Happy Holidays!!

Our first US Xsmas
AUGURI!!!

“YOUR GIFT IS ON ITS WAY” card

Last year I had some very last minute Christmas shopper who found my work few hours before gift opening night. I made for each of them one personalized “YOUR GIFT IS ON ITS WAY” card. Also this year I decided to offer my customers the same choice.

HOW IT WORKS:
1-You find the gift that you like, for example Chiara earrings

2-BUT it is already the 23rd and it is too late to receive it by next night, you can buy it any way and send me a message (convo in Etsy language) or an email (fruccidesign@gmail.com) and I’ll prepare a personalized card for your gift:

3-I’ll send you (at no extra charge) a pfd file of the card that you can be easily printed at home, you’ll just need to have Adobe Reader (free download here) and a printer

4-Place you card under your tree and enjoy your Merry Christmas night!!

Tetto sotto la neve

My very first HDR(high dynamic range image).

To tell you the truth this is not a real one, because in order to make a HDR picture you need four basic elements:
-a photo
-the same image photographed at high exposure value (E=~+2)
-the same image photographed at low exposure value (E=~-2)
-photomatix

and I had one and half: my photo and Photoshop
So I produced the over and under exposed copies with Photoshop, and then I followed this tutorial.

Now I have joined my first HDR group on flickr hoping to learn more and more!

NORDSTROM GEMELLI

Few weeks ago I've posted some shots of my new cufflinks,

Nordstrom Gemelli

A limited edition of elegant eco-friendly cufflinks.

old leaf and new snow

In the past few weeks I haven't been around here much, the reason is that I have moved to my (well I should say ours) new house

And this morning we had a nice surprise outside: first snow in Rochester, first snow on the deck, first winter photo.

Why I hate Halloween

Sorry, today my post has nothing to do with my jewelry, it is about why I hate Halloween!
I’m Italian, and when I left Italy in 2000 there was no sign of Halloween celebration there, the 1th of November is the real holiday for us. Halloween was something that I’ve seen only in the movies.
So you can imagine how thrilled I was for my very first Halloween.
I had studied “Halloween how-to” quite well, I had asked around what kind of treats I should have, and how should I greet the kids…so I was ready! The house was full of chocolates and candies, the lights were all on and in addition I came home earlier than usual (which implies I had to spend an extra hour stuck on the L.A. freeways traffic).
I waited and waited and waited….not even one kid showed up and the worst part was that next day I called my parents in Italy and they told me that some kids had rung at their door asking “Dolcetto o scherzetto” (trick or treats)!

In conclusion, this year I’m not yet ready to forgive Halloween but at least I put on a costume!

Frucci Design jewelry at OCMA

This weekend the 2008 California Biennial (CB08) will open at the Orange County Museum of Art.

Recently the exhibition has emerged as an important indicator of emerging art and artists working in California. This year’s biennial is guest-curated by Lauri Firstenberg and it includes works by more than 50 artists and, for the first time, incorporates off-site projects with collaborating venues from Tijuana to Northern California.

I was much honored to be asked to send a selection of my paper jewelry for the museum retail shop. These piece and more are at the store for the grand opening!

By the way if you haven’t visit the online museum collection check it out here

Does blog banner matter?

Few days ago, I decided to design a new banner for the blog, and I found myself wondering if blog banner matters at all.
This is the kind of question that never finds a single good answer. It is like asking if appearance matters more than substance. What do you think?
My personal answer to this dilemma is yes it matters!
Don’t take me wrong I’m not a superficial person, but it matters if you’re trying to introduce yourself through a visual media like the web.

And this is why I had put a lot of thoughts in what my banner should look like, and my last version is a fingerspelling of FRUCCI DESIGN.
Why fingerspelling?
Because it is made with hands or handmade, and my blog is about what I do and my hands are my most important tool!

By the way, while researching for this article I found out that the word BANNER comes from late Latin bandum, a cloth out of which a flag is made (Latin banderia, Italian bandiera).

I'm a member of crafthaus

I've been invited by Brigitte Martin to join a new contemporary art, design and fine craft network crafthaus.

It is a true honor for me to be part of this community, especially because most of the artists that I admire are members!

This is my page where I've added a little detail for most people, but a big change for me:
for the first time I'm using my name.

