Kalaya Steede

I have come full circle. This Saturday will be my 2nd Freret Street Festival . This marks my one year anniversary of doing markets.  Woohoo!!! Here is me one year ago at the Street Festival. I revamped my booth display this week. I felt that the pieces were not popping, and the props were actually crowding the table so the eyes could not rest on any one thing. So all of the displays were removed for a more wabi-sabi look. A more simple look. I will take a picture tomorrow for you. The forecast is predicting 60% rain...likely! Wow! Do I melt in the rain? YES! hahahaha...well...not really but still! Here is a sneak preview of some of the pieces you could see if you came out for a visit. Some pendants... I was playing with scraffitto enameling.  Lots of fun but time consuming.  All of these were done in a kiln except for the middle one.  That was torch fired. Some dangle earrings... but the real fun was this... 'Wonder' brooch I wond...

Bonjour! I have been on a ring making journey and in the past week I have probably made at least 7 rings!  Would that count as a ring a day?  HA! Anyway, my most favorite rings are anticlastic. Anticlastic is defined in which the two principal curves bend in opposite directions, like a horse saddle. Curves in the metal are so beautiful to look at and follow,  kind of like our bodies.  Have you ever lay there with your hand in front of your face and just follow the curves of your hand? Absolutely beautiful! Here is a ring that I recently made on commission. Notice the gentle curves and feel how smooth they are. Well this journey of anticlastic forming has led me to making my own anticlastic or sinusoidal forming stake.  I was going to purchase one but why do that when you can make your own? I started off with a block of rock hard maple (7/8" thick) and transferred a template a friend gave me. After about 40 minutes I was able to ...

I had the most intensive Faux Bone workshop EVER!   Robert Dancik decided to play in NOLA in the month of May teaching anyone who wanted to learn about Faux Bone at Thomas Mann's studioFlux and I was up to the challenge. What is Faux Bone you ask?   Well, it is PVC but a higher grade of PVC.  It is non-toxic, malleable, can be stained, dyed, twisted, and was founded by Robert. It comes in sheets of various thickness just like metal but sawing is like cutting through butter. I started off making one of Robert's designs so I can learn everything about the Faux Bone. After cutting out my shape and sanding to make it real smooth I used a Dremel engraver to draw my designs into the bone.  Next was to make those engraved sections pop, basically just adding some acrylic paint in the crevices and then wiping the excess off.  Last was to give it a good stain to make it look as though it had been aging for thousands of years. How do you ...