This weekend Sue gave me pictures of hers and Cathie's PMC pieces from our march class. The flower/leaf 3D pendant is Sues', as well as the moon one. The lovely circle pendant is Cathie's. My piece is the last picture.. it's 2 triangles attached with 2 small cabs. I added the wire bail. the class was a great deal with fun, and I'm hoping I'll get to play with this material again in the future!
This weekend was fun! Mage-con is a gaming convention that I set up the jewelry booth at. Jerry loves this show because he gets to go game all weekend (board games if you are curious) and I get to visit with my good friends Sue and Cathie. What's really kewl is they set up their jewelry also, forming a megabooth ( DH calls it the bead dungeon, we call the fortress of beaditude). We have a huge area on the inside in which to sit, chat, and make jewelry, which is what we did all weekend. This first picture is of "my" side of the booth... then Cathie & Sue's side.. 
I love silver. I love copper. Gold.. not so much. It's not just the expense, which it is! - but the color doesn't call to my soul like silver and copper does. 
and spread them on my work table, trying to decide what looked like fun to play with today... I ultimately came up with a sketch for something leaf like. The frame is 18GA, and I used 26 GA to do the wrapping in. I really like it... and using Goldfilled wasn't bad at all. I made matching earrings of course, they are in the last picture.
I've been hard at work doing various commissions, and trying to get all stocked up for shows. I've been "watching" TV when I make stuff.. rather I've been listening while I make stuff, like driving I keep my eyes firmly on the "road" which in this case is trying not to hit my fingers when I hammer! VH-1 has been running a special series called "One Hit Wonders of the 1980's". What fun, most of the songs are fab and I grew up on them... The 80's are truly that magic zone of music for me.. I was 12 in 1980... what you listen to in your teens stay with you.. probably because as a kid you have so much time to listen to music. Beds are burning, Video killed the Radio Star, Turning Japanese, 2 hearts that beat as one, What I am.. great stuff! Makes me want to dig out all my old vinyls and listen to them.. but I don't have a record player. Anyway, if you are an 80's child, you should try to catch it, it's worth the memories!
I'm short on time this week, so only 1 piece this entry... this sun pendant is made from copper and sterling silver.. I textured the pieces separately and then soldered them together, and then domed it. I think it turned out very well. so well in fact I"m keeping this one and making another one for sale.. the other one will be slightly different, I used a different texture on the sterling silver part... I bought this great cheapo framing hammer at Harbor freight recently, and boy, it gives such a wonderful texture!!! I"ll have pics of it soon, I've got the pieces textured but not soldered yet, hopefully this weekend I"ll get the chance to do some smithing.... I've got a couple of other projects ready to solder, and a couple more ready to polish. I'm also working on a commission for a chain, and I've started to seriously revamp my website. My goal on the website is to have it done by the end of the month.. my show season starts then and I"m afraid if I don't get it done by then, it won't get done this year!!
more to come!
OK, I will admit it, I'm lazy when it comes to taking pictures. I took my camera with me last weekend... and ever got it out of the case! All the pictures I had last blog are from my friend Sue who isn't so lazy with the camera. I'm hoping to get few more pics soon from the trip, but it's my own fault for not taking a few with my own camera!! So here are a few earrings I've made recently, and hopefully I'll have more Weekend pictures next time. 
Wow!! did we have fun!!!!! I don't want to write book.. so I'll keep it short and sweet... Here is a pic of PART of our living room, most of the stuff on the tables are Cathie's and Sue's beady stuff.. wow! you can almost hear the tables groan! 
Cathie's is a lovely elegant piece with taupe colored pearls mostly, and she wire wrapped a large pearl as the centerpiece. Sue's is a wild explosion of pearls.. she did corkscrew fringe in wire, with pearls and crystals on the ends. Everyone did such a good job on the challenge!!! 
The beads are carved Adventurine, wrapped with 22GA twisted sterling wire. April it's purple, I"ll have to come up with something kewl!! 
!! So I hope everyone has as much fun as I do this weekend!! 
selling this piece, that way if it does run in the future it's my bad and on my clothes not a customer!! It's just a touch of color, in the crevices of the sterling where I textured the rings. I hammered them flat, then used stamps to give them the design... I used a different stamp on each ring. I sealed the crayon in ( hopefully) with a micro-crystalline sealant. Originally I was going to have 9 rings in necklace, but after laying them out, I decided 5 rings was fine ( I've since thought of changing it to just 3 rings, but I've gotten death threats from my friends who don't think I should change anything)
I wish the pictures were better, this is so big it's hard to get good pics of it! 
Only this time I wanted to solder the frames closed and connect them in a huge neck piece. As you can see on the bracelet, it's not soldered but connected by wrapping. I love this look, but I seriously wanted to try it soldered to see how it looks that way. The last picture shows the frames after soldering but before I cleaned them, filed and sanded them and reshaped them. More to follow in part II
OK, see the lovely sketch? LOL. Quite a few of my projects now start out as a sketch that only I can read, as my drafting skills lacks, well, skill. But my translation skills, ah, I think that's a project with improvement! This necklace is made out of Titanium that I shaped, pounded, textured and colored in my class. Then I added in the pearls. You know how you see things in clouds? I see things in clouds, in flowers, in the recyling bin, and in water puddles with oil in them... and I sketch. I didn't always sketch, it's something I've been doing for 3 or so years now. I wish I had sketched when I started making jewelry, 12 odd years ago! You see, as an artist I get ideas all the time. Sometimes they happen in inconvenience places... say at one's day job. Old me would most likely forget the idea... new and improved Sketching me won't. I write it down or do a quick doodle. Just something to capture the idea. I don't always remember to get it down... but I loose fewer ideas now. Not all the ideas bear fruit, like this one did, but it's good to get them out of my head... sometimes when I can't get it sketched out, I go CRAZY! until I get something of it down on paper!
I got a good range of colors on the pieces. Each piece was dipped separately, and then I put it together with the fresh water pearls. The larger pieces are 18 and 16GA, I wrapped the pearls on with 28GA. This was a fun piece. I'm hoping the titanium and Niobium pieces do well this summer, so I can buy me an anodizer and experiment some more! 
