I'm a Pisces

 I see my last post was over a month ago.  Sorry!

As usual this time of year I get into a funk.  I've just spent several months in Florida and developed a new routine.  Then I come home and it takes a while to get back into the old routine.   Plus it was 27 here this morning and 68 there.  Need I say more?

Anyway, I tried to get somethings done around the house before I went to the studio.  I straightened up, put things away, swept and dusted......... Then my husband decided that now was a good time to put in a new tub.  So........ now I am straightening up every day, putting things away every day, sweeping every day and re-dusting.... everyday.  So...... I've decided that now is the time to get back to the studio and get out of the house while this remodeling is going on.  I can keep my sanity better if I only have to deal with the aftermath

I volunteered to donate a piece for the Tionesta Art Auction and to make a piece for the silent auction.  The theme this year is the Zodiac and since I am a Pisces, it just seemed logical for me to do that particular sign.  Needless to say, I knew about this since back in early March(?) but procrastinated until the week it was due.  (Oh how working under pressure drives us.)

My original thought was to do a necklace with the two fish we usually associate with that sign.  I used a  Koi fish texture plate for the back of the piece and cut it out in a water droplet shape.  (Clever, Eh?)  Then I used a texture plate that had native American style fish for my two fish.  (Didn't think of it at the time but Tionesta has a rich Indian heritage.)    The original design didn't have the aquamarine in it (that was an afterthought.)  Here is a picture of the piece before firing as I envisioned it. 

I really liked the look of this and planned to put a hidden bail on the back.  Then I decided to add the stone............ that's when things started to change.   Once I added the stone it looked like an "eye."  I tried to ignore the eye.  But it wouldn't go away.  All I could see was this eye which looked like the eye of a bigger fish.  As much as I tried not to think about it, I knew I had to put a tail on this bigger fish.  It was no longer elegant (what I was aiming for) but now became whimsical.  (Which is okay.  I guess my jewelry this time wanted whimsy.)

This is a picture of the finished fish.  (But not the finished piece for the auction.)  

Oh how he changed.

Stop back tomorrow for the trials and tribulations of finishing the piece for the auction.  

Heads or Tails?

I just finished two commissions back to back and they both were very challenging.  The first was to incorporate a "screw" into the piece and I wrote about it two posts ago.  

The second commission was to incorporate a 1943 dime into a necklace.  I guess I have to say the screw was more challenging to design and execute.  But, even though the idea for the dime came to me much easier, it too was a challenge to execute.  

Once again I didn't charge the customer for "all the time" I spent on the piece.  I was doing something I hadn't done before so I chalked it up to a learning experience.  

This time my personal challenge was to create "tabs" to hold the dime in place.  The tabs needed to be small enough so they didn't cover the dime too much.  They also needed to be made so the dime could be removed in the future if need be.  Since I'd never made tabs before, I wasn't sure how thick the clay should be and how high to make the pieces that would fold over the dime.  I also wanted them to basically be "invisible" by blending into the design itself.  

Another consideration was once again the shrinkage factor of the clay.  I needed to cut out a hole that would shrink just the right size to allow the dime to be inserted in the fired piece.  Once again the computer was my friend as I enlarged a scan of the dime to 118%.  I made a mold of the dime and used it to make a "stand in" so the tabs wouldn't shrink any smaller than I needed them to be.  

The leaves were each cut individually and pasted on one by one.  Talk about tedious.  I didn't put as many leaves on the back as those were to act as my tabs.

My next step was one of the most crucial in the making of this piece.  I HELD MY BREATH AND PRAYED IT WOULD ALL TURN OUT!  How's that for precise planning?

My method of madness worked and everything fit.  Since the silver is at it's most pliable fresh out of the kiln, I added the dime and started the process of bending the tips of the leaves over the dime. It was going well until one of the tips broke off.  Luckily (I live dangerously) there was enough other areas to hold the dime tightly in it's place.  There is no movement what so ever.  

 

Biggest Challenge

This past summer a former student of mine (from my days of teaching elementary art) asked me to make a necklace for his daughter that incorporated a screw that had been in his daughter's broken leg.  Sometimes I have an idea immediately, but this time my mind was a big blank.  (Ask my husband..... this is nothing new.)

It took me quite awhile.  ( I was busy enjoying summer and kept putting off what I knew I needed to do.)   About six weeks ago, I finally just told myself "Do It!"  So I drew up some ideas, sent them off to the customer to see if any of them were what he had in mind.  

