Object Fetish

Object Fetish

Check out the recently launched art jewelry site, Object Fetish. I am one of the featured artists they are showing. It is a beautiful site and I am in great company with many other talented designers. They also have a fabulous blog if you want to stay up to date on all things Art Jewelry.

And check out the video they made of me talking about my work!

Craftzine Blog

My crafty wedding bouquet, made for my buddy Reed Easley, was featured on Craft magazine’s blog! The bouquet is made of vintage raffia ribbon flowers I made on a loom I bought from Cathy of California at Maker Faire.

















Assisted by some other crafty buddies we created the base by carving it from a large styrofoam sphere and covering it with pleated white cotton, tulle, and a large satin bow. The handle was a screwdriver wrapped in floral tape and inserted into the foam base. This was a fun process and inspires perhaps more bridal accessories to come...

Reed and I




























Close-up of her hairpiecesOur Critique Collective along with many of Reed's family and friends had a hand in creating crafts for the wedding, including over 1,000 handmade paper flower decorations, the place settings, alterations to her victorian inspired dress, and even the wine. Reed made the beautiful glass neckpiece and hair pieces she is wearing, and she and her husband Sean Sullivan made amazing sets of wine stoppers as gifts for everyone. It was a beautiful and super fun wedding.

Hundreds of flowers in process

Daily Dream-Daily Doodle post

Check out the post this week on Daily Dream-Daily Doodle with a mini interview of me and my inspiration.
Experience with your art Part-4 FIELD TRIP

LUCKY!

This week one of my favorite boutiques and retail venues for my jewelry was featured on Lucky Magazines website as the Boutique of the Week. And they featured my Gold Sequins Bib Necklace! Thanks Lucky!

























The Candystore has a great site in addition to their store on 16th Street in San Francisco. And they sell my pieces on the site.

Critique Collective Project no. 3

Starting this year our Critique Group (10+ years going) decided to start doing group projects. Inspired by our 10 Year Anniversary Exhibition held last fall at Blue Space Gallery in San Francisco, we wanted to begin assigning each other projects to inspire us to create work outside of our usual realm.









Project no. 1 (given by yours truly) started with an assignment to create a pieces (any piece) made out of a project that you either never finished or was not happy with. This was basically an exercise in remaking and reusing materials in innovative ways.Project no. 2 was assigned by Emiko Oye, and was to document the process of making a piece using film, video, or any other chosen medium. I wrote up the process of my fist project plus set up this blog! I will post my project with images in the very near future.

Project no. 3 has just been completed and is shown here. David Casella gave us the challenge to make a piece out of a grab bag of items he selected. I pulled a bag of five black zipper pulls. I was inspired to keep it simple. The neckpiece I created is shown below. The chain is sterling silver and contrasts nicely with the black painted metal of the zippers. This piece hangs very beautiful and is quite hot and sexy when on!

Zippers fresh out of the grab bag.








Hot Zipper Neckpiece.

Accessorize with Toys

Our Accessorize with Toys Workshop at Maker Faire was a success once again. Emiko Oye and I taught this as part of Swap-O-Rama-Rama for the third year. We teach kids and adults how to make cool jewelry from recycled toy and game parts. We had so much fun and are looking forward to teaching this workshop in other locations, thanks to some leads we received while there. Thanks for having us Maker!

Emiko and I armed to Make!


We even had repeat fans of our workshop!
(see the 'happy maker' pic from a few weeks back)


Neat to see this video up from the Maker Day on Make Magazines blog.
And see all our workshop pics here:http://www.flickr.com/photos/8936857@N03/sets/72157604870088704/

Maker Day

I wanted to share my experience about Maker Day, an afternoon of presentations by innovative minds on the Future of Making. But lucky for me (and you) my buddy Emiko already wrote up our day. Check it out here on her new blog...
http://blog.rewarestyle.com/
Garth Johnson's talk on Extreme Crafts, one of my new favorite sites! http://extremecraft.typepad.com/

Maker Faire Workshop

Next weekend (May 3 & 4, 2008) Emiko Oye and I will be teaching our popular Accessorize with Small Toys Workshop at the Maker Faire in San Mateo.

Revitalize old toys into jewelry. San Francisco jewelry artists Emiko Oye and Shana Astrachan will show you how to approach jewelry making with alternative materials and some simple craft tools. Particiapents are encouraged to bring small plastic and rubber toy parts to work with or contribute. All ages are welcome!

More info can be found at:http://makerfaire.com
http://makerfaire.com/pub/e/1268
http://www.swaporamarama.org/makerfaire08.htm













A happy maker from last years workshop.

Last Saturday at the SFMOMA

Me and Gio (my amazing assistant) at the SFMOMA Trunk Show.

It was a great success thanks to all of those that came out!

SFMOMA Jewelry Trunk Show

SF MOMA Jewelry Trunk ShowSaturday April 12th, 10AM-3PM
http://sfmoma.stores.yahoo.net/trunkshow.html
I invite you to come visit and see my new jewelry.

or view my work at these sites:
www.ShanaAstrachan.etsy.com http://ShanaAstrachan.supermarkethq.com www.flickr.com/photos/25057921@N03 www.shanaastrachan.com