Adornments Retreat 2019

I'm sorry it's been so quiet on my blog so far this summer.  Since June1st, I've only been at home three weekends and one of those was spent with serious jet lag!  We're on the run again this coming weekend too.  Wowza.  No wonder our summers just fly by!

Anyway, I digress.  This past week and weekend was filled with travel to and tons of fun and learning at the Adornments Mixed Media Jewelry Retreat.  While it's all still fresh in my mind, I wanted to share my experiences and my projects with you all!

2019 marks the third year of Adornments and I've been lucky enough to attend every year so far.  Since it falls around my birthday (it's tomorrow!), I look at this as my birthday present to me.  Each year the schedule has worked out a bit differently.  Our instructors were Jess Lincoln from Vintaj, Heather Powers of Humblebeads fame, Erin Prais-Hintz our mad scientist, and Candie Cooper who is the queen of sparkle and special sauce!  This year participants could take four different half day classes over two days (Thursday and Friday).  We also had a round robin make and take session on Saturday where we got to a little project with each of the four instructors... so great if you didn't have a class with everyone!!

Our fabulous instructors: Candie, Jess, Heather, and Erin

My friend Alexa that I met through Heather's oh so awesome Bead Cruise flew into Minneapolis and rode with me this year.  It's always better to have a buddy to keep you company on a long drive!  Plus we'll be rooming together on the 2020 Bead Cruise so this was a great opportunity to get to know each other better before we room together for 8 nights!  We had a nice dinner in downtown Galena before settling into the Chestnut Mountain Resort for the week.

Wednesday:  Day 1 of the retreat was all about registration, housekeeping for the event, digging into our goody bags from all the generous sponsors, and the ever popular pendant exchange.  Each attendee is encouraged to make a pendant for the exchange and then it's a blind choice... you get called up one table at a time and just grab the package that speaks to you!  Here's what I made for the exchange with etched copper and the cute dragonfly that I received from Tammy N.

Another fun part of the first day is creating and dividing out a bead soup to be used for the design challenge.  How that works is each participant is asked to bring a 16 inch strand of beads (or it's equivalent).  Each table has it's own bowl and the folks sitting at that table throw their respective strands in, mix it around, and then divide it out.  On the last day of the retreat we reveal and vote on our favorite designs made from the bead soups.  More on that later!  Sadly, we were so eager to get started that we forgot to take a before picture of our table's bead soup.  Oops!!  At least you can see the palette below.  After dinner, we reconvened for a night of shopping with the instructors, beading, and socializing.  I came away with some nice goodies as always!

Thursday:  Day 2 dawned and we were all excited to get started with our first classes.  For me it was Heather's Faux Tin Charming Affair.  Yes, I know I've taken this a few times before, but it's always different images and projects... plus she and her awesome husband Jesse have tweaked and perfected the process over time, so you get the most up to date and best technique to take home!  This time we were more focused on charms and earring components... right in my happy place!  I'm often a little pokey in class but I did manage to get one pair of earrings completed and some textured copper pieces cut out.  Eventually I'll get the faux tin pieces cut out and everything filed and put together!

My afternoon class was Erin's Petri Dish Pendants.  I really enjoyed each and every one of my classes, but if I had to pick a favorite, this would totally be it!  Unlike many techniques, this one feels a bit like mad science.  You really have no idea exactly how the resin and alcohol inks will react with each other... it's just a leap of faith.  The only bad part is that you have to wait 24 hours for the resin to cure before you get to see how things turned out.  This is not a technique for those of you who want a reliable and repeatable design.  If you're willing to take a chance the results can be amazing.  Not everything turned out how I expected/hoped, but I still think that they are all attractive and fun!

On the left you can see how things looked from the back... this is the pre-cured picture.  The right is how they looked right after I peeled them off the tape.  So exciting to see the results!

Here's the glamor shot of my finished components.  One of my maple leaf pendants still needs a tiny bit of clean up, but it's way better than it was!

Thursday night after dinner we had two fun presentations and a make and take hosted by Ron Rock from Swarovski and Jess from Vintaj.  Ron brought each of us a gorgeous (and hefty!) orchid pendant that we wire wrapped with a lovely Vintaj brass piece.  Heather shared an inspiring presentation all about the elements of design.  Lots of sparkly and art bead inspiration for sure!

My finished make and take pendant!  Isn't it amazing?

A couple of pages from one of the Swarovski inspiration books that they come out with twice a year when they announce new products.  These pages are hand crafted and just GORGEOUS!

Friday:  My morning class was Adding Images to EVERYTHING with Candie and it was super fun!  We did a quick project with an image under a glass dome and then got down to business with some fun translucent image transfer material.  Unfortunately it's not on the market anymore but I did buy a few sheets for future play!  I have some fun new pendants to create with plus more images to use when I get a chance to experiment some more.

