Physically Back

I am back from my trip to Colorado. But jet lag, and sleep deprivation have taken their toll. I expect to be moving slowly the next few days. Doing laundry, unpacking, and priortizing. Making a few phone calls. Nothing too overwhelming.

The week was one of exploration. I played with a bit of sculptural work...a chess set! It is not done yet, but is well on it's way to completion. I had fun playing with this, and it came out better than I expected. I also played with repousse and kumihimo.

Judy Belcher kindly shared her tools and materials to teach us a bit about repousse. She had recently seen a demonstration, and brought along the supplies to our retreat. Repousse is a form of metal embossing, working with tools on both sides of a sheet of metal to create a three dimensional image. I had a lot of fun with this, and see that it could be a great way to create forms to make molds to use with metal clay, or polymer clay. And the metal forms themselves could be used inset in polymer to create jewelry, or boxes. There is definitely more to explore here.

I learned Kumihimo braiding from Klew. I have always loved to play with fibers, and this was a fun new twist (literally!) on using fiber, for me. I plan to teach my daughter this technique. She loves to knit and crochet, and I think she will take to this quickly and easily. (Postscript: I taught my daughter how to do it yesterday, when this post was originally written. Since then she has made four pieces, and I will be lucky if I can get my hands on the tool again!)

The week was wonderful and overwhelming, and I have much to process. In the meantime, I think I have a load of laundry ready for the dryer.