Blue and Silver Jewelry for the Holidays

The Chanukah Blues are up at     www.pwmarcus.com! I had fun creating the blue and silver collection, which would look wonderful for any holiday, of course. The silvered glass is German glass glitter in various sizes. Some of the silver may gain a beautiful antique silver patina over time, but others will remain shiny because they are totally encased in resin. Mainly, the pieces with chunks of blue glass will gain a patina. I love how it looks! You can mix and match, including the bracelets. 

Happy Holiday Shopping!

Penny

Black, Gold and Silver

A quick post to let you know that this week's new pieces are the formal black, silver and gold pieces for the holidays. If you are looking for something to jazz up your little black dress for a party, these would certainly work!

This is my smallest Holiday Collection. More colors and holiday-themed collections to come, including Classic Holiday Sparkle, Chanukah blues (or just because you love the color), Holiday Greens, and Carnival Color Sparkle. Check in again each day this week each new collection.

Cheers!
Penny

Autumn is Here!

Things were crazy busy this summer and early fall, so, along with the whole change of season, I am trying to get back on track with the jewelry business, in spite of needing a new septic system and construction on the former studio. Life has a way of getting in the way at just the wrong moment, doesn't it?

Natural materials in resin have been added to my
fall collection and will be continuing in various
forms throughout the year

For gifts and for parties there is the upcoming
Passionate Purple collection. 

Part of getting on track involves the move of my arts and crafts studio. I had to split it out into two places: the woodshed for alcohol ink painting and our office space for everything else. My shed is being made into a bunk house/guest room. Insulation and wallboard will be a bonus for me if I ever turn it back into a studio. I was hoping to it all done this summer, but we're still working on it. Still taping and have painting to do on the shed, along with rebuilding the lofts. I'm looking forward to getting everything in place!












I have been adding collections for fall and winter, including the natural materials in resin, several sparkle and shine pieces using glass and resin along with my paintings in purple, gold and silver, and some classic black and gold pieces that will shine during those holiday parties.

Black, gold and silver pieces will look great with your best 

holiday regalia. 

 

There are elk in starry skies, open backed bezel pieces, holiday red, green and gold, as well as a few surprise experiments to post as we go along.

Starry nights and winter scenes are coming up, like these on a deep blue night
sky background.

You can reach me at penny@pwmarcus.com if you would like to order something specific or if you just want to cheer me on. I hope you are looking forward to the holidays as much as I am!

Cheers,
Penny

The 100 Day Project, In the Studio, and Spring Fever

Today marks Day #7 of The 100 Day Project, and of course, my course has already taken a turn. My original plan was to get outside into the world for 100 days, but I realized after 3 days that it was a poor choice. Instead, I have switched over to documenting 100 days of making, whatever that might look like.  (Actually, it looks a lot like my usual posts, but the point is to do it every day. My posts start on Instagram as PW Marcus and are copied to my FB page Designs by PW Marcus.  Feel free to follow me on either platform, comment on what you like or answer a question that might come up.  The more the merrier is the motto for The 100 Day Project.  I have successfully posted a full week now, so I'm pumped to keep going. 

In the studio this week I have been in pre-idea mode. This basically means I have been doodling, painting small things, finishing projects, and sealing paintings.  I have been thinking about what to do with my old Moo mini cards.  The printing quality is so nice and there are a lot of different photos and artworks that I have done on the photo side that I hate to just have them go to waste.  Some will make nice little pendants, but I have also tried using them as a starting point for the alcohol ink. I think they look pretty cool, but I have to try sealing them before I know if they can be used for jewelry.  I'm looking for some inspiration for other uses, as well. 

I am definitely in Spring Nesting mode. Everywhere I look in my house I want to make changes. This urge has hit like a sledgehammer this week! I want to move EVERYTHING in my rooms, just to see what it looks like. It all may go right back to where it was, but maybe I will find a new arrangement that looks fresh and feels more open. (It's been a long, long winter.) I know that we could paint the walls and that would make me feel happy, especially if we could lighten up to a nice yellow instead of the different greens on all the walls. I'll have to ponder that.

What are you doing for spring fever? Do you do a yearly spring cleaning, repainting, moving around the chairs, May Pole dancing? (Which actually sounds racier than is meant.)  My potting shed will be getting a workout soon.