For the afternoon I was back in Erin's classroom for her Quick Cure Clay Components class and more mad science!  Quick Cure Clay is a super new product on the scene from Ranger and the class was all about exploration and experimentation.  It's a really interesting material that cures quickly with just a heat gun as the catalyst.  It's strong and the cured product feels more like a ceramic than anything else that I can compare it to.  Even though Erin had a ton of different options for adding color to our creations, I chose to focus on making pieces since I had access to lots of textures and molds that I don't have at home.  I still have more clay in my package so after I do some more with this first batch color-wise I can expand on my experiments!

On the left, I'm set up and ready to start.  The right are my cured pieces.  The four flowers along the bottom have jump rings embedded in the back side so that I can use them as button clasps.

The last official night of the retreat is a crowd favorite... the Pajama Beading Party!  We get to be silly and wear fun pj's while we continue to work on projects and chat.  Pretty much eat, drink, bead, and be merry!  Another fun tradition is the Facebook Live beading challenge where Erin and Heather give each other a bead soup mix based on that year's palette and one of the other instructors provides a mystery component that must be included in both designs.  It's fast paced and good, silly fun that always results in some lovely new jewelry designs.  You can watch the replay, hosted by Candie Cooper HERE.

Heather and Erin working under the pressure for the Facebook Live Beading Challenge!

Saturday:  The last day of Adornments is always bittersweet.  I feel sad to be finishing things up and saying good bye to beady friends, yet by that time I'm also ready to be back home with my Sweetie and the kitties.  Similar to last year, the instructors planned a fun progressive make and take where we all got to do one charm project with each of the four instructors.  They divided us into groups and we rotated through all four stations.

Make & take charms:  Clockwise from top left the projects were by Candie Cooper, Heather Powers, Jess Lincoln, and Erin Prais-Hintz.  The pewter piece is from Vintaj and can be shaped in fun ways if you wish.  I haven't decided what I want to do yet so it's in its natural state!

After we did our round robin of charms it was time to vote on your favorite creation for the Bead Soup Design Challenge.  You could have knocked me over with a feather... I won second place and with it a $50 gift certificate to Rustic River Finds.  Jess's sweet mom Trish Italia owns this fabulous bead store right in downtown Galena.  I always find some really unique things that just have to come home with me there.  Trish also stocks a great selection of gifts and home decor items.  So fun to shop there every year!  Here's my winning entry:

h

entry was actually two necklaces that can be worn together or separately.  Both focals are polymer clay... the heart is by Erin (and I bought it the first night of the retreat) and the rounded square is by Heather and was in my goody bag.   

After lots of hugs and good byes to the folks hitting the road on Saturday afternoon most of us headed into downtown for lunch and shopping.  Monica, Alexa, and I enjoyed yummy white sangria and frozen fruit with our pizza lunch.

With our bellies now happy, we wandered down to Rustic River Finds to spend my gift certificate and more!!  Trish always provides a little make and take project for all the Adorners.  This year it was a sweet necklace.

Every night Monica and I opened our room for late night shenanigans and socializing.  Just hanging out and catching up with old friends and meeting new ones is one of the best parts of any retreats.  We always have some fun and silly times after hours in the "party room" but what happens in Galena stays in Galena!  ;)  Saturday night was our last hurrah and we probably stayed up a little past our bedtimes, but it was all worth it!  

I've come home with my creative batteries recharged and my heart full of gratitude and love for my beady tribe.  I don't get to see most of these awesome folks nearly often enough but I enjoy every moment when I do get to spend time in their company.  Until next year, Adornments!!

Adornments Retreat

Once again, I'm a little late to the party as far as sharing my recent creative adventures... but I'll stick with the better late than never theme!  For the Adornments Retreat, the creative forces behind Vintaj, the Art Bead Scene, and Now That's a Jig came together for an event not to be missed!  Three days of mixed media jewelry fun with Heather Powers, Jess Italia Lincoln, Erin Prias-Hintz, and Brenda Schweder at the Chestnut Mountain Resort in Galena, Illinois made for the perfect birthday weekend for me.  The only bad thing about the retreat is that I had to choose just two of the eight classes and I wish that I could have done them all!!  

Galena is about a five and a half to six hour drive for me (depending on the traffic and construction), so I decided to head out a day early so as not to be stressed out about my arrival time on Thursday.  Luckily, my wonderful roommate Monica decided to join me earlier than she had originally planned.  We had dinner that first night with one of Monica's coworkers, got to watch an amazing rain storm roll through from the floor to ceiling windows at the restaurant, and had our GPS route us down a series of increasingly creepily named dirt roads to get home (Devil's Ladder, Irish Hollow, Cemetery)... Adventure!!  The nighttime rain cleared out and gave us a super muggy morning to explore the shops and restaurants of Main Street Galena before the retreat got going that afternoon.  (Galena is a seriously cute town if you ever get a chance to visit!)

