Final Tally of the damage..... and yet more pearls!

Well I've gone through all my jewelry and displays, and the final tally of damage from the storm in Hannibal and the tent falling apart is (drum roll please) :
1 tent
1 table
1 display bust
4 pieces of jewelry damaged.
so really, I got off lucky!! We bought a new tent for this weekend's show, I've cleaned all the displays and jewelry, and I've even fixed 3 of the 4 damaged pieces. The fourth piece I decided I didn't like that much anyway, and just took it apart for the usable bits that were left. So really really lucky!!

Since I've been on such a pearl kick, I thought I would share a few more pieces with you. This first pair of earrings I call "pearl tree". Next is a traditional Crystal and pearl set, done in creams and sterling.. my sister saw them and fell in love, so she's got them now. Last is a lariat, with matching earrings and bracelet. I love this!! I can remember making long linear lariats like this 8-9 years ago, and it looks like long is in right now, so I had to make one with pearls and liquid silver. The matching bracelet sold already... I'm sure the necklace and earrings will soon follow.

I'm especially happy with the earrings. I've been experimenting lately with handmade ear wires, but not your typical french hooks. I'm really pleased how these turned out. To have a wider platform to add the pearls to, I actually ran 20 GA wire half-way through my rolling mill, trimmed it and then filed the rough edges away. Then I shaped the ear wire part... I think these would look great in any one's ear!

YOJ: Week 21 Ring of Fire becomes Ring of Ice...

Actually it's more accurate to say ring of wind... sign.... Right now it's 3:22pm on Sunday as I type this. Original plan: I would be wrapping up day 2 of the Hannibal Arts Festival in Hannibal Mo, hopefully making money hand over fist... In stead, 4 hours in on day one ( Sat) the wind picked up my tent and broke it. In the process, it knocked over 1/4 of my tables and displays, dumping them all on the hard, cold, and wet cement. All of my back stock was on that table also.. they got dumped to the ground. I don't know yet what extent of damage I have, I know I"m out my tent and 1 table. After I type this I'm going to check my jewelry and displays.. I suspect I'll have some damaged pieces I"ll have to fix and jewelry busts I'll have to replace. As the wind howled around us we scrambled to throw displays and jewelry into cases, just trying to get it all picked up before I lost more to the storm. Jerry ( my hubby) just carried all that to the studio.. today and tomorrow I"ll unpack, clean and repack our show stuff. I have another show in Saturday, so I need to buy a tent by then.. at least I've got extra tables around the house!

I know at least 3 other artists lost tents to the storm, and 1 pottery person's tent took out her whole display, and broke most of her stock. The tent next to ours also suffered damage... he was staying at least the rest of the day, while we packed up we kept watching his tent sink further down. So I know I"m lucky... what's more, during the worst of it ( mind you, this tornado like wind lasted maybe 15-20 minutes) I realized what's really important... no one was hurt. I lost sight of Jerry for about 10 seconds.. and I couldn't hear him... He was trying to hold the tent from flying, I was trying to keep the front displays from flying.. the tent sides were flapping like crazy, the Velcro pulled loose and enveloped him. I was scared for 10 seconds that something had hurt him... My 11 yr old daughter who I could see.. actually got lifted off the ground for a moment, trying to hold the tent down. I've told her in the future if her feet ever leave the ground again holding my damn tent, she's to let go... I don't ever want to see that again. And my tent didn't fly into something or someone else hurting them. None of my flying displays or jewelry hit or hurt anyone else. So I count myself damn lucky. I'm out a tent, a table and probably a few displays and jewelry. I'm not happy about it, but but it doesn't matter in the long run... we are all safe.

It's pretty upsetting to me to leave during a show, if you do shows at all, you know it's just not done... and it can get you black listed from some shows. The only other show I've ever left early, was at show like 3-4 years ago.. because the police told us to leave as a tornado was heading in our direction. The Hannibal people were real nice about it.. one of the volunteers actually gave me a hug, cause at that point I was pretty emotional, and she could see that. She told me it would be all right, and I really really appreciated that. But without a tent, displays etc, what else could I do but leave?
So we picked up the pieces and headed back to the hotel... it was 2 late in the day to cancel the 2ND night, so we just lazed around and watched TV, and the kid had a good swim in the pool. We even called around and checked the Internet, looking for another EZ-up tent to try to do Sunday. No go. So we got up early on Sunday and left for home b4 9am in the morning. So here I am typing.

