Just a day of cleaning (and destash beads)

Today I began polishing my steel metal clay pieces. I really enjoy the process of polishing metal.

I also listed a bunch of new beads in my Etsy destash section.

I cleaned up the soldering, tumbling, enameling, jewelry making, hammering mess I made the previous two days.

Placed an order with Rio Grande.

And by golly, that’s about it.

Tomorrow is SRAJD application processing day so I can’t estimate how much workshop work I’ll get done.

The Results of Designs 1, 2, and 3... and the Steel is out of the Kiln

Checklist for today:
1) Fire metal clay pieces
2) Finish enamel charm earrings (project 3)
3) Patina paddle earrings (project 1)
4) Photograph and list all three projects
5) Order supplies

If I get all that done and still have time left today, I’ll start on project 4.

While I was doing the Phase 1 firing of my metal clay today, I was reading one of Hadar’s books and it re-inspired me to try GOING through her books, doing all the projects (or most of them).

Since charcoal and steel bowls are on my list of supplies to order, I’ll wait until I get those, but then I’d like to challenge myself to complete as many techniques in her book(s) as possible.

I managed to get through items 1-4. I will try to work on ordering supplies first thing tomorrow morning. And actually, Design #4 may have to wait a day or two because I have a commissioned order I need to work on.

The metal clay pieces I fired today were several all steel pieces and two all bronze XT pieces. The bronze was leftover from my December class with Hadar. They are all pieces for me to practice inlay (of various sorts), but here’s what they look like right out of the kiln.



Those bumps on the larger of the two bronze pieces is blistering. The heat was too high for those pieces. You can see pitting on the backsides.



After that, I worked on soldering, tumbling, texturing, adding patina, and using the rolling mill. And here are the new listings.

Design 1 before and after.




Design 2 before and after.




Design 3 before and after.




As you can see, it’s not important for me to have the final creation look precisely like the original design idea. As a matter of fact, in some cases, the final creation won’t look even remotely like my original idea. Although I like to have a plan to start off with, it’s equally acceptable for me to wander from that plan as far as is needed to reach the end of the journey.

New Design Ideas (#4)

Project 4… window frames

Eventually, I’d like to make these in metal clay, but first I want to try them by sawing plain old sheet metal.

So my idea is to find lovely window designs and make the frames out of metal then add the background (outdoor scenery) from photographs, resin, paint, enamel, etc.

Since I have very little experience with sawing metal, this will be good practice for me.

First I shall select a few windows. That is easy enough by doing a search on Google and Bing for “gothic windows”.

Here are the sketches I made…



This should be a fun experiment for me as for years I’ve been thinking of ways to incorporate windows into my jewelry making. Something about windows really intrigues and excites me.

As I write this, I’m enameling. The best thing I ever did for my enameling was to purchase multiple trivets. As one item is in the kiln, I have the next one ready to go, and I can spend time preparing a third one.

There is no down time… the kiln constantly has something in it. This is important when I’m making pieces that have up to 10 layers each, which metal cleaning between enameling layers.

Today’s progress is that I made one more enameled circle to go with Lori’s beads (project 2) and I made a necklace/earring set out of them (yeah, I chickened out on the bracelet).

I also got the enamel charms done for project 3. Maybe tomorrow I can finish the silverwork (forging and soldering).

I still have the dang steel that needs to be fired. I guess I’ll try tackling that and let revamped project 1 take a temporary back seat.

Hopefully, I’ll have some photos to show you soon.

Partial Results of Designs 1 and 2

Of the three design ideas, I only had enough time in the workshop to attempt two of them.

I made my copper strips for enameling, but twice, the enamel just disconnected completely from the metal. I took a few photos to show you, but for some reason there was only one photo on my phone when I went to look for them. Shrug.



Anyway, I have no idea why the enamel didn’t fuse to the metal. I cleaned the metal the way I always do. I fired the way I always do. But my first 2 out of 3 popped clean off, so that was enough for me. I’ll save the copper strips and maybe patina them and make the earrings.

So I moved on to project 2. Had more success there. The round beads are Lori’s lampwork (as I mentioned last night) and the circles are my accompanying enamel disks.



I’m not sure I want to make this into a bracelet. If my enameling is going to be that fragile, my confidence level for a bracelet with enamel components is fairly low. I may see how it goes, tomorrow, when I begin to wire the components together. Otherwise, I’ll turn them into earrings, I guess.

But it’s all good because I always have fun and learn a lot.

Didn’t get a chance to get to project 3, so my plan for tomorrow is:
1) Make a bracelet (or earrings) out of design 2
2) Patina the copper paddles and make earrings as an offshoot of design 1
3) Make the enamel pieces for design 3
4) Do phase 1 and phase 2 firings for the steel metal clay pieces I finished yesterday

BTW, I don’t think I ever showed you this necklace (click on the photo for more details).



I enjoy making “double dome” pieces.

Here are some double-dome earrings I kept for myself.

New Year's Resolution and Planning Jewelry Designs

I’m not super into New Year’s resolutions, but it’s fun to think of things that could be NY’s resolutions and then see if/how I progress with them.



So here’s one I’ve settled on: I will plan out more designs and do less “flying by the seat of my pants” designing.

With that being said, I plan to enamel tomorrow and here’s the design I intend to work on.



I don’t mind in the least if the end result doesn’t look like my intention; I just like having an intention when I begin.

And the intention I’m beginning with is a bracelet that will be Lori Peterson’s lampwork beads alternating with some enameled circles decorated with millifiori type glass.

And two pair of earrings…



I’m also finishing up some steel test pieces that are ready to be fired, so we’ll see if I get time for a kiln run too.

Speaking of firing metal clay… One thing I learned at Hadar’s workshop was that the steel bowls we fire in have a shelf life. I got a really thin one at Ichiban Kan last month and fired a couple times with it. As I precariously carried it from campstove to kiln (between firing phase 1 and phase 2), I wondered at what point the bowl would stop being usable (i.e. would be so thin it would fall apart). You see, each time you fire, that firescale on the bowl is part of the metal that used to be the bowl. So at some point, it would become too thin to be usable. I was seriously hoping it would NOT happing during a kiln firing.

I went to pick up the bowl today and it just fractured in my hand like a super thin egg shell.



Good thing I still have the (much thicker) cat food bowl, but I’ll add more steel bowls to the list of things to get next time I’m out.

Here’s a final photo of the brick framed words pendant. I was okay with the front, but the back is a disaster. A very nice lampworker has offered to trade a bead for the pendant. Yay!



And here’s the pendant of a petroglyph man in a torn frame (click the photo for more details).



And a pair of earrings (double sided) from my last enameling session (again, just click the photo to see details).

Here (sold already, so no hyperlink on the photo) is the Egyptian goddess Nuit etched onto a copper cuff bracelet (I love that she’s arching over the wrist just like she arches over the Egyptian people to protect them in all the depictions of her from ancient Egypt).



Alright, that’s it for now. Fingers crossed for my first “intentional” design session. :-)