Long Month

Wow, it has been a long month.  Lots going on with family (I know, what else is new?).  Anyway, in the mean time, I was able to finish a ring.  I had challenged my advanced students, at The Art Center, Highland Park, to make a ring for the call for entries for Lark's new book "500 Rings"s and I thought I should make one too.  I had it professionally photographed by a jewelry photographer named Steve Wagner.  See the link to his site in the links section of this blog.  Steve is very personable as well as professional.  He also photographed one of my students works and it turned out very nice also. I am not sure why the server keeps rejecting the image of my ring but as soon as I figure out how to, I will post it. In the mean time here is a very amateur picture by yours truly...  OK, maybe not, can't find it.  More to come.

Pewter Casting

I went to a one day pewter casting workshop over the weekend.  It was a fun day out with my friend Pam.  We drove to Mineral Point, Wisconsin (which is a great little destination that deserves a posting all of its own).  The workshop was put on by Shake Rag Alley (again deserves a post of its own) and instructed by Eric Donaldson.  After a slow start (waiting for the plaster molds to cure) we finally did some casting in the afternoon.  Here are the two things I made, a little tulip charm and a salt spoon.  Any of you who know my wax carving will notice these are rather crude for my work.  But, I had fun and learned the basic process which was the idea.  I will definitely be doing more experimentation with this process.

Article update

I finally heard back from the editor this week on my article.  She liked it and thought it was very thorough, just needs one additional side bar on raising the fine silver.  I sent this off yesterday.  I will mail the ring to them on Monday, then they will send me the contracts.  They've decided to send me two contracts, one for each part of the article (wax carving and setting the stone).  Once they get that back, they will pay me!  The other bit of news on this is that the article is now scheduled for January 2012 (vs. March 2012).

Repaired Link to HCJ

Yesterday a friend told me that the link to the Handmade Contemporary Jewelry Project (HCJ) was not working.  That is now fixed.  She also wanted to know what it is.  Well...this is a new site to me that looks very exciting.  Here is an excerpt from the site's about page:
"What are the project's aims?
1.To provide comprehensive, up-to-date information related to contemporary jewellery, contemporary silver ware, and small "object art".
2. To aid easy distribution and dissemination of submitted content. Increase exposure for those taking part."
I am going to look into it a little further, perhaps you should too.

New Page

I have updated my blog to include a separate page with soldering tips (see tab at top of blog).  I originally planned these to be quick little tips which I would submit to a magazine on an ongoing basis, I still may do that but in the mean time I thought people may be able to get some use from them.  I wanted to put them in my blog as a printer friendly page but have not been able to figure out how.  So, for now, you will have to right click and print the blog page.  As time permits, I hope to post more pages on different subjects.

I have also included a search bar on my blog.

If you have not already, sign up as a friend and you will be notified when I post.  Also, if you want, please feel free to pass this page on to people who might find it interesting.

Sweet

Last week I broke down and sprung for a Benchmate. For those of you who are not familiar. Benchmate is a tool system made by GRS that has interchangeable components. One of the nice features is its inside ring holder. I have been setting a lot of stones lately and it will make my life a lot easier. Here is a picture.

This is a practice setting that I had on bench. In the back ground you can see two additional ring holders. The one on the left goes with the Benchmate, it is very similar to the ring holder that I was using, also made by GRS, it is on the right with the gold knob on the end. The Benchmate also came with a bench pin (not shown) but I will probably keep using my old bench pin.

Been a while.

It's been a while since I posted. Those of you who know me, know last year was not a fun one around the Eslinger house. Anyway, it's a new year now and hopefully, I will be able to keep up with my blogging. The last time I posted I wrote about an article that was accepted by a magazine. The article is done and at the publisher. It is scheduled to be published in March of 2012! I will write more once they pay me but in the mean time here is a picture of the ring I did for the article.

I had a hard time photographing it. Hopefully the pro's at the magazine can do it more justice. I am currently in the process of carving waxes for alternative designs of the same basic ring.