The Art of Joy Alyssa Day

It was a cool enough day yesterday to do a little torchwork at my jewelry bench. I don't get a chance very often, because it takes a good number of hours that have to be completely uninterrupted once I light that torch. It also has to be cool and breezy so that I don't burst into flames or fill the place up with propane fumes. As it is, my partner sometimes gets a headache from the fumes. I keep trying to open enough windows and turn on enough fans, but his desk is directly downstream from my workbench, so... sigh...

New ways to enjoy my artwork, and they're fun for me to make too. When I started getting my art pieces listed on Etsy and ArtFire, of course I drove around to see what else was selling and at what prices. I found these Scrabble tiles with various images plastered on the front. And immediately I thought "I can do better than that!!!"

Recently I was asked to produce visible light spectrum pendant necklaces. The lady who asked runs a wonderful scientific website called ScienceMall and she had been selling pendants that claimed to be spectrum, but didn't have the entire visible spectrum in them. When she called and talked with the sellers, they didn't understand what she meant. They were not scientists, not educated about visible light spectrum versus simple rainbow or color charts.

I grew up watching my dad making all kinds of wonderful things down in our basement. He was (and still is) a magnificent silversmith. He would take the odd rocks that he'd find and break and polish them into beautiful gems and then mount them for rings, pendants, and bracelets.  The basement cave where he had his soldering iron and all the various parts and pieces set up was a mystical treat for me when I was so young.  I'm sure the interest I had is part of what built in me to be confident enough to build and create all the nifty stuff I do.

Recently, and from multiple sources, I've gotten urged to use our glass work in jewelry. So I did a little research online to see what type of glass jewelry was already out there. We don't particularly like doing the same thing that hoards of others are doing. We like having our work be unique. I found a lot of various necklaces, etc, but none of it really looked like the type of designs that we would/have come up with.