At our last meeting, photographing jewelry was the topic. This year, the 2012 PMC Conference will include a virtual exhibition slideshow featuring the work of members of local chapters of the PMC Guild. So this meeting was held with that purpose in mind. Lori Magno spoke about lighting, set-up and offered her photography services to our group for those wanting to get their work into this slideshow. Here are some of the photos from the meeting. This first photo showed Lori's camera and various items she uses in setting up her photo shoot. Yes, you are seeing sunlight as that's always the best lighting to shoot with (if available).
Someone also brought in their pvc piping setup they use as a form to drape fabric over the sides acting as a lightbox.
Even an old milk jug can act as your lightbox. Just cut off the bottom, place your work underneath and shoot from the hole in the jug.
And for those who couldn't make this last meeting, we have a couple photographs of our new location. The space is full of light, the location is not too far from the highway, and there's even plant life!
Our next meeting will be held this Sunday, March 25th. Monte Nikkel will be demonstrating the Viking Knit.
I saw this on link on Facebook this morning and thought it was pretty clever. Wanaree Tanner did a small tutorial on how she makes one of her favorite tools, the turntable.
Here's a synopsis of what's coming for the guild. First of all, we have a new meeting place. We'll be meeting at the All Saint's Episcopal Church, 79 Central Street in Stoneham, MA. Apparently the group that prays together (to make it to these meetings), stays together holds true as our guild is growing, growing, growing! Our next meeting will be held on February 26 from 1-5. Most of our meetings continue to be held on the 4th Sunday of the month with a few exceptions. Here's what we have to look forward to:
February - Photographing jewelry demo & PMC conference picture-taking by Lori Magno. (will she address how to keep those cat hairs out of the picture?) March - Viking knit by Monte Nikkel (Monte manages to keep our bustling group mesmerized). April - Base metal clay, members who work in base metals will bring in the pieces. Working and firing the different brands of metal clay will be discussed and demo'd. Can you hear the excitement? May/June - combined meeting (1st Sunday in June) - Box making demo by Mikki Verani (I'm dreaming of a beautiful box filled with m&m's) July - Field trip to Gemstar Gems in Enfield, NH. Ladies - start your engines. August - Colors on Metal Clay - initial demo by Mikki Verani, with all members discussing their methods of color metal clay. Hopefully, not at once. I can hear Cheech and Chong now . . . class . . . class . . . CLASS! September - Kumihimo by Monte Nikkel (back by popular demand!) October - Sterling silver clay (ok - we have officially now got it all going on) Nov/December combined meeting - play with clay (this is where we get to hover over our neighbor's closely held secrets).
None of these topics are set in stone. If you have something you're just dying to learn or teach the group - we're listening. There's also talk of getting a "name" metal clay artist in for classes - so stay tuned.
Our next meeting will be January 22, 2012 from 1:00 - 5:00. This meeting will be our organizational meeting for the coming year. What do you want to see presented at the meetings for the year, what could you present to show us all? Think about it, and come with your ideas for making 2012 even better than 2011.
At the last meeting it was also discussed that we could present personal challenges for the year. What is it that you want to accomplish over the course of 2012....learn to blog, learn a specific technique, get into a few galleries, write an article? All present at the meeting thought this was a wonderful idea, so along with organizing the meeting schedule and demos for the coming year, we are going to ask that you think of something you'd like to accomplish and we'll all work on a game plan and possible mentoring.
Our next meeting will be the 4th of December at the Crawford United Methodist Church. This will be a combined meeting instead of a November and a December meeting, due to the holidays.
We will be honored to hear a quick verison of Lori Magno's talk on Social Media, which she presented at Metalwerx Vendor's Day and then we will have a Play with Clay day. So, basically gab and work! Bring a few goodies and we'll supply the tea and coffee. Hope to see you all there! And no more storms!
Today, there was an announcement on the PMC Guild website that Sterling PMC is coming in December!
Mitsubishi Materials Announces an Important New Product After two years of research, Mitsubishi announced today the release of a new product called "PMC Sterling." The clay contains 92.5% silver and therefore meets the legal standard of sterling. Like traditional sterling, the alloy is strong, hard, and bright. PMS Sterling will be available for purchase starting in December 2011. Technical details will be coming in the next months, but for now, here is the short version:
Like other types of PMC, it can be molded, joined, carved, and modeled.
The clay works like fine silver PMC, though some testers feel that it has a longer working time.
Use the same tools and kiln as for other metal clays.
Fire half hour in air and a half hour in carbon.
Cost will be consistent with other forms of silver metal clay.
And as you can see by the photo below, there's so many ways to put your work out there. It's pick and choose. Overwhelmed by the choices? Lori suggests to just start with one.
Sites like Google, Yahoo, Bing, MSN - they want to find you. Keywords are how they find you. Use them wisely. Do a test. Think of something you want to buy and then choose some keywords to describe it. What links do you get? Change the keywords and see what other links you get.
The three main reasons to use social media are:
1. Your audience needs to find you and you need to be in communication with them.
2. They need to find your work, whether your work is branded under your name - or a company name.
3. It provides opportunities to connect to your market. You need to be in contact with your customers - keep them close, keep them informed -- not always selling, sometimes just sharing.
There are other opportunities via social media:
1. Connect to other artists
2. Connect to your suppliers and vendors
3. Shows are using social media to announce ‘call for artists’ (the days of mailing in slides and CDs of images are quickly coming to an end!)
There's something else to think about. The keywords you use - they stay out there. Say for instance you made a bridal necklace and it sold. The keywords you entered for that item on your page will still bring traffic to your site.
And finally, Lori talked a little about Google+. Another social networking site. It opened to the public on September 20th and has attracted 40 million users. It took their rival Facebook three years to reach the 25 million users mark. So people seem to be flocking to Google+. Here's a brief video that talks about circles and sharing.
And one of the nice features of Gmail is the chat. So, it would make sense they would take the chat feature and pump it up. It's called the hangouts . . . what do you think?
