Artist Inspired: Her Majesty the Flapper: One of a kind Jewelry Made from Vintage & New Materials by Laura Boyko

Cozy In Our Igloo By Laura Boyko

 I met Laura Boyko aka Her Majesty the Flapper at the Bridgetown Farmers & Traders Market this summer. I asked her for an interview to find out what inspires her funky one of a kind designs that most definitely can be called wearable art.

Cozy in Our Igloo Necklace
Cozy in Our Igloo Necklace

How Long have you been making jewelry?

I have been making jewelry professionally for one year. I participated in a Christmas Craft show in Bridgetown last December. I received wonderful feedback from the community which encouraged me to sign up for two weekly summer markets, the Bridgetown Farmer’s and Trader’s Market and the Annapolis Royal Farmer’s and Trader’s Market. Since then, I have been very busy doing special event markets, jewelry parties and online sales.

Ice Castle Necklace
Ice Castle Necklace

What made you start creating jewelry?

I have a passion for making things and an interest in collecting unique jewelry. I suppose it was a natural progression for me.

Misbehaving Underneath the Mistletoe Earrings
Misbehaving Underneath the Mistletoe Earrings

What inspires your designs?

I am inspired by the materials. I spend a lot of time with the beads and chain in my hands. I lay them out in front of me, pushing the colours and shapes that are pleasing to my eye into groups. I studied sculpture at Emily Carr University. I think that I approach jewelry making in the same way that I would approach making a found object assemblage. The making of the piece is only the final step, the design process is what really excites me.

Winter's Bride Necklace
Winter’s Bride Necklace

What are your favorite pieces to make/ creations that you have made?

The best pieces happen when I don’t concern myself with their salability. After making hundreds of pieces in the past year, the process remains interesting to me because I allow myself to make work that is unconventional and bold and that may not sell right away. When it happens, selling a piece like that is the most satisfying. I feel a connection with customer because they see what I see in the design.

Dried Flower Earrings
Dried Flower Earrings

Where do you sell your work?

I sell my work at the local farmer’s markets and through my blog

Green Apple of My Eye Earrings
Green Apple of My Eye Earrings

Do you accept custom work?

I will absolutely do custom work. I have a lot of fun collaborating with customers on the design.

Kaleidoscope necklace
Kaleidoscope necklace

To contact Laura & for more of her fab jewelry, please visit her blog, and if you are in & around the Bridgetown, Nova Scotia area keep your eye out for Her Majesty the Flapper at local craft shows & markets.

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Are you an artist inspired? I’m looking to share your story here and in my monthly newsletter. Inspire me; inspire others! E-mail me or leave a comment below to be considered. All you need is an online presence (blog, website, Etsy shop, etc.) so that the international audience the internet attracts can get to know you & your product better. This is my contribution to the handmade/artist community, & I am honored to do so! Look forward to hearing from you…

The Dye Binder: Recording Fleece Dyeing

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Last month when talking about the dyeing experiments I was conducting in the studio on raw fleece, I meant to post a photo of my dye binder. We went through 3.5 bags of sheep fleece: horned dorset, finnish landrace & half a bag of grey-white romney, to see how the dye would react on darker color saturations, as well as small batches of mohair I had on hand. I am so glad I took notes because thinking back now without them I would never remember how to duplicate them! Needless to say i am *dying* to card & spin all the 200g samples, but the holidays has me totally locked down jewelry making & I still have a 3lb. bag of brown alpaca to spin (not that I am complaining about either!). 🙂

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November Newsletter – Archive

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Last month I launched my monthly newsletter, a goal that I have had on the books now for 4 years! The newsletter acts as a monthly overview of what’s new as well as an artist’s spotlight, & more importantly, as a thank you to loyal customers: there’s a monthly giveaway & the best promocodes for discounts you wont find anywhere else I advertise. Click the image below to read last month’s. Go to http://bb3.ca/#gonewsletter & add your email in the box to sign up. You can unsubscribe at any time, and you won’t get anymore than one email a month from me (I simply don’t have time for any more). 🙂

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Artist Inspired: Painting Poems by Steve Skafte & Wally Shishkov

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Steve Skafte of Bridgetown, and Wally Shishkov of Bear River, Nova Scotia, have combined their talents to simultaneously create a cohesive piece of artwork called Painting Poems. I was particularly intrigued at how poet & painter can work silently together yet have the end result manifest the perfect mood/emotion – with Wally painting upside down, no less!  Learn more about the artists & their process in this interview with Steve Skafte.

MESMERIZE / 8.5 x 11 inches / unframed / watercolor and poetry

How long have you been creating painting-poems?

The very first piece that we did was on May 20, 2013. We began on a blank sheet, with no preparation or fore-thought whatsoever.

DEATHBED / 8.5 x 11 inches / unframed / watercolor and poetry

What made you start creating painting-poems?

