Saltwater Purls

Summer: Fruits of Knowledge

I am planning a series of jewelry trees depicting each season of the year: My first tree is a summer tree bearing fruit....and it is the fruit of the knowledge I've gained so far in silversmithing. I love learning and I hope I get to spend the rest of my life learning, researching and discovering.

The tree is silver, made from precious metal clay and bezeled tourmaline cabs. The trunk is a natural tourmaline crystal (I unfortunately broke it in two places as I set it grrr). It is strung with faceted tourmalines.

Owl boy takes wing

This will be a drive-by-blogging. I am around and fine just busy traveling, spending time with family and creating. Here are my two favourite silversmithing pieces thus far.

Owlfred the owl boy or night angel. He is the product of a class on precious metal clay I took a couple of weeks ago, Wow what neat stuff if you've ever dabbled in clay and the firing process uses the same tools as I use for silversmithing. I then added the stone setting (petersite - a recently discovered mineral from Jersey) and beading (faceted iolite)  afterwards.
 
Ammonite cycle of life. The ammonite was a broken piece I scored a little while ago and had ground to a triangle shape and then I paired it with rutile quartz and tiger iron or banded tigers eye.

hmmmmm...pretty

I've been bitten badly by the silver bug....once I see how things are made, a whole new world opens up I want to explore. I've almost had my fill of rings  (I still have two in the works to finish though)...claws fittings are next on my list of things to do. Anyway here are my first two rings...

The Star Ruby (can you see the star, can you, can you)

The Boulder opal with hammered ring shank (my jewelery Earth contribution).

One Ring to Bind...

I took my first silver smithing class last night at the Bead Gallery (what was Unearthed). What fun! I made a simple ring that I will adorn in the next class in a couple of weeks (I already have my star ruby chosen). So last night was just taking a silver band and soldering it, then sanding it. Look out everyone...no more necklaces, it'll be rings for birthdays and Xmases. Like a good stasher I have already started collecting cabochons and paraphernalia to put in silver jewelery. Still no camera....

Still firing them up

I haven't shown any beads recently, but I am still making them. Here are three recent necklaces. I love the clasp in the front style.I love making them and I love wearing them. Each necklace has one of my beads on it. From left to right A) pyrite crystals, iolite and the focal bead is dark blue, black, lavender and a reduction silver blue. B) white turquoise, peruvian opal chips, sliver links and the focal beads are a piece of boulder opalwith a glass bead containing opal yellow, red brick, turquoise and dark ivory. C) turquoise,ivory nut,african carnelian and the glass bead has turquoise,dark ivory, copper green and uranium yellow,with a gorjuss hunk of turquoise. I love making glass beads that somewhat resemble rocks.

Something to Brag About

My Brag necklace. I am finding the beads I love the most crack...maybe I spend too long staring at them before annealing and they cool unevenly...anyway I've been playing with swirls recently but I should get back to dots soon...

Well not too soon because I am off to Britain today so I will probably not blog for several weeks. Happy Holidays everyone!

A month later...

Practice number  4. I finally  go the hang of  A.  striping  adventurine filigrana on a bead, which is harder than it seems because it naturally wants to  shock and shatter. Talking of thermal shock I managed to not get one of the beads B. under the glass mat fast enough and it cracked. I finally got the hang of C. encasing and application of frit and making D. perfect bubble beads. Notice for the same length of time I'm making fewer and fewer beads (well the big one took ages). 

And the bead goes on...

And the glass bead making continues. This weeks products are quite likable but not to the standard where I could sell them to other people. You see I still have things to learn (no really). I made one bead I am proud of and it will be gifted to someone whose birthday is real soon. I made it into my favourite style of necklace..the pocket watch chain with the clasp in front as a focal point. I added aquamarine and iolite to the necklace as the closest matches to the glass bead.

The other string of beads (with chrysocolla beads in between)  are the rejects although some of them aren't too bad. My biggest mistake this week was over heating the glass which causes black and cloudy spots on the glass (see exhibit A.). One way of getting rid of this is too etch the beads (like beach glass) but this will make the beads opaque so this will not work on certain beads like exhibit B.

Exhibit B. is one of 3 beads where I rolled the bead in frit (broken chips of glass) and then encased the beads in transparent glass. The bead in question turned out quite well except that I managed to roll some glass blanket scrap in as well (the white spot). I'm getting better at encasing. The center white bead had a gap between rounds of transparent resulting in that line...but that was my first encased bead for the day, the other two were much better (apart from the burnt glass). I've almost perfected the bubble beads (eg the blue bead above exhibit B.) but this bead popped off two of its dots due to thermal shock (the dots cool at different rate to the underlying bead)...Ping...ping...resulting in a jump and a curse. So it a fine line between burning the glass and shocking the glass.

More madness

Officially I am obsessed. I dream beads, I plan what I am going to make as I fall asleep and I can not wait until the next session. I am limiting myself to one session a week for 2 hrs as the studio costs money and I have a family and a job and all. Need to keep those!

The top necklace contains a variety of beads where I was playing with dark ivory, purple red, a hand pulled turquoise and sometimes encasing with clear glass. The turquoise and dark ivory glass are fun because of the interactions with the flame where they change colour (notice the dark rim around the turquoise and the yellowish tinge to the ivory). The beads below are the result of dots and transparent colour. Glass flows in strange ways when it is melted...I guess it has something to do with surface tension. I want to move onto playing with reducing and oxidizing flames but first I need to get better at those dots !

Like a hole in the head

I need a new hobby like a hole in the head... but I finally took a soft glass bead making class at Unearthed. I've been dreaming about bead making every night since. I want to work my way up to 3-dimensional borosilicate beads but there is some practice that needs to done first. Voila! my first beads still on their mandrels. they are soaking in water to soften the bead release (white clay stuff on the mandrels).

Unfortunately although I cannot stop thinking about making beads I have to go to DC this week to visit the National Science Foundation. I am participating in a workshop that will come up with new ideas to take climate history in the future. What do we say to politicians who remark 'So climate change is happening, okay we can stop studying it now...'