CUFFLINKS in PROGRESS

I'm working on a limited edition of cufflinks.
Last summer NORDSTROM advertising campaign saw artist Ruben Toledo and photographer Ruven Afanador teaming up to produce these fantastic pages

Of course, I couldn't help my longing for wonderful paper, I had to collect it.
Now I'm giving these pages new life, transforming them into man jewelry!
Here are few shots of my work in progress

UNLEASHED IDEA

Have you ever had impression of a concept buried in your mind and it seems it cannot make it out of there, like if it is not quite ready to come out?
I have...all the time!
And I’m so luck, I always find the trigger to pull it out of there!

This time it was a customer who asked for a pair of earring to match INSERTO R pendant

her request has unleashed this idea for new earrings that was floating in one of my brain drawers for quite some time

Thank you Jolene!

Discarded to Distinctive

Ross Art Museum Features Eco-Friendly Exhibit


My work was selected to be part of the eco-friendly exhibition, "Discarded to Distinctive", that is opening today and on display through Nov. 16 at the Ross Art Museum .

Twelve pieces are on displaytogether with the work of Chakaia Booker, Lyne Kearns, Hayley Muse Rupersburg and Aurora Robson:

"We have five artists who are all doing wonderful things with items that are easily overlooked," said Tammy Wallace, first assistant for the museum and curator of the new exhibit. "These women have truly elevated their raw materials into unique, beautiful, sometimes amusing, and sometimes inspiring expressions of creativity. Ultimately, the goal is for everyone to re-think the items they toss into the trash and ask themselves: 'Can this be recycled? Can this be reused? What could I turn this into?'"

And the icing on the cake was that my RB Shlelly was chosen to be on the exhibition flier!

Aber TERRA necklace

I love colors and I generally try to incorporate them as much as I can in my work

...but sometime it just doesn't happen!

Second day of school

I’m doing some more casting, this time the wax model was prepared by injecting hot wax into a rubber mold and her e you can nice the nice part of this project: you can get as many copies of an obect as you like and they all be the same…

…but of course the other side of the story is that not all of them come out at all!

Moving

Ready for my next adventure!!



Destination: Frisco!!!!!

I made it!!!!

I'm featured seller at Etsy



here are the 10 questions they asked:

1. Tell us a bit about yourself (name, location, affiliations, personal stuff).
2. Apart from creating things, what do you do?
3. What first made you want to become an artist?
4. Please describe your creative process (how, when, materials, etc).
5. What handmade possession do you most cherish?
6. Name your top five books, movies, songs/musical groups, and websites (besides Etsy).
7. What advice would you give to artists who are new to Etsy?
8. What are your favorite features on Etsy? What new features would you like to see?
9. How do you promote your work?
10. In ten years I'd like to be...

now if you want to know the asnwer check out the all interview

Maker Fair

This week end come and visit me at the Maker Fair.
I'll be there on Saturday demoing my PETALI kit.

Please stop by just to say hi or if you feel more crafty bring by some shopping bags and get ready to step in my recycled paper world!
See you there!!

P.S. here is the map of the fair...have fun!!

Casting my name

Yesterday I had my first casting experience, and I started with a ring: “MY NAME IS” ring.
These are few sketched ideas

The wax model was sprunged it and invested

The ring was casted and here is how it looked once the silver was quenched

The sawed out ring is ready for the cleaning process

But I couldn’t resist trying it on!

GIRASOLE BROOCH

From today, GIRASOLE is also synonym of brooch!

It is the new eco friendly brooch in my shop, made of old magazine page and embroidered with tiny blue seed beads.

On a black jacket it really pops out!

BROOKE EARRINGS

"What is your favorite color?
If you had to choose among 36 colors, which one would you pick?"
This was what Brooke was wondering about few days ago…when she had a fabulous idea: “why pick just one? why not more and all together?”
So everything started combining colors

…paper was cut…

…transformed into tridimensional elements…

…few of the tiniest seed beads were included and sterling silver wire was hammered…

BROOKE earrings are now part of my paper jewelry collection.

Grazie Brooke


Qual’e’ il vostro colore preferito?
Se aveste 36 colori fra cui scegliere per quale optereste?
Questo era cio’ che si chiedeva Brooke qualche giorno fa…quando le e’ venuta una fantastica idea: “Perche’ limitarsi ad uno, perche’ non di piu’”
Cosi’ tutto e’ cominciato con la scelta dei colori…
… la carta e’ stata tagliata…
…trasformata in elementi tridimensionali…
…alcune perline aggiunte, l’argento e’ stato battuto..
..ora gli orecchini BROOKE fanno parte della mia collezione di gioielli!

Bond's dad

The 2008 is the centenary of the birth of Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond,and to celebrate a series of events have been organized, you can check them on this website .