Thursday afternoon kicked off the fun of the retreat proper.  We all gathered in our main meeting space to get our registration materials, name tags, and goodie bags.  This is always an exciting time at any retreat when you get to see old friends and meet new people... everyone is buzzing with anticipation of the fun to come!  After some introductory remarks from Heather and the other instructors, the group had the fun task of making and dividing out some bead soup!  

Before the retreat, we were given the following inspiration and asked to bring 16 inches of beads to go with the color palette.  We were also supposed to bring some sort of focal/pendant and any other beads and findings we might want to add to our personal bead soup portions.  The idea behind all of this is that each person was encouraged to make something made up of at least 60% of the bead soup and enter into a fun design contest to be held at the end of the retreat.  Each table made their own soup and it was fascinating to see the different mixes of beads we had around the room.  

My portion of our table's "soup" with the pendant I chose to use.

We broke for dinner on our own at the resort and then regrouped for a fun evening session afterwards.  Heather and Erin did a presentation about the Art Bead Scene blog and their monthly challenges as well as using art beads in your jewelry designs.  Fun and inspiring stuff!  One of the highlights of the evening was Heather and Erin doing a Chopped style competition where they gave each other a bead soup mix and a focal based on the July ABS challenge and then they had 20 minutes on the clock to make a design.  Nail biting jewelry making excitement!  To add to the challenge, Brenda gave them each a mystery component that they had to work into their designs.... and it was a plastic monkey with a sparkly crystal collar!!  Here are our lovely contestants and their designs at the end of the competition.  

While all those hi-jinx were going on, the rest of us looked on, mingled, and worked on our own beading projects.  I managed to get my Bead Soup competition piece completed that first night (probably a sign of the impending apocalypse!!).  Here's what I made:

This sweet pendant from Erin's Simple Truths Sampler Club was the perfect fit with my mix of pastel beads.  It is beautiful and had a lovely message on the back side that the wearer will keep close to her heart.

For day one, I chose Erin's INKsplorations class where we got to play with different alcohol inks and surfaces to put them on.  I probably didn't experiment enough but I think my brain just isn't great when it comes to really being freeform and just messing around.  I also stuck mostly to the Ranger alcohol inks since those are the ones readily available to me locally.  Before lunch we had time to experiment with the inks and substrates and Erin worked through lunch (naughty monkey!) to get all of our little masterpieces sealed for us so we could move onto the next step when we got back.  We spent the rest of the day cutting down small portions of our inked artworks and gluing them into bezels and adding in UV resin.  Now, resin is a tricky thing (at least for me!) and this class was no different.  I had some bubbling and what I think is the resin pulling away from the material underneath but I believe with some creative problem solving that I may be able to salvage these two.  While I had fun playing with the inks (and got some fun results along the way) I think this may be a little too freeform for me to want to pursue it too much... although I'm thinking about trying two part resin with it instead of the UV and see if it's any less frustrating for me.  Time will tell!

Day two for me was a polymer clay and metal play day with Heather in her Wings & Dreams class.  I really can't overstate how much fun I had in this class!  I never would have dreamed that I would enjoy polymer clay until I took my first class in that medium with Heather last fall.  I'm never going to be the genius artist that she is, but I really enjoy playing with it and learning new polymer techniques.  I was so busy making cute butterflies and flowers that I really didn't do a great job of documenting the day, but here are some pictures I took during and afterwards of my completed projects as well as some that are still works in progress.  I didn't realize this when I signed up for the class, but alcohol inks were a part of the coloring process for these cuties so I had all the supplies I needed to continue painting and playing when I got home!

Right after our day two classes, the entire group came back together for our Wrap Party where we got to see and vote on everyone's Bead Soup creations and officially say goodbye to the wonderful Adornments Retreat and our fabulous instructors.  The fun didn't really end there as many of us were staying over Saturday night.  After dinner Jess's mom, Trish Italia, opened up her lovely bead store Rustic River Finds in downtown Galena for us to do some more shopping.  (I forgot to mention that Friday night we had a private shopping event with our instructors and Trish at the retreat!)  Not that I needed anything, I found some treasures to treat myself with as a little birthday gift.    

Top: Our lovely instructors Brenda, Jess, Heather, & Erin; Bottom: Me with my two teachers and fellow participant Lin.

My birthday goodies!

If you're looking for a fun and inspirational jewelry making retreat, I highly recommend checking out the Adornments Retreat.  They're already starting to plan next year's event.  A huge THANK YOU to Heather, Jess, Erin, and Brenda for a wonderful weekend of jewelry adventures with a great group of folks.  Any time I can come together to share, learn, and laugh with my beady tribe is a blessing and a treasure I'll cherish.