Annual February Ice Storm Hits Missouri

Well, Old Man Winter must like the Show-Me State - he's sure hanging around this year. Since moving to the KC area nearly 4 years ago, I've been under-whelmed by the winters....until 2010. We have truly had winter weather this year - not just once, but repeatedly. Today is no exception - freezing rain, ice coating the blades of grass, the dogwood tree buds, the willows and the fences.

 

I didn't sleep well last night - waiting to hear the crashing of broken ice-laden branches which are often the result of winter ice storms. But so far, the streets have stayed wet and the trees have held up under the ice. That could change tonight, with colder air, wind and continue wet stuff falling!

So I am officially ready for this winter weather to be finished and spent yesterday in my studio, making jewelry with GREEN polymer beads.

  

  

And copper wire, of course. Since my fractured arm still hurts, and I'm not supposed to hammer metal, I used my torch to ball up the ends of copper wire and made jewelry with tangled wire beads.

Its fascinating how a little torch fire can melt the ends of wire into little balls or tear drops, often leaving them a great rosy red color. These wire tangles go great with other colors too. All-in-all a productive day, today I'm giving my arm a little rest.

  

  

 

My Copper Charm Necklace

Earlier, I posted a pic of all the great copper charms I received from our Kansas City PMC Guild copper charm exchange. When I went to put my charms onto a chain, my inner chaos broke out, and I just felt that a basic "charms on a chain" bracelet or necklace wasn't right for me. Here's what I did instead....

Read more about it on the KCPMC Guild blog here.

Experimenting with Copper Clay

The Kansas City chapter of the PMC Guild (i.e. KCPMC Guild) met this week to exchange copper clay charms. These folks are used to using silver clay to create so the copper clay, with it's different properties and more complicated firing procedures was new to most of us. These are the pieces I received after swapping an equal number of charms made by me.

My charms looked like this. As you can see, I was the only one who opted for lots of black antiquing rather than the shiny polished look or the matte "from-the-kiln" rainbow patina. YBNRML?

To see more, go to the KCPMC guild blog.