Anyway, I made this pendant a week or 2 ago, it's based on pendant I saw in a newspaper add for mother's day pendants. The original sold for 499.99 with diamonds all around a pearl. I used crystals and sterling to recreate the look. I like mine better. I've also included 3 different pendants I made back in march.. trying to catch up on my photos for the blog here... and 2 pearl bracelets I made. I've been in a real pearl kick of late, if you couldn't tell.

YOJ: Week 20 "South Dakota"

Rats. I have really good ideas for this week's theme: Chinese Culture. Unfortunately I don't have any spare time, and I refuse to get behind on the weeks. So instead here is a piece I made 3 weeks ago, but has great meaning to me. I've named it "South Dakota" partly due to the color scheme.. it really reminds me of the painted canyons we saw last summer on our South Dakota trip.. and partly because I was with my very good friends ( Hi Cathie! Hi Sue! ) from South Dakota when I bought the beads. I could just as well call it " best friends" because that is their company name and well, recent life events make me realize just how important good friends can be.

Periodically I get together with Cathie and Sue to bond and bead for a weekend. We got together in Omaha in early April, at a bead show and Sue bought these 4 different colors of pearls. She didn't buy them with any peculiar plan in mind, but I was looking through her goodie bag and realized they were drop dead gorgeous together!! Thus the plan was born.. She went back and bought another strand each, and I bought 2 strands each and we decide to have a friendly competition: both of use would make a necklace using the beads and show off our work in 3 weeks when we got together again at MageCon. This is the necklace I made. I was thinking gypsy necklace, lots of layers almost choker like, with the long strand with the pendant hanging down to the chest level. I used almost all 8 strands of pearls, lots of sterling spacers and the lovely pendant is Duck Creek Jasper.. Sue came up with a multi strand necklace also that was gorgeous, and used a honking huge crystal square as the pendant... unfortunately I don't have pictures. But we had a ton of fun!!

The last 2 pics are recent jewelry pieces made spirals of various sorts. I really like spirals.

YOJ: Week 19: Taurus

The last few astrological signs I couldn't really get into it. I'm not really sure why, maybe it's just a timing issue. I felt better about this one, and the work and details I put into it shows I think. I started out with 16GA wire as the frame, and bound it with 24Ga round and 22GA half round sterling silver. One of the stones for Taurus is Sapphire so I used a vintage large Sapphire Swarovski crystal from my stash. I wanted the crystal to have movement, which it does, but the frame isn't quite large enough to allow swinging as I envisioned. I might redo that part at some point. I'm quite pleased with the wrapping and herringbone wrapping on this piece however. I've only done a few projects with herringbone weaving, and this piece shows improvement! The "horns" is another piece of 16GA, which I hammered for texture. I think it's abstract enough to appeal to someone who isn't a Taurus, but looks enough like Taurus to make a Taurus person happy with it. Writing this I think I've figured out why I haven't really gotten into doing the astrological challenges. I'm not really in that mindset, and it's very limited market.. you can only sell to people that are into it, or people looking to buy for someone of that particular sign. Since this piece I feel is interesting in it's own right, I like it better. I love when I learn something about myself and my art.. I want it to be more inclusive of that. But it also gives me something to shoot for with the rest of the signs throughout this challenge: making them enough "like" the signs to be a sign, but interesting enough to stand on it's own also. A challenge within a challenge! I love it!! I've got a couple of pictures of other recent projects.. rings which I made with sterling wire which I coiled, cut, soldered, cleaned, textured, polished and beaded, and I must say they look pretty darn good and professional! And really fun to make. 2 pairs of earrings, and a pendant I made for a friend's birthday.. I made matching earrings with smaller rings, but I guess I didn't get them photographed. The copper circle I'm not sure what I'll do with yet.. it was practice in sawing, filing, polishing and texturing metals. It looks pretty kewl all by it's self. I even textured the back with a wire brush on my dremel, but it's very subtle and I couldn't get a good picture of it. Last is a herringbone & brickstitch bracelet with Japanese Seed Beads.

YOJ: Week 18- 2nd Bezel is Done!

