Graduated!

Well, I am officially an alumnus of East Carolina University. YAY! It feels wonderful to not be a student anymore; no more papers, no more studying things I don't want to learn yet and not study the things that are just plain awesome (like astronomy! Astronomy is fantastic, but I couldn't take it! No time! grr...) no more waking up for 8 am classes that I know I'm not awake enough to do my best in, no more school food!

But here's the thing. As wonderful as it is, I now have this constant feeling of "I know I should be doing something. I can't have all this time, schedules don't work like that! I should wake up early to do something. What am I doing!" Tiresome!

My cousins also came up from Florida to surprise me for graduation, and my best friend drove in from Chapel Hill to have some fun time, so we had a wonderful weekend! There was a whole lot of geekery involved.

Anyway. i've had some really awesome commissions lately, and wanted to share a little!

Tada! Zelda earrings! The shield is about the size of my thumb. I'm pretty excited about how much little detail got in there! And I've realized that my exacto is probably getting a little dull; I had to do some major touch ups once I got the little shapes cut.

Monster plugs (0g)! Again teeny tiny cutting! And here's the best part:

THEY GLOW!!

Yep, that's the excitement of Lyssa this week. 

Translucent Canes and Feather Canes

Hi!
I've been playing around with Donna Kato's feather cane tutorial (click on the title for a link!), and came up with a few fun ones! Unfortunately, I got so cane-happy that I didn't think of what I could do with them after they were made... But I've been working on that!

These are going to go on bobby pins, I think. Nice little hair baubles, no?

These are some other canes I made; just a simple black one, and the red one from the last picture, and the one that looks white is actually glow in the dark. Yes, I love my shiny things!

And a bracelet I tried to make; I used a translucent feather cane and a translucent spiral cane on top of a ripple blade cut pastel stack.

P.S. Artistic rut is happening! I've been trying to find interesting pictures to stimulate me, but to no avail. Anyone want to share what inspires you?

Post Father's Day!

Yep. It's been quite a while...but I wanted to share some silly things from Father's Day. I'm lucky because my Dad is both a dad and a best friend. I was playing with some new canes at the table yesterday while we chatted and ate Kaluah brownies for breakfast, and I ended up reverting to the 3 year old me and started playing with making him look silly. When I was little, I would try braiding what little hair he had, but now I'm grown much more sophisticated! I made him polymer clay moustaches!

Happy post-Father's Day everyone! Hope you showed your dads some love!

Giveaway on pjmommy.com!

Hey everyone!
PJMommy.com is doing a giveaway of one of my Infinity Twists! It's pretty easy to enter, and I won't be putting this style up on Etsy until next month when the giveaway winner is announced. So, if you want them, please enter!

http://pjmommy.com/lyssas-stuff-jewelry-giveaway/

New Infinity Twists!

Ta-da! A new collection of Infinity Twists; Simply Bold. I love rainbows. ^_^ So, making Twists in the main rainbow colors was only a matter of time. They look really fun! I've been wearing different colors for different outfits, and mixing and matching too.

Neat, huh? They look really awesome all together. I'm thinking of making a listing for all of them as a set with a slight discount. We'll see how it goes.

Also, I'm checking pjmommy.com a lot because they're doing a review and giveaway of one of my Twists! It's a completely new one that isn't available in my shop yet, and won't be until the giveaway is complete. But here's a preview!

They fade from reddish-bronze to gold, and have little black and white pinstripes. Man, is it hard to get the stripes to stay in tact on a Twist!

Spring Break!

Oh thank goodness for spring break. I've really been needing this. Dad's new apartment is looking pretty awesome, and I'm finally able to sleep in with no fear of missing class. Yes, I've been procrastinating on the school work that's due when I get back, but seriously. It's break time.

Dad and I made brownies night before last, so we've been cutting into it pretty much every meal. Brownies for breakfast with mangos and cereal and coffee, brownies for lunch, brownies for dinner with chicken pot pie! Om nom nom nom nom. We sat last night for a couple hours just listening to Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain. What an awesome piece!  I love break.

