New Jewelry for November, Kindle Screenshot, Garage Sale Find

In the workshop, my students and I have been covering a lot of ground.  Riveting, enameling, soldering, using the rolling mill, stamping, forging and forming.  Just lots and lots of fun.  I have the most amazing students.  They are not only supremely talented but supremely nice.  I'm so lucky!

Earlier this month I added the new items to the website (first Monday of the month).

Mostly metal and definitely concentrating on rings lately.

Gifts for him.

Gifts for her.

Gifts for yourself.

Anyway, click here for the link to the section with my new items.

I sent a lot of jewelry to Hollywood this week so fingers crossed I hear about something being used. 

Not jewelry related, once in a while my friend and I get together and hit up a few local garage sales.  I picked up a pair of these three-foot tall stained glass window panels for $5. 

But that means I have to pick two items to take to the next garage sale (we do a garage sale twice a year).  Otherwise you'll see me on an upcoming episode of Hoarders.  Eek!

Random tip of the day.

Did you know you can take a screen shot of your kindle (if it's 2012 or later model, usually).

Just hold "volume down" and "power" at the same time.  If you touch the "volume down" button first, your screen shot will include an image of your speaker volume.  Ha ha ha!  So practice pressing them both at the same time, rather than one before the other.

Too Much Food and Too Many Beads... and a quick look at some patinas

So I'm looking in the fridge the other day and there's broccolini and green beans and lettuce and bok choy and butternut squash, and then on the counter there's grapes and kiwis and apples and bananas... and I started to get nervous.

There's TOO MUCH FOOD!

Don't get me wrong, I love it all.  But I can't eat everything in three days.

I totally understand the European way of shopping where you walk down to the local market every other day and just get what you need for a day or two.

I *so* don't want any of this food to go to waste but we simply MUST stop shopping at Costco for fresh fruits and vegetables, even if they ARE organic.

So I've taken to freezing things.

Anyway, as I'm staring at the contents of the fridge feeling a bit panicky, I had a sudden thought that I used to have a jewelry making philosophy similar to this.

When I started out making jewelry (it was mostly beaded), I thought the people who only bought what they needed for a given project were crazy.  Why wouldn't you just want a store room of stuff to choose from?

Now I know the answer to that question.

1. Inventory costs (anything sitting in your workshop is not making money, so while you do need SOME inventory, having too much is just like having a bead bank).
2. Too many things take up space and can be a distraction.
3. The odds that you'll actually USE even 10% of your stuff are slim to none.

I know there are some upsides to having a huge inventory, but for my own peace of mind I'm trying to downsize.  I'm SLOWLY building my destash shop (what isn't sold first via the SRAJD destash page).

Doing this is taking hours out of every day that could be used for real work.  But what am I gonna do, just give away 10 years worth of bead collecting?  Hm.  To be rid of the stuff, I am going as fast as I can and pricing things at real garage sale prices.  Am I taking a loss?  Definitely.  Do I care?  Not when I compare the space and time to free space and more time.

So I'm starting my first "collection".  I'm hoping to unveil either January or February.  While I'm still a bit of a hoarder, I will do my best to order things on an "as needed" basis.

Okay, now to share with you a wee bit of patina experimenting this week.

I kind of get obsessed when I see these super saturated colors on jewelry and I feel there's no way they can be real.  Ha ha ha!  But people swear they are so I determined to see if I could replicate them.  The results were mixed.  While I *was* able to produce blues, pinks, golds, and violets, I didn't get any say so in the placement of these colors nor do I believe they would last over time.  But it's still a step in the right direction.

My first experiment...

The piece in the middle was the only one I was thrilled with... oh and the piece at about 7:00.  The rest are more what I'm used to.  The two piece that took the best were not dunked any shorter amout of time, but they ARE textured pieces.  That could make a difference.

For the above, I used very hot LOS.

For the next test I used room temp LOS and added more ammonia to the mixture.  This is one untextured piece of scrap sterling silver shown in a progression of dunks.

Since it was an experimental piece, I continued to play around with it after this last step and eventually put Ren wax on it and totally ruined it.  ha ha ha!  The colors are dull as heck.

The bottom line, however, is that in both experiments I achieved colors I didn't think I could.  I did notice that the color intensity depended a LOT on the angle of the piece, but it's definitely a good start.

Alrighty, talk to you soon!

Character Strengths... What Are Yours?

So we're learning about character strengths in my "Stress and Well-Being" class and I wanted to share with you some info.

The University of Pennsylvania has a website called Authentic Happiness created by Dr. Martin Seligman (Positive Psychology).

You can take various tests on the site, but the one we took this past week was: VIA Survey of Character Strengths

You can take that or any of the other tests after you create a login.  The login doesn't have to be real... you can make one up.  You don't have to go to your email to see the results.

Give yourself some time, though.  There are a lot of questions... 20 pages as I recall, in the one test  mentioned above.


So here are my results of character strengths in order.  The top five are considered your "signature strengths".