I'm so jazzed!! this is my 2nd completed bezel. It's all in sterling this time, and I relied heavily on Don Norris's techniques for this one. It's not perfect, but I'm very proud of it. I really feel like I'm getting a handle on using the torch and how the metal acts. The stone is sodalite. The polish on this one is much much better and cleaner than on my first one. Don's method of "fast with gloves" is a winner. For my buffer machine I'm using my dremel at approximately 20,000. I do turn down the speed on the more detailed areas. I also have alittle fire scale on the back, it probably doesn't show in the pictures, it's just a slight color difference in spots. It took me 3 tries to get the bezel all the way securely soldered to the back, I suspect that I burned the metal somewhere in that process. You can see where I soldered (or didn't solder) the bezel in these pictures. I had it all the way sanded down at one point, and discovered I had 1 corner of the bezel not locked down.. when I resoldered it most of the solder from the bezel joint flowed away... I'm afraid if I polish it anymore it will undercut. So lesson learned: I'm not polishing the bezel part until I'm absolutely sure I'm finished soldering in the future. I'm amazed how much I've learned just doing the first 2 bezels. And this was quicker, I took off Weds from work and did most of this one in 1 day!

YOJ: Week 15 & 16 Aries and not on topic

Week 15 is Aries. Aries is a "masculine " sign- It's rather depressing, but this means it's a extrovert or "positive" sign, not necessary a "guy". Seems like a slam to all those wonderful women born in this time frame each year, but I didn't set the astrological rules. Still, after last weeks' hubby watch design, it's gotten me to think more about design jewelry for males. Or more specifically, jewelry that either sex could wear without feeling out of sync. So when I set out to make this pendant, I was keeping that concept in mind. I used 14 ga copper ( copper is the Aries metal) and then spent quite a bit of time texturing it. I made the rings and alittle bail to hang it on with 16ga. It's very simple, which I think would allow a male Aries wear it, yet pretty enough that a female might enjoy owning it also.

For Week 16 I made these copper washer earrings. Now they seem very simple to the casual eye, but they represent a great deal of work. Let's start with the washers. I got these through Harbor Freight, and my first attempt to texturize them fail miserably. The washers are rock hard, no bend in them at all.. So I set them aside for a couple of months.

Enter my metalsmithing class at the local art center. I know that metal comes in different tempers, but in the class the teacher demonstrated how to change metal from work hard to dead soft - and easy to work with - again. I remembered the washers!! So I annealed a handful of washers, and boy, does that make a difference trying to hammer them. I thought the first time my hand was going to fall off!! (let's try an experiment.. get a penny and pound it with a hammer.. you might dent it, but it's seriously hard. that's exactly how the washers were)

Delighted, I decided I wanted a light, almost matte sort of texture for these earrings. I've always wanted to make my own texture hammers, so I got out my dremel and went to town on a cheapo hammer. Now I'm not all that used to power tools, certainly not to alter steel.. so what happens when you touch steel to steel, especially if some of the steel is moving at 35,000 rpm's ... you get sparks. duh! I wasn't expecting sparks.. infact to keep the mess down in my studio I'ld laid newspapers about 2 inches under and around where I had the hammer... fortunately I didn't catch my studio on fire, and i"ll be prepared the next time. But I was really nervous there for a while. It was worth it, I got exactly the effect I wanted with my new hammer. It's interesting though, the texture on the hammer head gets pounded in with each use.. so at some point I'll have to retexture it. ( I'll skip the newspaper and just clean the floor next time.. or better yet take it downstairs to the torch area where it won't hurt anything if it sparks) I used crystals and quartz crystal. I've made a 2nd pair for sale in black crystals.. used different hammers on the washers. I just love to play with my hammers!!

