Sorry, I Have No Catchy Title For This Post

First off, I want to update the progress of the garage cleaning project. It was a fairly successful endeavor as I now have a place to work, tools and supplies stored properly and a bunch of garbage gone. It went from this...

...to this!

Way more organized and much easier to work in. I hope I can keep it that way...

BUT, I promised you something else this time around. I promised to write about a project that I've been working on. And, so I shall!

I've been accumulating old, broken jewelry, mismatched earrings and other random objects for a while. Sometimes, I'll run across a bag or box of junk jewelry at a yard sale and I grab it for next to nothing. I've yet to find diamonds or gold in one of these lots, but I have found a few silver pieces and I've also found some really nice costume jewelry that I pull out and sell.

But, when the culling is over, there's just a bunch of miscellaneous stuff left. Some things are broken and some are just ugly. There are loose stones, necklaces, bracelets, earrings, rings, pins, cuff links and just about any other kind of jewelry you can think of. Individually, they are pretty useless, but, in this case, the sum is greater than the parts. I take a bunch of random pieces and, together, they become something else. Here's one I did recently:

A couple of months ago, I read Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach. Great book and my paperback version has a really cool looking seagull on the cover. So, I thought a seagull might be a good subject for this project.

First, I drew it on paper to make sure of how I wanted it to look. There's really no detail, just the outline, so it was easy. You can also see that the seagull has an admirer across the page. We'll get to him later.

 

After I had the proportions right on paper, I drew him on a piece of wood. Then, it was time to commence to cuttin'.

I cut out the outline with a jigsaw, sanded the edges and painted it white. After it dried, I was ready to start decorating.

I got out some of the aforementioned junk and started sorting through it to find pieces that I thought would work well. When I got a few pieces picked out, I began gluing them in place. Some pieces just seemed to fit in certain spots, so I went with what looked right.





After fitting and gluing and moving and regluing, I felt like I had the right combination of trinkets bunched up and arranged where I wanted them. Here's the final product...

I think it turned out great. I was quite happy with it, so...I decided to try another subject.

Remember the skull drawing on the paper with the seagull? Well, I decided that a skull would be a cool thing to do. I tried a few different looks and then made a template on poster board. I figured that would make it easier when it came to cutting the shape out of wood.

So, I drew the skull.

Then, I cut it out of wood. I actually used an old masonite GE sign for the wood. I had 9 of them and the thickness was just perfect. So, now I have 8 signs and a partial remaining.

And, after I sanded it, I painted it white. Pretty much the same process as the seagull.







Then, I marked the locations of the eyes, nose, teeth etc. just to give me points of reference. I didn't want him to come out looking all disfigured like The Elephant Man, so I tried to keep everything in the right place.

But, to give it a neat little touch, I decided to paint the eyes and then put clear stones over them. I thought they would stand out better than your standard dark, hollowed out eye sockets that you usually find on skulls.

Doesn't he look happy?

So, I added a little of this, a little of that...





I didn't want to go overboard with this one. Enough adornment to fill space and to be interesting, but not so much that it looked like I was just trying to find anything to cram into every little gap. I guess there's a fine line between just enough and too much. Or, so I've been told.






So, after flirting with that fine line for a while, I ended up with this.

Sort of a Dia De Los Muertos kind of look. That wasn't my original intent, but it quickly became apparent that it was heading that direction, so I just continued in that vein. Not too over the top, but just right. I'm very happy with this one and the picture doesn't really do it justice. Of course, I'm a little biased, too...

So, if you have old jewelry and trinkets that you're thinking of throwing away, think again. Maybe you could make something really cool with them. Found object art is what they call it. Yes, it actually has a name. And, it doesn't have to be jewelry. You can use anything. The really cool thing is that there really aren't any rules to follow. Use what you want to make what you want the way you want to make it. There's no right or wrong way to do it.

I suppose that's why it really appeals to me. If there were strict rules about the proper way to do things, I probably wouldn't be able to follow them closely. I might try, but I just don't do very well when I have to do things precisely. That's not to say that I'm not precise in the things I do, but I'm just precise in the way that seems to me to be the right way as opposed to the universally accepted "right way" to do things.

But, if you have old jewelry and stuff to get rid of but don't want to mess with all this, I know someone who will take your junk off your hands.