Susan Lenart Kazmer and beyond

I told my son "come look at my $700 necklace". I managed to finish one project in my class. I am going to blog about my classes before I lose my blogging momentum. Rain and high wind has just hit Edmonds. Time to put in a Midsomer Mystery from Netflix.

I signed up for three classes from Susan Lenart Kazmer. I like her work because she thinks outside the box. She shares wonderful techniques and has a great sense of humor. Supplies all the tools you need for the class if you don't have yours there. (Some instructors don't do that). She has kilns and blow torches and drills and never seems worried that we are going to burn the place down. Instructs us with grace and humor. It is always fun to take a class from her. Also check out her blog, Objects and Elements. You can see her talking about connections here.

I learned how to enamel, which was amazingly easy. Well, if you have the kiln ;).

And how to make resin pages and fill bezels with resin and found objects. I made many messy versions. I wish I had read up a little more before my class. ;)

And the last day we did Altered Surface Charms, fun and frantic. I made many but stopped to focus on my enameled piece while I had Susan there to answer any questions I would have in that process.

Exploring Resin Jewelry-Making with Susan Lenart Kazmer.

Metalwork: Making Cold Connections with Rivets  (DVD)








And here is my one finished piece from the enamel class. I found beautiful pieces of a Madrone tree where the bark looked burned. I really wanted to incorporate that into the piece. I brought some more branches home to use again, in a bigger way! I made many enameled pieces to use, this one was a larger piece of copper, enameled on both sides. They should really be enameled many times on both sides but the the limited time, I only enameled two sides once. I finally stared sketching out an idea, which i realized help me so much instead of sitting there looking at the pieces thinking how and what to do with them! So next time ... I will sketch out first because I think better like that. Thank you, Susan, for an amazing three days!

The last hour of every class is pandemonium trying to finish whatever you can and clean up for dinner. Wishing you had 3 more hours of class time!