the windy streets of Chicago.
 
I got to Lillstreet in a foul mood, determined to be pissed if anybody showed up for open studio and equally pissed if nobody showed up for open studio. Two students showed up right away. So I decided to stow my bad mood. Better to turn out a brooch in three hours of open studio than quietly curse two perfectly lovely women under my breath. And this is what I ended up with…
 
 

 
Oh holy crap! Will ya look at that! I should be in a bad mood every week. Obviously this is a work in progress, but I was so stoked about the outcome-so-far that I wanted to share it. It’s various sizes of brass tubing cut to the same length and soldered together. I plan to solder a stick pin backing on, give the piece a green patina, and then sand down the front face so the edges of the circles are a shiny brass. If last year you told me I’d be working in brass and making brooches and LOVING it… well you probably would’ve gotten my voicemail and I probably wouldn’t have gotten back to you because last year was really busy. But whatever. Brooches.
 
 
*The storm wasn’t actually that bad. I just really didn’t want to put on pants again.