New News!

So this last couple weeks have been just a little bit crazy; I drove a couple hours away every weekend to help my dad move into his new apartment, and tried to study for midterms. Luckily, my art teacher realized that the due date for our project was right smack in the middle of everyone's tests, so she postponed the deadline til after spring break. NICE.

It's a dye class, and we've been doing different shibori techniques since the beginning of the semester. The theme she gave us was resistance. These are a couple of my samples. Most of them start out as traditional pole wrapped shibori, but a few of them have folds or stitching. All of them are rainbow dyed with acid dye. I love how clear things are in the acid dye!

I'm a multicultural kid; my mom is a Filipina who went to a Catholic all girls school in the Philippines until college, and my dad is a mixed white American. There are things many things that I learned that agree with both cultures, but what happens when they disagree? I've been having to pick and chose what I want to take with me, and lately that's been getting harder. Dating protocols are very different from my mom's world and my dad's world, the role parents play in your adult life is another difference.

BeadsofLight13

Hello everyone! I'm still in the middle of a very hectic family/school time, but I just had to share with you a lovely new store on Etsy!

Chelsea's shop, BeadsofLight13 has some really pretty beaded works. Swarovski beads, lampwork beads, pearls, stones, glass, you name it. (No surprise she'd love to see Venice because of the glass! Great reason to go, by the way. They have neat little glass blowing studios tucked away at the tops of shops.)

This is a picture of a gorgeous bracelet I traded for! Did I mention how accommodating she is? 

Look at the wonderful glass bits in there! They're so pretty with the pearls. I can't resist shiny! I have no clue how she finds time to do all these beautiful pieces with the number of pets vying for her attention. Chelsea's got a german shepherd and three cats! One of whom is preggers too. I can hardly get stuff done with the amount of effort it takes to keep just ONE cat out of my room! She must be a secret animal whisperer. That's the only explanation!

But with all those pets, she's a girl after my own heart; she likes birds! I've been considering getting one, but it really has to wait until after I graduate and we get a place big enough to keep the bird away from the dog. Or else there'll just be a dog. It would be so cute if Chelsea got a parrot though! It would probably learn all her favorite country songs!

But really. Check out her shop! Because the more people look, the more she can experiment with learning some techniques she's been craving to play with. Like casting rings and doing sculptural pieces! Don't you want to see those?

^_^

Mellow...

School started on Friday, but tomorrow is the real start of my crazy semester! Bring it! >_< Sort of. I'm so mellow today. I guess that's what listening to Sigur Ros does to a person! I'm absolutely in love with "Kafari." It reminds me of the little water drops that fall in puddles after it stops raining; arhythmic, light, and almost nostalgic.

I finished making a really fun commission! This girl wanted me to do the TRON identity discs as earrings. At first, it was hard getting the shape of them right, but with a little help from a Chick-fil-A straw, they turned out awesome.

I also got to do a lot of research on types of findings, and it turns out there's a difference between gold-filled and gold plated. Filled has 50-100% more gold than plated does, so it's got a long, hypoallergenic life, but the cost is significantly less than pure gold studs. Handy info!

Spice!

No sugar, just spice! I love the colors of sunset, so I was playing around with my skinner blends and made a rich yellow/red/purple sunset sheet. But when I made it into Infinity Twists, poof. My gorgeous sunset was now some kind of ornamental pepper! I think it turned out pretty neat anyway.

The funny thing is, I can't eat anything even remotely spicy. Something about pepper, cayenne, or anything else spicy makes my tongue swell up, among other really unpleasant things with my gums. No idea why either! It makes me really wary of Mexican restaurants. I can't avoid them though! There's a place within walking distance of my school and all the other costumers love it. So, whenever we have a costume shop lunch or dinner, it's Chico's. Delicious, but dangerous.