Icy

Thankfully I have ice cleats…the trip in from the studio would have been treacherous without them. 

Siq Armmor

Working on Siq Armor #3

Do over!

This is a ring that I cast several years ago. After setting the stone I noticed it was set on a slight diagonal. It was not enough of an angle that it looked like it was intentional so I decided to flank the the stone with smaller ones set in a way that it would accentuate the diagonally set center stone. After looking for years, I finally found a variety of small amethyst that would fit in the tiny space available on the ring shank. 

So...what do you think? Did I get the redo right?

Running rabbit

Here is a necklace I made from my impromptu running rabbit. I used Redicit to make the smaller ones which are 1/3 smaller than the original. I also made one more iteration which is 1/3 smaller than shown here, this size could be used for earings or charms. The blue stones are appetite and the brown ones are Poppy Jasper. It retails for $350.

Long time

It's been a long time since I posted. I have been busy though. I've been doing a lot of casting lately, mostly rings but I also cast the bunnies that I posted. Some of my students thought it was a bunny sculpture but that was not my intention but it is a good idea.

Ring

Here is one of the rings I cast last week. The casting did not turn out (it has a lot of voids) but I wanted to set it any way. I like the way it looks set with the spinal but the design is technically not very good. I should have allowed for a way to access the stones from under them. Without this, it is impossible to clean the lubricant (used during setting) from under them. It also does not allow me to thoroughly test the tightness of the settings.

I have some ideas on how to fix the other waxes that I made from the same mold; but I think I will just carve a knew one and be done with it.

Bunny tree

I have had a productive spring break. Here are some bunnies ready to be cast in bronze. The larger ones will be little figures de art and the smaller ones zipper pulls.

I made the small ones using a product called Reduce-it. It is pretty cool but I wish it would shrink a bit more than it does (maybe 2/3 dimensionally). I made one more reduction, which will be for charms) but I did not make a mold of it yet.

I also cast some rings last week but did not get them finished yet.

More rocks, less time

While visiting my sister and brother-in-law in Palm Desert this past week,we took a day and drove out to the Himalaya Mine's (www.highdesertgemsandminerals.com) fee dig site.  It was a beautiful drive over the Pines to Palms highway which winds serpentinesly up to the high desert.

At the dig site we met Terry and his dog Jackass. Terry, showed us samples of the different gems and minerals we might come across; tourmaline, quartz and crystallized mica (which has a pretty lavender hew) and how to screen for them. While we searched the tailings for treasures, Terry entertained us with stories about mining.

We had a great time an found lots of tourmaline (including an awesome blue one) a couple of quartz points and a water clear, gem quality piece of quartz. We also found a couple of egg sized pieces of quartz with tourmaline inclusions. serpentine

Rough cast

This is the rough casting of a bunny I did as a quick demonstration for my lost wax casting class. I used sticky wax and it was so sticky I could not be my usual obsessive perfectionist, which is a good thing, as it freed me up to be spontaneous. I think it turned out pretty cute. It is cast in bronze.

Betty's toddler spoon

This is a copy of a spoon one of my students designed for her grandson. Hers is sterling silver, as it should be; utensils made from copper are a bad idea.

The blank was cut out of 20 gage sheet.

To raise the bowl I used a spoon mandrel that I made out of a railroad spike that she had. Then I plannished it smooth.

I used a doming punch to do the synclastic raising on the handle.

Clean bench :)

I made myself this bench-top organizer today...took the time to clean my bench while I was at it.

Celebration

Here is my latest. I came up with the concept a few weeks ago and made the prototype yesterday. I am calling it celebration. I really like the simplicity of it and the balloons can be done in a variety of gemstones making it adaptable to any celebration...birthdays, anniversaries, Forth of July, etc. This one is done in garnets and sterling silver. The stones are flush set and the strings are pierced.

Having fun!

I have been having a lot of fun working with the old steel and sapphires we found last fall. Concepts have been flowing out of me so fast I can hardly keep up with sketches. Ok, that's an exaggeration but I do have a few ideas in mind.

The other day, when I was working out a design for a channel set ring, I got so excited about a steel pendant idea; I had to stop working on the ring and make the pendant.

I started with a really old piece of rusty wire.
When I forged the wire it wound up with a slight serpentine shape which I really liked, so I decided to mimic it in the setting. I drilled holes to clear out the bulk of the metal for the channel then used a saw and files to remove the rest.

Next I cut some 14k yellow gold sheet, to use for the bezel, and soldered it in place with easy 14k solder.

I had a scrapped, 14k gold, hoop earring; that I cut a short section out of to use as a bail. After melting two of these I decided it was just too thin of a gage (30) to solder to steel. I then set out to make the bail out of sheet. Tubes are pretty easy and I had it made and soldered in no time. Bending it proved to be a different story. Since it was so short the spring bending technique did not work and I did not have the right size music wire to use as a bending mandrel. So...I had to design and make a bending jig.

It worked ok but took me some time to work the kinks out. It turns out (I think) the channel needs to be deeper than just half of the cross section of the tube. More like a U shape. I did practice with some copper but finally decided to just go for it. It wasn't perfect (probably because my hand cut channels (I used a ball burr) had a couple of wobbles in them. So, I found a piece of wire that matched the inside diameter of the tube exactly (in this case a coat hanger) and bent it into and arch to use as a mandrel. I inserted this in the tube as far as it would go and used a polished hammer to coax it into shape so I could slide the mandrel in further. I repeated these steps until the mandrel was fully inside the tube. I then plannished out the remaining flaws and removed the mandrel.

Lessons learned:
- make sure the bezel is completely soldered. If you look closely at the upper right side of the channel, you can see where the bezel is pulled away from it (actually I relearned this...bad Pixie, you know better. In fact you would have made your students redo it.)
- 30 gage gold may be to thin to successfully solder to steel. Someday I might do some more experimentation with this but for now I plan to steer away from it (it was really to thin for a bail anyway, I was just to lazy to make the tube).
- don't be cheap. I tried to save cost and made the bezel too short. In the long run it would have been a lot cheaper to make the bezel another .25 mm taller than to struggle getting the stones tight in the setting.
- use a higher karat gold for bezel setting. The 14ky that I used was really hard to move. First I tried using my favorite setting method that I use for silver bezels; a brass punch and a chasing hammer. When the gold would not budge I switched to a mild steel punch in a hammer handpiece. This helped but I was constantly resharpening it. Finally, I switched to a stainless steel punch and got the job done...sorta' (I really could of used that extra .25 mm of bezel height).

He's-a-back

After a two year break, my husband is finally back to wood turning. He does beautiful work and it's nice having him around the studio.

He's-a-back

Bead Chain

I tried using the hot dip method of torch firing on some stainless steel bead chain. My thought was the enamel would not go inside the beads and the chain would remain flexible.

For the most part it worked, but I need to get some different enamel, with the correct coefficient of expansion for stainless. As you can see in the photo, most of the enamel came off as it cooled. I think it looks cool anyway.

Torch fired

Last week I tried out some of the techniques described in Barbara Lewis' book torch-fired enamel jewelry. I had a rocky start because did not pay close enough attention to what she said about the type of gas and torch to use.

While I like the funky, somewhat, unpredictable results of the technique; which consists of dipping or rolling hot steel findings in enamel...I found the process tedious and lacking creative challenge. Once I fired a bunch of the store bought components and some home made head pins, I found assembly to be an equally unrewarding task in which you almost can't go wrong.

For me, the fun part was in the final product. Here is what I made...