As a little girl I use to love James Bond movies...the music, the humor, the locations, and if you want to know my personal preference on the usual question who is the best James...I must reply Sean Connery of course!!

Sean Connery
Originally uploaded by twm1340

Visit to LACMA

I’m a museum person, I can’t help it...if I’m in a new city I have to visit as many museum as I can, and everytime I’m back home, in Rome, I have to go visit at least one art exhibition!
But I have been postponing the visit to LACMA for so long, and why? Simple! it was just too close, too handy!

I tend to procrastinate when something it’s so easy to do that could be done it anytime!
Well, now I have no time left, I’m leaving LA in 20 days so I had to go!

The new opened building of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum is a travertine box surrounded by red steel beams by Renzo Piano:

BCAM
Originally uploaded by Dan Hontz

I was very happy to find the first floor of the BCAM dedicated to one of my favorite metal sculptor: Richard Serra.

I'm posting videos for both the two Serra's sculptures, Band and Sequence, which, in my modest opinion, describe better than a single photo the dynamicity of these two masterpieces and give the flavor of what an incredible experience is walking in these giants

BAND

SEQUENCE

While we were strolling about the second floor, I entered a room and..SURPRICE a gigantic table immediately made me feel tiny (which is generally not easy to do being almost 5.10”!)



Therrien's "Under the table", an almost 10 ft tall sculpture, brought me back when I was a little child and I could crawl under the table, while adults had their supper...down there it was a world made just for little ones!


Now I'm really ready to leave LA!

March Madness

So far March has been the craziest month of the last few years for me!
The mosaic below kind of summarizes few of the events, but now I should be able to get back on track and blog regularly again!

The biggest news of all…well there few I can’t reveal yet, but one I certainly can:
I’m leaving sunny California in direction of up state NY…more precisely to Rochester!

Have you ever met a bare protein in person?

No?!

So let me introduce you to my protein, well not really mine, I’m just studying it!



The yellow solution in the tube contains the protein, leaving out too many technical details, my protein is dissolved in that liquid.
I’m trying to study this protein by NMR.
NMR is a powerful technique used to “look” at some protein atoms (hydrogens, carbons and nitrogens) in order to understand how the protein 3D structure looks like.



In few words it is like doing a tomography or an MRI, but instead of a person's body I analyze a protein!

ALMOST MISSED SAN FRANCISCO WEEKEND

This morning, ops it's already Friday...so I should say yesterday morning, I got an e-mail which reminded me of today early morning flight to San Francisco.
I have to say 98% of the time I hate those remainders, but today I was so grateful to read it!
Why?
Because I had totally forgotten about it!
So in few hours I'll be in San Francisco and I'll attend a three days metalsmith class at the REVERE ACADEMY.


In the mean time, I wish you HAPPY EASTER!

Open Studio Tours: Fru Snoops on

I have recently started to write this Open Studio Tour series for the Storque, where I'll be snooping around artists' creative spaces, how they set them up, when, why...even how often they clean them!

The first tour was into my space

This time I visited Michelle aka mcaplan wonderful working space

If you would like to show and share your working space, please leave o comment here.

TUTORIAL

FLICKR SCREENSHOTS/ILLUSTRATIONS
How to properly post a screenshot or an illustration on Flickr.

Recently Flickr has changed its policy on safe contents, while before that some people used to be NIPSAed.
What does NIPSA mean?
It stands for Not In Public Site Areas, and the NIPASed accounts do not show up in public search (if you want to know more about NIPSA see here)

Now that the new filters are in use, you can avoid any flagging of your screenshot or illustration by labeling them properly.

Here are two methods for setting the content type while uploading the photos:

1 UPLOADING FROM THE WEB
-in your flickr home page click Upload Photos

-click “show more upload settings”



-a large menu will come out, where you can set your file content (photo/screenshot/illustration) or safety level.



2 UPLOADR UPLOADING
-look for the “content type” menu on the right

Here are two methods for changing the content type on uploaded photos:

1 ON THE PHOTO PAGE

-on the bottom right of your photo page find the link Flag your photo



-set the content type




2 ORGANIZE MODE

-click on “Organize” button on the tool bar

-once in the organize window, you can drag in the center as many photo as you like (in my example I just used one) and click the Permission button


-chose from the menu “Set content type”


-set the content type


-go back to your home page by clicking the Your Photo link on top right of the page


TIP for Etsians: use one of these methods to set the content of your treasury screenshots...and happy flickring!