1. Love of learning -
2. Curiosity and interest in the world -
3. Creativity, ingenuity, and originality -
4. Gratitude -
5. Leadership -
6. Zest, enthusiasm, and energy -
7. Kindness and generosity -
8. Appreciation of beauty and excellence -
9. Fairness, equity, and justice -
10. Humor and playfulness -
11. Forgiveness and mercy -
12. Citizenship, teamwork, and loyalty -
13. Judgment, critical thinking, and open-mindedness -
14. Hope, optimism, and future-mindedness -
15. Perspective wisdom -
16. Honesty, authenticity, and genuineness -
17. Capacity to love and be loved -
18. Caution, prudence, and discretion -
19. Social intelligence -
20. Bravery and valor -
21. Modesty and humility -
22. Industry, diligence, and perseverance -
23. Spirituality, sense of purpose, and faith -
24. Self-control and self-regulation -

Totally not surprised by my top five.  I've always lovee learning.  I'm curious about everything in the universe.  As far as creativity, yeah... that seems like one of my top strengths alright.  Gratitude, is something I think I developed later in life.  Leadership... I can see that.

As far as the things at the bottom?  Ha!  Yeah, I have no self-control or discipline.  I'm also not spiritual.  And I'm pretty sure humility escapes me entirely.

Social intelligence?  That would be rock bottom, but position 19 isn't too far from that mark.

My initial response is that people with the opposite strengths than me are more worthy.  But then I step back and say, "No, there's a place in the world for all of us."  We don't all have to be Mother Theresa.

And an interesting thing my professor said is that rather than become consumed with fixing the bottom character traits, work on strengthening and using the top ones.  She gave the analogy of a sailboat.  If there are leaks in the hull, yes, you have to do what something to keep the boat from sinking, but just do what is absolutely necessary for that.  Then concentrate on our sails (your top strengths) because those are what move you forward.

So if "curiosity, learning, and leadership" are some of my strengths, then I shall continue to find ways to use those to my best advantage.

What did you results end up showing you?  I hope you share some of your thoughts in my comments section.

Time is a Four Letter Word

Actually, I prefer to be friends with time rather to berate it for betraying me.

The past couple months, I spend each week thinking I'm going to catch up with the emergencies that week then have the following week to organize and take care of other tasks that are waiting in the wings.

But it seems to always be THAT week... the one with the emergencies and never the following week where I can catch up.

I actually say to people, "This week is crazy busy but next week should be less hectic."  But it never is.

Projects, midterms, orders to be made, classes to prepare for, garage sales, online webinars, craft shows, etc.

I look around my workroom and ache to go through boxes and put things away so that when I want to find them I don't have to... go through boxes.

I guess for starters, next semester I won't take three classes at school.  I really am enjoying my classes, though, but yeah, stuff like that isn't important/crucial.

So speaking of "important", in one of my classes we recently went over Stephen Covey's time management matrix.  I use this often, at times like this when I begin to feel overwhelmed and have to pare down the "things" on my plate.

Here's a good article on the subject.

Basically it's this grid.

And then you fill it out.

And from that, you can determine what things need to be taken care of immediately and what things can be left to the wayside (for now, at least).

People are always wishing for more "hours in the day".

One way to achieve that is less sleep... something I'm not willing to give up.

There are tons of articles on the subject:
http://www.apa.org/topics/sleep/why.aspx
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/sdd/why
https://hbr.org/2006/10/sleep-deficit-the-performance-killer


So my mantra for today?  Time is elastic to my needs.

This also means I'm cutting this short today because I've got stuff to do.  Oh, but first... here's a peek into the world of my gratitude journal.

Later!

Riveting and Patinas and Metal Clay Lentils

Wild September.... hoping for a mellower October.

No one to blame but myself, so this can't be much of a complaint. Maybe more of an observation.

I'll start backwards.

Here are some photos I took from today's class.

First I was admiring Angela's cuff bracelet. She made it after learning to etch in my workshop last week.



Then while we were waiting for the kiln to finish (we started on metal clay yesterday), we did some riveting. There are still some issues to work out if we want to use the crazy expensive riveting tool I have (ugh!), but here are some eyelets my student was able to set.



And I reverted to the old fashioned method of making them by hand using fine silver wire.



BTW, that red patina on the background of my pendant was totally an accident (but such a happy one I kept it). I was soldering that jumpring bail onto the back of the pendant and when quenched it and was just about to drop it into the pickle pot, I saw this cool red color and not one speck of oxidation. So I decided to leave it as is and just put some Ren wax on it.

This piece will be going into my secondary Etsy shop.

So after that, we got our lentils and bead caps from the kiln. Here's the lentils looked like after they cooled.



To show my student what sealant does to these lovely heat patinas, I demo'd on mine.



After that, we both cleaned our lentils then gave them LOS baths. Here's my student's. These cell phone photos don't do any kind of justice to the fabulousness of her bronze pendant. The colors were beautiful (but again, who knows how long they'll last).





And here's one of her own lampwork beads with bronze caps (made from metal clay). She also set the tubing by hand (because that beautiful bead was too big for my little Impress bead liner).