I can't wait for warmer weather again to get outside and shake off the claustrophobia that has settled in!  How about you?

Driving, Illness, and Resin

One thing about living in Packwood, you have to be ready to drive if anything happens! This week my mom was in the nearest hospital with pneumonia for a few days and we had to pick up my mother-in-law's glasses in Tacoma.  As a consequence, we have spent a lot of my non-work time driving, not my first choice of activities.  Fortunately, Mom came home yesterday, so we could take that day to run down to Tacoma and turn right around and come back.

Meanwhile, everyone across the creek where she lives has a really cruddy virus.  It sounds like a hospital ward over there.  So far we have been lucky over here, just tired and cranky, not sick.

I did get to play in the studio the last few days.  I have been experimenting with UV-light-cured resin. It sure is great when it works right away. I fear that I used it over a wet layer of another coating on a tile, because it just doesn't quite feel dry, even after a long time under the UV flashlight. I will be playing with this more, though. SO nice to have it be dry in minutes instead of days! I did the pieces above using the new epoxy.

I enjoyed making the owl pendant below and the cashier at Costco was very admiring of it yesterday.  Her mom used to love owls and apparently collected them.

The owl is actually embedded in the epoxy. This took a few layers to get everything level and covered, but so fast in between layers! I'm looking forward to finding more ways to use the UV epoxy. I love using up pieces of tings that might otherwise be wasted. The little owl came off of an earring blank. I think he's pretty cute as a singleton in the green with blowing gold leaves, don't you? 

Have a great week!

Penny

Warning: Bright Color Ahead

I have had color on my mind for the last week or so. Today, in particular, I was drawn to yellow and orange, bright, gotcha colors, and not so much shine as this winter. I still love the glittery, shiny stuff, but this week it was all about color, strong color or ways to make pastels look a bit more sophisticated.

I adore orange, but I don't feel comfortable wearing shirt that is orange. It's is nice to know I can use it in small doses as earrings or bracelets. It looks amazing with dark blues. It can also be just what a neutral khaki and white outfit needs. I have combined it with a brilliant sun yellow in a few pieces, and it reminds me of sunsets in the summer.

I have also been using some neutral backgrounds, pale green with some pearly shine with pattern on top. The pinks with black are appealing to me now, too. If you are a wearer of pink, there are some pale, shell-like colors that are toughened up a bit with the black line work on top.

How do you wear strong colors? Are you awash in black? No problem, they all look great against black, too. I spent years wearing black for concerts, so any opportunity to brighten it up a little bit was welcome. I would have definitely liked some of these fiery colors in my earrings for those evenings.  Come see more fun jewelry at www.pwmarcus.com.  New pieces are added weekly!

Spring-Time on My Mind

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Since I wasn't even aware that I could do that with my pics in the blog, I am going to just leave them that way. (Reminds me of the title of one of my favorite podcasts, "The Accidental Creative.").  The top picture is of pieces I finished today.  My color palettes have been decidedly lighter and more spring-like. The over-painted strong black lines keep them from being too little-girl pastel, though.  The pendant is a combination of a small glass cabochon set in epoxy over yellow-gold background painted with alcohol ink.

The works in progress above are a combination of my line drawings with alcohol ink over the top of the print. I love the combination of the swirls and lines with the mix of color and shine from the inks.  I have also made some new pieces in greens and blues.

This one is spring incarnate to me. What do you think of the color choices for this one? It made me smile today as I sealed the ink on the paintings done over the week.

I have also had requests for more blues and greens from friends, so this mixture of greens, blues and gold will be turning up as baubles and earrings for sure.

The set below is made of an iPad painting. When I create digital works, I use my Pencil to paint freehand in various programs, often Procreate. The flowers here also remind me of spring, but earrings have the added bling of silver and clear glass. I love how they turned out.

All of the above will be making appearances in my shop at www.pwmarcus.com over the next few days. Feel free to browse over there and enjoy.

Life in the Mountains

We have had a wild February up in Packwood. The snow is variable in the  mountains, depending on the snow line and your elevation, so that it can several feet where we are and hardly anything or even rain 4 miles down the road.  We didn't have a white Christmas this year, but we are making up for it now.  I guess that we are just getting our fair share now. At least the temps have been tolerable!

