Lots of Jewellery

I've been quite busy the past few days. I finished a couple of fun projects:

This will be available on my Etsy right shortly.

And these, you've seen before, but I'm still really proud of them.

So there's my life right now. Gotta get some earrings made and mailed. Whoop!

Quick Update

It's been a very busy couple of selling weeks for me. I've sold a bunch of chainmaille pieces, like this lovely:

I also finished two wedding rings:

This is a bride/groom set. The grooms ring says his wife's name, Kari. Her ring has his name, Derek.

And then I finished this Tiffany style infinity band, which started out as:

And is now:

 I think it's beautiful, I really hope the recipient does too.

And now I'm leaving to go camping tomorrow morning. My very first manicure is DESTROYED but the wedding rings are finished.

The flower that blooms last

It's been a busy couple of weeks for my. My biggest conundrum is that my sister's birthday had passed, and I was struggling with the execution of her gift. On a whim, I made this:

Which she told me she really loved. It's a sheet of brass, nickel silver, and hammered copper held together with a sterling silver tulip bulb pin. It's spinny, it's cute... It just needed something to go onto. So I made this:

This part is awesome. It's copper tubing from my local hardware store, which I purchased at $1 a foot. I beat the hell out of it, annealing it whenever I thought it was getting too difficult, and hammering a pattern into the surface. This could also be accomplished using a rolling mill if you have one, with a texturizing plate. I have a couple of ideas that I'm going to use for the next one!

Each piece was polished seperately. Before assembly, I coated each seperate piece in a coat of Renaissance Wax. Theoretically, this should help prevent oxidization and stop it from turning your skin green. Once each piece was coated, dried, and buffed to a shine. Then I put them together:

And it's finished. The sharp outer petals spin, to help prevent any catching or skin slicing. It's a very comfortable fit, and I'm quite proud of the finished result. Thinking about having it on my etsy.

Oh, I finished this too:

Men's wedding band. Now to finish its partner!

Weddings wedding weddings...

It's been a long couple of weeks... full of work but not enough posting.

You may remember a few weeks ago, when I posted this:

Well, I'm happy to report that it's finally finished.

My brother is 18, and this is his present from me. I hope he likes it. I need to replace his other ring as well, but I haven't had a chance to get it put together yet.

My purple sweater is continuing, but I'm a bit stalled on it as I've started growing my various plants for the summer. My lettuce bed has been planted, I'm growing wheatgrass almost daily, and my tomatoes are just waiting for warmer weather to go out onto the balcony.

I'm currently working on a wedding ring, which my friend wanted to suit both her promise ring as well as her grandmother's ring:

Which now looks more like this:

From another angle:

As the ring is now to be made in silver, I wanted it to be a bit more sturdy to prevent anything from happening to it. It actually looks very similar to the matching Men's wedding band, which as you may remember, looks like this:

So... Except for a birthday present which I should be able to finish tomorrow, that's what I've been busy doing. Planting, knitting whenever I can, and getting jewellery work done for people.

I've been running a fever for a few days now, so I'm going to sleep to try to recover faster. I want this wedding ring finished by Friday.

My family keeps planting seeds

It's been a sleepless week.

I've been working away at a present for my little brother. I decided on a signet style ring, set with a sunstone that I picked up in Tucson, Arizona.

Here's a photo of the beginnings of the project. The square block is hand-tooled until all the sides are 90 degrees to each other. This makes it easier for me to plot the ring out and be completely accurate.

 Then I gradually take pieces of wax off until the ring looks... ring-like.

Once it looks ringlike, I carved out a space for the sunstone. I rounded out all of the corners, and made it ring-like.

I was lucky enough to spend the Easter weekend with my family, and spent Good Friday in my Dad's studio. This ring took me most of the day to make, but it looks pretty good.

It's hard to go home sometimes. It makes me think too much! It's so amazing to go home and be able to talk with my family about my design ideas, technical difficulties, and design issues. They're so helpful, and are able to talk me through any issues that I'm having. They suggest really creative ideas, help me to think outside the box, and plant seeds in my brain.

I'm currently playing with these:

My mom taught me how to make these when I was a little girl. She used to draw them to keep her occupied during church. I use it to zone out.

