{"id":16547,"date":"2019-08-18T03:30:12","date_gmt":"2019-08-18T10:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/?p=16547"},"modified":"2019-08-28T14:43:58","modified_gmt":"2019-08-28T21:43:58","slug":"pretty-little-bits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/pretty-little-bits\/","title":{"rendered":"Pretty Little Bits"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Shing Yin Khor Title: Curiosity Cabinet #2<\/p><\/div>\n

First of all, I have to shout out a thank you to all of you who have been reaching out to me while I am relatively out of commission this month. I received so many well wishes by email and messenger that I\u2019ve not been able to answer you all yet and for that I do apologize! I\u2019ve also received cards from as far away as New Zealand and even a book! I can\u2019t tell you how touched I am! You all are so amazing and so supportive!<\/p>\n

I feel almost guilty because while I deal with silly little stuff I could have prevented if I wasn’t such a workaholic, there are others of you out there are dealing with the really hard stuff like fibromyalgia or cancer. I just want you all to know that I\u2019m thinking about those of you who are struggling with your own pain, debilitation, or illness as well. It is easier to get through the rough patches when you know so many people care! In fact, might I encourage you to reach out to someone you know who is having a hard time and just say you are thinking of them and wishing them well? Just those little words can do wonders for one’s spirit. It has for me!<\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s talk about pretty bits!<\/p>\n

Do you have a bin or box of pieces and parts of your handiwork yet unfinished but which you are too in love with toss? If you regularly create, I can\u2019t imagine that you don\u2019t. But what exactly are we going to do with these pieces?<\/p>\n

This is a question we all end up pondering at some point. Do we hold onto them, hoping that they will be just the thing needed someday or do we toss them? It can be quite the dilemma, one that even Marie Kondo can\u2019t easily help with because, hey, these do spark joy for us! And we do see value in them, in that they represent our creativity and what we can accomplish. But do such little jewels of our work belong in a bin where we don\u2019t get to admire them?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking about this question for a while and came up with a few solutions of my own, but I am hardly alone in searching for and finding ways to display pieces that might not otherwise see the light too often. Let\u2019s look at options for what you can do with your pretty little bits as well as how to extrapolate possibilities from what other people are doing for jewelry display in general.<\/p>\n

Out into the Light<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you read and perused through your entire copy of Polymer Journeys 2019<\/a>, you would have seen, at the very last entry, my contribution which is a display case of small exploratory items for which I had no particular use in mind when created. In other words, I created them without thinking \u201cThis is going to be a pendant,\u201d or \u201cThis is going to be a set of earrings,\u201d or \u201cThis is going to decorate a vessel.\u201d I just made them to see what the material would do, most of which I liked, and which represented a little exploratory learning experience. I had already been tying bits onto ribbons and hanging them off the edge of my studio corkboard as little festive decorations but that didn\u2019t work for the pieces that really only had one viewing angle as they would twist around on the ribbons.<\/p>\n

Then I was out talking to the butterflies in my backyard (Yeah, I talk to the creatures in my yard. It\u2019s a hazard of working alone from home all day. You\u2019ll talk to anything!) and remembering how I used to catch and collect them in shadow boxes as a kid and it just randomly struck me that my little creative bits were like butterflies in a way. They are lovelies that I caught in a moment of exploratory creativity and in that small frame of time, they became a kind of an unexpected friend, going through that creative time with me. I didn\u2019t want to toss my little friends even though I had no end-use for them. You don\u2019t do that to friends! You hold onto them around and support each other, right?<\/p>\n

Does that sound silly? Maybe it is, but it was revealing to me to realize that I kept certain pieces not because they were so beautiful or well done but more often because I felt connected to them. So, why not collect them and put them out like a collection of butterflies or a collage of photos of one\u2019s friends? And this is what I started making. We find shadow boxes at garage sales and thrift stores for cheap and because they have character. I\u2019ve made half a dozen of these so far.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By the way, I use a hot melt glue gun to tack the pieces onto a bit of mat board cut to fit the box. The nice thing about the hot melt glue is that if you do every want to take a piece out of the collection, you just pop it off the board and heat it up with a hairdryer to remove the glue from the back of the piece. So, your \u201cfriends\u201d can come out and play in another piece or a new collection as you like!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t want to display pieces quick and easy, you could tack them up on a corkboard, as I bet many of you do already, but you can also make a nicer, more intentional display like this reed shade like Lauren Valenzuela<\/a> does with this earring collection. Now, she is using this to photograph her collection, but you can pop up your bits by looping wire that ends in a hook around it. You could change out your collection on a whim that way. This is also a great idea for hanging up earrings, brooches, and necklaces so you can admire them even when not wearing them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You can use collection displays or anything with dividers that can be hung on a wall. This would work especially well if you make little sculptures are pieces that would sit upright and are better seated then hung or glued but it can work with both as seen in the piece by Shing Yin Khor<\/a> at the top of this post. Gerard Collas<\/a> used an old printer\u2019s letter set tray to display collections of his little wood sculptures.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You can also use wall art to display your artistic bits. This canvas covered with brooches is an ingenious display put together by Kathleen Dustin<\/a>. She used this display in her show booth in 2016. I\u2019m guessing she\u2019s still using something of the sort because it\u2019s just such a fabulous idea. But you could do the same basic thing with your bits. Get a canvas and have at it with paint or whatever you\u2019d like, and attach your pretty bits, maybe with the hot melt glue gun or even hang it with the wire hook method. You could, alternately, find a finished piece of art, maybe at a thrift store or home goods store, and attach your pieces to that as it hangs on your wall.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Earlier this year, when I was in San Francisco, I saw this great wall of jewelry displayed on life-size artistic portraits. Again, this is showing completed work, but you could print out a large portrait image or, sketch or paint your own, and adorn and the image with your little lovelies or even with finished jewelry.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now, if you simply have a lot of beads and bits that may not be your special \u201cfriends\u201d but you have held on to them because you are sure someday they will come in handy (but maybe you are starting to lose faith in that idea), you can use them to create decorative wall pieces when used collectively. I didn\u2019t know that this was a thing but there is a ton of this type of thing on Pinterest and general home craft blogs. People are doing everything from simply arranging spare bits into heart shapes to creating elaborate scenes in a kind of mosaic manner. Here is a fairly straightforward example fashioning tree imagery out of spare bits and bobs. It looks to have been created by Berdean Mante<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By the way, I found this jeweled topiary wall piece in an article about what to do with old vintage jewelry. It is all about creating wall art or decorating home decor objects with lots of pretty bits. If that interests you, pop over to that here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So\u2026 Do I have your little wheels turning in your head? These should give you ideas not just for what to do with your extra bits but many of these could be a jumping-off point for creating your own unique show displays and photo setups.<\/p>\n