When I was younger, snow meant going skiing and sledding, possibly building a snowman and making snow angels, definitely a snowball fight with the neighbors and siblings. I still get excited when it snows, but that is combined now with the dread of shoveling, outages, and worry about being able taking care of my disabled family members. I hope we are out of the snow line for the rest of the winter!

One of my surface patterns
from last year.

The weather has kept me away from my studio this week. I plan to spend tomorrow working on the jewelry photos, getting new pieces up on the website, and making new things to post later. I can't wait to get back to it.  Since I am new to this, I would like to hear in the comments which pieces are your favorite at the moment. Just to see what is catching your eye.  You can see what has been up this week at The Shop (www.pwmarcus.com).  Here are a few things coming in for the next couple of weeks.

Cheers,
Penny

News from the Studio

My favorite part of starting this little jewelry business www.pwmarcus.com is actually making the jewelry. I spent a few hours in the studio today with some new styles and fixing up some of pieces that weren't quite right.  Is there anything as much fun as playing with shiny, colorful bits and pieces?

This piece is one I love, but it had too many things wrong, so it stays with me after I did my best to fix it up with a row of glitter.  Should have measured twice and cut once! I will definitely still wear it myself. I plan to try again next week.

My latest bracelet blanks arrived yesterday, so I have been making a couple of square-faced bracelets.

This one is made of blue glass and silver glass shards. I like the iridescence of the glass pieces here. I can't use this for the shop photo, but I thought some of you might like to see it in a different light.  I love having another shape for the bracelets. The little bit of added surface area in the square is helpful for laying out a design.

I have some other pieces drying now. They should be ready for shop photos by tomorrow.

We did have some excitement last week with a late winter snow storm. No power, internet, or cell phone service for about a day-and-a-half.

It's melting now, so we will be wading through the next week or so.  C'est la vie, spring is just around the corner, even up here!

The Website is Active!

Hello again. The website is up and running, so please visit me at ...

www.pwmarcus.com 

I would truly appreciate a little help sharing my website, so feel free to send it along to friends and family looking for gifts for themselves or for that hard-to-buy-for family member or friend on their list. Every piece is one of a kind, and there are pendants, earrings, and bracelets to explore in the shop. There is a little taste of what I do on the Home page and, of course, the link back here to my blog. 

If you have been to the test site, be sure to use the real address above.

I will be rotating items every week or two and as items sell, so there will always be a few fresh pieces of jewelry to browse through in your spare time.  Enjoy!

Penny Ward Marcus

Welcome to the Studio

Hello, I'm Penny Ward Marcus. Welcome to my studio blog.  This is the place where I will show works in progress for my jewelry shop on my website, which is coming very soon. As I expand what I do on my website, it will be discussed or announced here.

The studio is my place to make, paint, write and dance where no one can see me. This is it in full-on mess mode. Yes, that is a bagel on the counter.

It isn't exactly like the arts and crafts spaces pictured in Houzz or Pinterest. First, I haven't figured out how to keep paint off the counters or walls (or myself), so those all-white odes to creativity wouldn't look that way long with me working in them. This is where I make, paint (usually with alcohol ink, not pictured is my full face mask), create jewelry, cards and whatever else I feel like taking on.  Sometimes I even write blog posts here.

This is the setting for my studio, though. Yes, much, much more Instagram-worthy. 

I live in the heart of the Cascade Mountains. This is the actual view from our back yard, but, sadly, not from my studio. We live in Packwood, Washington, home to elk herds, the famous Blue Spruce Tavern, many skiers, and several members of my family. A lot of elk and mountains make it into my art and jewelry, the family not so much.

I love color and shine in my art. Maybe the shine is my fondness for sun glinting on snow and water, or maybe it's just the magpie in me. I do love metallics in paint and glass and metallics in my jewelry, though.

At the end of all the play time with paint, I do need to find things to do with color studies or pieces that just didn't come out as I hoped. The jewelry came out of searching for ways to make use of my bits and pieces that looked pretty cool, but were not really frame-worthy. Most of my jewelry starts with a piece of an original painting, framed to be a wearable piece of art. It may be mixed in with glass shards or German glass glitter, pieces of broken ornaments, glass bits, shiny hardware, and some are full-on collage in miniature, making every piece unique.

My hope is that visitors to my shop will feel like they are visiting my studio, or better (and neater) a favorite aunt's home where they can snoop through the jewelry box and memorabilia to find treasures they have never seen before. Enjoy!