YOJ: Week 17 Growth

I had a bunch of sketches for this, but right now I"m so focused on learning soldering and metalsmithing, I can't bring myself to do anything but projects that practice these skills. Then it hit me, growth as an artist, is well, growth. I'm very please to show you my first completed metal bezel: Growth. This took Hours! to make, I can only hope as I get better, they will get quicker to make. Let me outline the steps it took to make this. First I cut out a square from copper sheet. Then drew a circle on it, and sawed it out for the base. Then I filed, filed and filed some more to get it as round as possible. Then I sanded. then I filed and sanded some more. I did this off and on for a couple of weeks, when I had a spare moment or in my class. While I worked on making the circle as circle like as I could stand, I also cut out a strip of copper sheeting, and then used a rolling mill to make my bezel wire. ( you should be able to see in the pictures a rim of copper directly on the stone.. that is the bezel wire. It's maybe 1/8th of a inch tall, 26 ga and it's actually what is holding the stone in place) I made a total of 3 bezel wires before I could get it right.. this required filing and sanding, filing and sanding, making it 2 small 2ce, and finally getting it just right. Then I soldered it. I'm happy to say that only took once. I used 2 much solder so I had to file and sand off the extra. (In the picture of just the bezel, you can see the blobs o silver on the inside!) Then I had to sand it down because it was 2 tall. The goal is to make the bezel wire just tall enough to crimp over the edge of the stone to hold it in but not 2 tall to obscure the stone or buckle up when you crimp it. IF you make it 2 tall, it will buckle up and be unsightly. I fortunately had my teacher at the art center to help with this part. I got it now, but I think that was the hardest part.. I kept sanding it down, asking her if it was OK, she'd be like it's 2 tall and make me sand some more. this took hours to do also. Once I had the bezel wire right, I made the decorate sterling twisted wire in a perfect circle that fit snugly over the bezel wire. I had to solder that also. It took me 3 tires to get the wire right. I'm very pleased with the wire decoration.. it's hard to tell where it's connected and soldered. It took some effort to match the twists up so it would look that good. then I flattened the wire just alittle.. so it would solder better to the base piece and I like the look of flattened twisted wire. then I had to solder the bezel and the twisted wire to the base. that went well.. I had a couple solder spots on the inside of the bezel, I used my dremel to grind those down so my stone would lay flat in the bezel. I also used my dremel for the polishing steps. I've had to miss a few classes at the art center, so for polishing I relied more on Don Norris's CD (BTw I really recommend his series on silver smithing. Very common sense approach to the whole process. I've added his website to my links) I decided I wanted to make a wire bail, so I made a hole, and used my dapples to make it nice and even. then I fitted the stone in, carefully crimped the metal over the edge, did the final polish with the dremel, than ran it in the tumbler for 2 hours.

It's not perfect, but I am in love with it. It represents hours and hours of work, frustration, tedium ( and if you know me, you know I don't do bored well) and frankly tears. But I made it, and I bet the next one will be better. I'm very, very proud of my first student piece, and it's a keeper.. in fact I'm wearing as I type this!

Week 14: Jerry's Request

OK this weeks subject is "fool's gold" but I couldn't really come up with good ideas. In fact right now I'm so busy with RL and when I'm not (about 5 minutes!! ) I"m obsessed with metal smithing-- Which so far seems to fondling the tools and materials, paralyzed with indecision on what to make while burning solder. More on smithing later...

I've made my darling hubby, who has very mixed feelings about my jewelry, a few pieces over the years. A couple of pendants, and a watch. He wears the pendants when he thinks of them, which is averaging once every 4 months or so.. but the watch he really likes, and he wears it everyday to work. In the first picture, you can see what it looked like. I made this originally for him 3 years ago for Christmas. I can't tell you how much it means to me that he likes the watch so much. Everytime he breaks something on it, he wants it fixed asap. He's broken it at least 3 times. Last week he got it caught on machinery at work, and this time he wants something different.. he requested something more reflective of my work now. Something with wirework. He's right; over the last 2 years my work has shifted. Still he's hard on jewelry, so it has to be sturdy. He wanted something simple and manly; cause well, he's a guy. He's also got a 7 inch wrist, which gives me less area to work with. After some study I started working on it last weekend, and just finished it last night. The big square stones in front are bloodstone ( he loves the name of that BTW!) wrapped in 16 ga copper. The wire is way to thick for the stones, so I've actually strung the beads with softflex and then fitted the wraps to the stone, and strung them on like a bead. The spirals are my sneaky way of hiding the crimps, and making it look like everything is wireworked. I'm hoping it will last longer this way also. It gives it very good fit also, being more flexible with beading wire as the base. The large black beads in back are obsidian.

Here is Jerry trying to look like Christen from Project Runway.

Ok, metalsmithing. I'm taking a class at the art center here in Des Moines. I'm also working my way through a couple of books and Don Norris's CD. Somewhere towards the end of this blog should be a picture of the first item I've made using sterling soldering. ( I tried to solder once before with a soldering iron and base metal solder.. don't ask, I'm not counting those and neither should you!) It's a paw print in silver, on copper backing. I had this great scheme of making this really kewl locket thingie.. instead I used way to much solder and well, now it's a zipper pull on one of my bead bags. Despite looking like it's caught a diseased with all the extra solder I like it, and maybe after a few more experiments I'll make another that that doesn't have dying solder bleeding all over it! I've made a few other things with solder since, just to practice. I'll have more pictures next time. I think I'm just trying to go to fast- I have so many ideas bouncing around in my head, but I don't have the skill set yet to do them. I need to take deep breaths, slow down and keep to a simpler scale while I learn. Besides, my torch right now is a propane torch bought at the hardware store. On the other hand, once I graduate into a real metalsmithing torch, I'll have pretty good control.. if I can control a hardware torch then a professional torch should be a cake walk! (sez the ever optimistic Kat) More to come....