Do you have a cool and unique way to display your extra bits or jewelry? Send me links to images if you do. Put it in the comments below, or if you\u2019re reading this by email, click the header for this post to get to it on mine to leave a comment.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Light at the End of the Tunnel<\/strong><\/p>\n

In other very exciting news, we have our house back! The construction crew did last small tasks on Friday and for the first time in four months, I\u2019m off to sleep in a full-size bed in an actual bedroom! I love my studio but I have spent nearly every hour of every day the last four months sleeping, eating, and working from here. I\u2019ve been getting a little more than stir crazy! But now, we basically have to move back into her house. I hadn\u2019t thought about how the post-construction time was going to be like moving into a new place but, of course, it is because it is basically a new place. So, I have tons to do and did not have time to take pictures for you yet, but I will take some pictures for next week when it\u2019s kind of back altogether.<\/p>\n

Hopefully, I didn’t make too many mistakes in this post. I am dead tired and sneezey from all the cleaning and raising of dust. And yes, I am being good and cleaning away with my left hand to spare the bad right one. Well, mostly. I do forget sometimes, mostly because the pain has diminished a ton from not being on the computer all day. So, the break is working thus far, at least for my arm! The pre-diabetes has been tougher to crack but I am determined!\u00a0 Having a full kitchen back and a real bed to sleep in should contribute greatly to all that. Yay!<\/p>\n

So, until next week, I hope you have fun with the display ideas!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First of all, I have to shout out a thank you to all of you who have been reaching out to me while I am relatively out of commission this month. I received so many well wishes by email and messenger that I\u2019ve not been able to answer you all yet and for that I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7559,7560,7548,7581,7578,6696,7580,7563,7579,7576,7577,7535,7533,7558,7538,7556,6695,7523,7522,6482,7543,7540,7555,7566,7534,7545,7554,7542,7547,7529,7565,7552,7551,7553,7544,7557,7546,22,7541,7569,7571,7568,7570,7526,7539,7536,7573,7572,6206,7519,7520,7567,7562,1308,7537,7528,7527,6692,7532,7521,7575,6694,7525,7549,7550,7564,7531,7561,7530,7524,7574],"class_list":["post-16547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspirational-art","tag-art-jewelry-display","tag-artful-display","tag-artful-storage","tag-berdean-mante","tag-booth-display","tag-cabinet-of-curiosities","tag-canvas-as-display","tag-cleaning-out-studio","tag-clever-booth-display","tag-clever-display","tag-clever-sales-display","tag-collection-display","tag-creating-a-collection","tag-creative-art-display","tag-creative-display","tag-creative-displays","tag-curio-cabinet","tag-curiosity-cabinet","tag-curiosity-cabint-2","tag-cute-critters","tag-display-earrings","tag-displaying-a-collection","tag-displaying-art-jewelry","tag-displaying-collectibles","tag-displaying-collection","tag-displaying-jewelry","tag-displaying-pins","tag-earring-display","tag-earring-storage","tag-festive-decoration","tag-gerard-collas","tag-hanging-brooches","tag-hanging-earrings","tag-hanging-pins","tag-jewelry-display","tag-jewelry-hung-artfully","tag-jewelry-storage","tag-kathleen-dustin","tag-lauren-valenzuela","tag-letter-set-tray","tag-letter-set-tray-uses","tag-letter-tray","tag-letterset-tray-uses","tag-little-critters","tag-making-a-collection","tag-making-a-display","tag-old-printers-letter-set","tag-old-printers-letter-set-tray","tag-polymer-journeys-2019","tag-pretty-bits","tag-pretty-things","tag-printers-tray","tag-reducing-clutter","tag-sage-bray","tag-sales-display","tag-sculpted-creatures","tag-sculpted-critters","tag-shadow-box","tag-shadow-box-display","tag-shing-yin-khor","tag-small-wooden-sculpture","tag-specimen-boxes","tag-specimen-display","tag-storing-art","tag-storing-sculptures","tag-studio-clean-out","tag-tie-a-ribbon-on-it","tag-unclutter","tag-unusual-decoration","tag-victorian-cabinet","tag-wood-sculpture"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2O0Lm-4iT","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16547"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16569,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16547\/revisions\/16569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}