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Kristi Bowman

Art Journey Challenges, Monday Musings

Monday Musings: Creating for Art Journey 8

Happy Monday, everyone! And Happy Thanksgiving Week!

As much as I love the architecture and stained glass windows of Frank Lloyd Wright, I think this journey may very well be the most challenging for me. As far as my personal design aesthetic goes, I tend to be drawn towards organic shapes, swirls, and curves. The geometric patterns and sharp lines of the three light screens that we have for inspiration for Art Journey 8 are another animal entirely!

Time was super crunched for me the last couple of months so my grand plans of experimenting with some ideas bopping around my brain didn’t quite come to fruition, but I did get a couple of designs completed that played with the geometric shapes of the light screens.


Tree of Life

For this first pair of earrings I picked some Earthenwood Studio ceramic charms and paired them with Humblebeads polymer clay discs, Czech glass, and brass on niobium ear wires. It’s tough to see in my photo (darn winter light) but the glaze in the lines of those charms is a green color that echoes the greens in the inspiration window. I like the effect of turning those clay squares on their corners for the diamond shape. While the patterns on Heather’s polymer clay discs is more organic, I do give a nod to the geometry required to make polymer clay cane!


Robie House

While the colors in the painted copper charms from Kristi Bowman Design and the Humblebeads polymer clay discs are way brighter than the Robie House light screens, I felt like the pattern on the charms is reminiscent of leaded glass. (Seriously, I warned you that this one was tough for me!)


Coonley Playhouse

This last piece obviously isn’t totally finished… although I may just pop it onto some chain and call it good. Undecided. Anyway, I wanted to play some with Heather Power’s “Metal Sketches” technique. I used two different sizes of jump rings to create the circles in the brass square and riveted that to an arte metal circle blank that I textured with a riveting hammer.

In a perfect world, I would have also played with a larger metal canvas and attempted to connect the circles with some lines more like the inspiration of the Coonley Playhouse. At least I managed to capture the idea of the circles and the squares that make it up.


Thanks for stopping by and seeing what I’ve been up to! You have until Saturday, November 30th to add your entries for Journey Eight. Click HERE to submit your creations for this Art Journey. Remember, you can enter as often as you like… the only rule is that you have to use at least one art bead or component. I know that this is a busy time of the year, but hopefully you can still carve out a tiny bit of creative time. Don’t miss the chance to win some fabulous art beads that should help jump start your creativity for Art Journey Nine!