We both survive almost entirely off the income of what we create, so economical reasons are almost as pressing as creative ones. I (Steve Skafte) had been thinking a lot about busking and street performance, and it was just getting into the season where warmth makes that sort of thing possible (or at least comfortable) in Nova Scotia. I came across a TED talk by Amanda Palmer where she talked about the concept of allowing people to give in return for art, rather than the idea of constantly demanding payment. I was already planning to take to the street with the idea of writing poetry live when a conversation with Wally Shishkov turned me in the direction of collaborative creating. There was a real desire to be seen for both of us. Art is more invisible than ever before in rural Canada, shoved into dark corners and only drug out with the notion of group expression or with the drive of government funding. We were tired of waiting to be accidentally discovered, so we decided to put ourselves in the path of passing traffic. There was never any urge for performance, just a nervous and open-hearted sharing. What could we do but create? For all the people hawking their finished products, it seemed to mean so much more for them to see it coming alive.

COMBUSTION / 8.5 x 11 inches / unframed / watercolor and poetry

What inspires your designs?

Dreams, nature, water. Water more than anything, that’s part of working with watercolours, I suppose. Wavelengths, lightwaves, electrical impulses, magnetism. Without waves, where would we be, what could we see? Nowhere and nothing. The images start swirling, and they eventually find their way or dry their way to completion. Geometric shapes, lines and crosses and circles. The patterns of frost, the growth of crystals. We begin every creation live and at the same time, so as Steve writes and Wally paints upside-down, there’s a rush to the end, or at least to discover where the end is. In the end, the inspiration is the word. We pick that word, the title of the painting-poem, and try as best we can to express the full and whole emotion of what that word means to us. The shape is almost always entirely unexpected. It’s hard to know where it comes from.

GRAVITY / 8.5 x 11 inches / unframed / watercolor and poetry

What are your favorite pieces to make/creations you have made?

There’s one called “Exodus” that was particularly hard to part with. A lot of the pieces hang on heavily from the meaning of the words. The images mean a lot to us, but the words are a story, a one-of-a-kind journey to a place we’ve never been and will never be again. The wide-eyed smiles and sometimes tears in the eyes and on the faces of friends and strangers when they see the painting-poem come alive, fully improvised in front of them, just for them, that’s worth a lot. I think of a few pieces where the joy and sorrow was beyond compare, and we were deeply humbled and honored to share it. “Heartbeat”, was one. “Gypsy” was another, for a woman we’ll never forget. One called “Solitude” carried a woman back to the death of her mother, and we didn’t mean it that way, but it was exact to the strangest detail. “Transformation”, done on the street for a friend named Stephanie, was the most personal of experiences. Between the two of us creating, with her and her boyfriend watching, it was almost religious in nature. Nothing has ever felt so right. There’s a line in a piece called “The Gift” that says: “The gift we have is the gift we’re giving,” and that’s the real depth of it, I think. The ones that mean the most to us are the ones that meant the most to others.

SQUALL / 8.5 x 11 inches / unframed / watercolor and poetry

Where do you sell your work?

We sell on the street live when we create, or inside at what shows we can get when the weather is colder. A binder of our 8.5×11 work is available for view at Low Tide Gallery (4 Queen Street, Bridgetown, Nova Scotia) as well as a handful of our 16×20 pieces. Online, we sell all of our currently available work in our Etsy shop, but all sold and unsold works can be browsed on Facebook.

DAWNING / 8.5 x 11 inches / unframed / watercolor and poetry

Do you accept custom work?

Absolutely! About 1/3rd of all our work is requested. Unlike most art, requests are more like conversational ideas than demands. We start with a word (or sometimes a two/three word title) and sometimes a little background of what it means to them, then create from there. If you’d like us to do a piece for you, go to our Etsy shop and click the “Request Custom Order” button.

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I own 3 Painting Poems for my Bridgetown home, & look forward to possessing more.

To see/learn more:

visit Steve & Wally’s etsy shop
follow them on Facebook

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Are you an artist inspired? I’m looking to share your story here and in my monthly newsletter. Inspire me; inspire others! E-mail me or leave a comment below to be considered. All you need is an online presence (blog, website, Etsy shop, etc.) so that the international audience the internet attracts can get to know you & your product better. This is my contribution to the handmade/artist community, & I am honored to do so! Look forward to hearing from you…

Have you been healed by creativity? I am looking for examples to be featured here on the creativity inspired blog of how art/creativity helped you overcome loss/hardship/illness. Did you paint a picture? Get a tattoo/had art created for you, much like the Painting Poems? Plant a garden in honor of a person or event? I want to hear every & all examples of how an outward expression aided you in your process. It is my hope that others will find comfort in these inspirational stories. Please contact me directly in order to be featured, or leave me a comment below. My only requirement is that you have one picture of the finished product to share with readers. Namaste!