Butterfly

The past couple of weeks have been relatively uneventful except for an emergency room visit, a process I’m well familiar with so I wrote a small story titled “Emergency Room tips for the novice”. This was censored by my husband as inappropriate for this blog, so if you wish to read it (424 words), you will need to let me know and I will email the PDF to you.

As someone who works predominantly with Sterling Silver, I am always concerned about tarnish and oxidation of the jewelry pieces I create. In Hawai’i, this is even more so predominant thanks to our sulfur-spewing volcano. Shortly before hurricane Iselle hit the Big Island earlier this month, I visited the Volcanoes National Park wearing lovely silver earrings, which by the end of the day had turned completely black!

Minimizing the effects of oxidation of your silver-containing jewelry (unless it is a deliberate part of the design) means limiting exposure to air. I keep all my pieces in plastic zippered bags, along with anti-tarnish-tabs, but any enclosure is helpful. I want to share with you an informative video on how to clean your silver jewelry.

That’s all for now, I mean to take this Labor Day weekend serious and take a break to clear my thoughts, a need to which this blog attests to. Here are a couple of photos from my studio, a design focusing on a beautiful silver butterfly clasp. Since it will only lay flat when hanging sideways, it will end up as an asymmetrical necklace, which is so much more fun and challenging! I’m still not set on the overall color scheme, so next time, I will write about one of my favorite subjects: color.

Papillon…you will be released soon.

Design and content copyright by Andrea Corwin ©2014. All rights reserved.

Adaptability

As he sits there every morning eating his dry Cheerios, banana and a glass of milk, my husband often likes to tease me about being “high maintenance” and making reference to dinosaurs, that is, if I were one, I’d become extinct. Hey, I just had leftover tuna salad for breakfast, so how’s that for being adaptable? I’m just very particular, as we all are, about certain things: maybe some of us more than others. You can’t outrun change, or evolution for that matter. You can try, but that actually means that you’ve adapted to being a fast runner!

This is my first “blog”, so bear with me. If I recall, this process began way back when we lived to Columbia, SC and I started writing commentaries, sending them to friends via email. I was encouraged to continue writing but I didn't. I went off Facebook, now I'm back on. I went to LinkedIn. I built my website. It's a lot to keep up with in this Brave New World.

What has changed? Adaptability: creativity’s kissing cousin. I've decided that all this is no longer a chore. When there's too much information, I tune it out, selectively. You can too! Ignore this blog, I won't be offended but secretly hope you won't. Throughout my encounters and exposure to artists/art school, it was always highly recommended to engage in journaling, so I forced myself to do so but not without feeling like an impostor. What was wrong with me? Was I not “artistic” or creative enough to embrace this process? Lack of confidence? Yes. English is not my first language but unfortunately I have never truly been proficient in my first languages, which leaves me to obsess about possible errors in spelling, grammar, idioms and colloquialisms. Truncated sentences. More about obsessions in a future blog. For now I'm letting go, ready to embrace the unknown. What will I have for breakfast tomorrow?

Deep breath. Here I go, in a public forum no less, “journaling” in cyberspace like millions of others with a healthy dose of self-consciousness and with a firm belief that it will be interesting (at least to me). It can be interactive. People can comment and I'm finally doing something fun: applying my personality and creativity to mixed (social) media. It's as simple as that. I'm pressing the BIG orange "publish" button.

A (b)log is like a tree falling in the forest. If nobody reads it, does it say anything at all?

I have adapted to the 21st century. Sort of. Stay tuned.