I'm also going to be using them to etch onto metal for jewellery. I could make these etched pieces to make earrings, bracelets, and pendants. I'm hoping mom can use them in her Fibre arts as well.

I'm working on a lovely bracelet as well, but I think that's enough pictures for one post. Very busy.

A rough week

It's been a rough week for me. My boyfriend has been working security all week for Toronto's Fashion week, which means that he gets home very day after I've already gone to bed. So I've been a bit lonely.

And then I found out that on Thursday morning, my beautiful big girl had to be put down.

Whiskey was our first family dog, and she would have been 13 on April 7th. I remember how all of us kids had our calendars marked for the day we'd finally be able to bring her home. She was tiny, she was friendly, and she was a great dog throughout her entire life. She's always had her health problems, but she never lost her amazing personality and her trust in us. I'm going to miss her a lot.

I've been working all weekend as well, so I haven't really had a chance to just sit and let everything sink in. Hopefully the good nights sleep that I had last night will help counter-act that. I did find these at the Bead Oasis show that I'm working at:

I'm giving one of the strands to my brother, he's got a thing for skulls. However I broke into one of them last night

Just for fun.

I really need a bit of fun right now. I'm trying to keep smiling even though I really just want to go home, curl up in my bed and cry. Sleep until I want to wake up. Knit. Cry. I just want to go home.

Holding out till Thursday.

Pen clips and Rings

It's been an incredibly busy couple of weeks for me. I've been working with my Dad on a couple of projects, and they're finally starting to show progress.

Firstly, the pen clip he wanted me to make.

This is fresh out of the casting machine. My mold is injected with molten wax, which is sealed in a plaster 'pillar'. This pillar is put in a kiln overnight to melt out the wax, leaving a hole for the silver to be forced into. Once the silver has been forced into the empty space, the plaster pillar is removed from the casting machine and plunged into cold water, breaking it apart to release the completed silver piece.

Because you lose the wax model during this process, it's referred to as the 'lost wax' casting technique.

I think it looks cute, no?

It looks even cuter when it's almost finished:

This has been taken to a very fine emery finish. Then we polish it:

And blind ourselves on the resulting glare. This clip will be going on a test run with my Dad, and then we'll see about making more.

I also made a couple of rings this week:

This is a Sanskrit ring that my sister was having difficulty wearing because it was copper, and turned her skin green. Now it's gorgeous in sterling silver, and I'm extremely proud of the finish that I got on it. So professional! The ring is available on my Etsy

I also finished off this ring, remember it from my last post?

It's all polished up and lovely now. This picture shows you how I started with the piece, and how it finished. The two ridged ring is completed, and is available for purchase.

So that's my crazy busy week. I still have so much to get done, and will possibly have more work from Dad on Monday. Better get my sleep in while I can!

Many-Hues Studios

I've been lucky enough to spend my weekend up at Many-Hues Studio. I was originally just plugging away on these little beauties:

These are done in sterling silver, with Preciosa Crystal drops. I decided that I really liked them... so...

I went only slightly crazy. They're going to be available on my etsy shop very soon, as soon as I've got it set up I'll post the link. They're only going to be listed for $15.

Once I got all of my earrings done, I needed something else to do. My dad set up one of his new lathes for me to play with

My only regret is that I don't have any more wax. If I go any further I risk hitting the chuck, and as much fun as THAT would be...

Dad let me play with one of his new tools to. So I made this:

We had a lot of fun playing around, and I can't wait to get these casted. Altogether, an excellent weekend with a lot of hard work done.

Saquaro and Jewellery

Well, I'm finally home.

Isn't it just fantastic though?

I've been in Tucson, Arizona for the past week. I had a really good time checking out the cacti, talking with other artists, and eating as much Mexican food as I could stomach without wanting to cry myself to sleep. I met a really fantastic artist who had the booth next to us:

MAKUstudio has some really fantastic and original pieces. She handmakes them all herself, so no two pendants are exactly alike. I couldn't stop wandering over to check out her stuff. I also really liked these guys:

BottleHood recycles glass bottles from liquors and beer, and turns them into jewellery using a kiln. They also make really fantastic cheese platters, display bowls, and lamps! Incredibly neat stuff that really got my mind ticking...

