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!