And this is the little darling I whipped up. It's a glass bottle bead (made from Patron Tequila, doncha know) wrapped up with a silk ribbon (From this fancy ass artist: Color Kissed Silk) and one of our exclusive Stones and Findings toggle bars. It only takes a couple of seconds to wrap up, it's easy, simple, and looks fantastic. I'm hoping a lot of people saw it and bought BottleHood's beads!

Not too much knitting completed though. The time difference meant that by the time I was back at the hotel every night, all I wanted to do was sleep. Soon though. I'll take some decent pictures of the gorgeous stones I was able to purchase (oy my VISA bill).

Busy Season

I haven't been able to post for a little while, I've been too busy knitting up christmas presents, sorting with the holiday madness at work, and taking a night or two off for myself. I just need a little bit of time to recover, that's all. Once all of my presents have been gifted, I can post some pictures of them. I can't wait to show them off!

That being said, I've been able to make a few things over the past few days.

I really love this one. That's an ocean quartz hanging from a lotus, and it's such a lovely shade of green it's nearly heartbreaking. I imagine it would look lovely under black light; must test this theory.

This one is an amethyst that my partner gave me for my birthday three years ago. He gave it to me the night before we started dating, with a whole bunch of other crystals that he'd chosen for me. I remember thinking it was one of the most thoughtful gifts I'd ever received from someone other then my family. And I'm finally able to wear it proudly.

That's my life right now, summed up in two pictures. I'll have much more to post once my family have received all of thier gifts!

Beaded Felted Bracelets

I've finally come up with a way to make felted bracelet that makes me happy with the finished product. I 've spent the past 3 days at the Toronto Bead Oasis Show and found some really lovely beads that actually fit on the yarn that I'm working with. I really love the 6/0 beads from NLM Glass Arts, the colours are simply stunning and I love how consistant the beads were.

I strung about 60 beads onto my yarn, and knitted them into the 8 stitch i-cord wherever they happened to fit. I made the i-cord about 9 or so inches long, used a kitchener graft to connect the bracelet and felted it until I couldn't see any of the stitches. I absolutely love the results.

 

I went back to the bead booth and bought more beads, I'm in love with the colours. I may need to write up a tutorial on knitting with beads, there were a lot of little things about the knitting that drove me crazy for the first little while. Now that I've got the technique down, the next couple will go a lot faster. 

Felt and Silver

Just trying a new concept here, as I have to man the booth at the Toronto Oasis Bead Show this week. I have some little leftover scraps of felt from my previous felting experiment, and I decided that I needed a new set of earrings for the show.

These earrings were made out of sterling silver chain, Swarovski crystal beads, and two hand felted beads. I did the felting by dumping some small felt scraps in hot soapy water, and rolling the felt between my fingers until the felt turned into little beads that I could wrap wire around.

They're very cute and light, and I like that I can mix up the colours if I feel like it. The only other colour that I really had was bright pink, and I just can't justify it. Redheads just weren't ment to wear pink.

Sorry Ariel.

Cleaning out the Moths

I've run into a problem that is both literal and figurative.

Moths.

I've been running around my apartment trying to kill these evil little things for over a week now. I've lost a pair of socks (that were still in progress), and the cuffs of my favorite pair of mittens, but nothing else very important. Truth be told, those socks were never going to be finished anyways.

I'm still incredibly upset though. It's horrible to know that somewhere in my apartment, these little flying devils could be munching into my stash, of my hard-won finished projects. Bad enough I found them in my kitchen, when I noticed them in my closet something HAD to be done.

These little guys have really brought to light a current problem that I've been having in my life as well. I've left some of my creative thoughts and processes go stagnant for so long, that the moths are eating all my dreams away.

Visiting my parents on the weekend really made me realize how many of my designs and thoughts are going unheeded. I'm so caught up with the day-to-day runnings of my apartment, my job, and taking care of my pets that I keep forgetting that I really need to plan time away for myself and my crafts. I haven't carved any new jewellery projects in months, I'm only knitting again because Christmas is coming, and I'm not letting all of my creative new thoughts out of my mind into the world.

This weekend, I thought of several new projects that can combine both my jewellery arts and my knitting, and I've yet to sketch them all out in my notebook. My dad has given me a new small notepad that will hopefully make it that much easier to keep all those lovely thoughts from getting lost.