After he picked his favorite, my next challenge was to figure out how to actually make it.  There were several techniques that I've never tried before and I decided to try them in this piece.  

Some of the challenges:

1.  Getting the piece to shrink to the right size so the screw would fit.  That one was pretty simple as the piece is made 118% bigger than the final piece.  The scanner and the computer are invaluable as tools to figure this out.  (Although there is a metal clay shrinkage ruler that can also help determine the beginning size and I did use it too.)

2.  Making the sides thick enough to create wells to hold the items.  I could have rolled the clay out with cards but felt that I needed something thicker.  So, I pulled out my clay extruder (which I've used only once before to make a bezel tube.)  This time I used the square cam to extrude a thick square snake which I cut into fourths.  The inside dividers were rolled by hand.

3.  Next I had to figure out how I was going to keep the screw in place.  (I didn't fire it in place as I wasn't sure what it's chemical makeup was.)    I decided to try resin.  Never used resin before either.  I did some test pieces before I took the plunge.  (Nervously took the plunge!)  The screw is held in place with clear UV resin and the blue is also resin, tinted.  (Had the resin supplies for years.  It was about time.)

4.  Finding teeny tiny pearls was impossible.  So...... I made some.  Once before I "made" a pearl for a piece so it was no problem to do it again.  Just polymer clay and "pearl" powder.  The most difficult thing here was how small I had to make them.  I thought I had them tiny enough but still ended up cutting them in half to make them fit.  (Glueing them in was no picnic either!)

5.  Finally, hanging the piece on a cord created yet another challenge.  Originally I was going to put the three keys at the top of the piece so they would go through the cord.   I wasn't sure what type or thickness of cord I was going to use so I turned them and hung them by putting jump rings through the keys.  But, when using the same size of jump rings, the pendant didn't hang right.  I had no problem leaving the middle key without a jump ring but wasn't sure the customer would see it the same way I did.  So..... after some trial and error, I enlarged the two outside rings and left the center ring the same size.  

6.  The amount of time I spent on this piece was quite extensive.  I didn't really keep track but it took  days and days and days.  (Mostly because I wasn't sure what I was doing and because I was trying new things.)  The piece has lots of silver in it and lots of time but I didn't charge the customer for all the hours.  Instead I looked at it as a learning piece.  It made me try some things I hadn't tried before (and definitely will try again.)  The customer shouldn't have to pay for that.

The back....... it's important too.

All done!

I finished the last of my unfinished projects from my classes a few weeks ago.

Here is the metal clay "wet" inlay technique.  The backing was made of copper and the bronze clay was inlaid.  I wasn't able to get it as smooth as it should be since I included a stone in this one, but still got it pretty smooth so it would take the Baldwin's Patina.

Just like fabric

My friend Carol Scheftic has been invited by Hadar Jacobson to be a charter teacher in her Accreditation Program.  Carol is a "big" fan of Hadar and has been working with her clays for a long time now.  So, when she said she would be teaching a class on using the powdered clays I jumped at the chance to join it.

It's not that I haven't worked with Hadar's clay.  Both Carol and I put off working with the base metal clays until some of the kinks were worked out.  (Not that there still aren't some problems, but not quite as many.)   I started out with the readymade copper and bronze clays but once I found Hadar's clay I never went back.  It has to be mixed with distilled water to make it pliable but it is much smoother and silkier than the other packaged clays.

It is this smoothness and silkiness that makes her clay perfect for the draping technique.

The clay is rolled very thin (1-2 cards thick) then folded and draped.

The clay can be left as formed or cut out with a cutter or template.

If using a texture, I found it best to roll the clay 3 cards thick first.  Then roll it to 2 cards thick onto the texture.  This draping technique really suits my design tastes (and it's fun to do.)  

Pete and I did our pieces in Carol's studio but due to time constraints we fired our pieces on Carol's new screened in patio.  

Check out Carol's blog for information on firing Hadar's clay.  

An older piece which I call "Tiny Dancer" (and was in a previous post) was created with Hadar's clay using the drape method.  This one was a free-form piece (no cutting from the shape.)

Box pendant

Last Saturday I taught a box pendant class using a combination of techniques I learned from Gordon Uyehara and from reading Kate McKinnon.

This was the piece I created in the process of demonstrating the techniques.  I had a package of tiny fine silver balls and used those along with some syringe work to embellish the area with the pearl.  (Actually the need to do embellishing came about because I miscalculated when I drilled my holes for hanging.  The pearl was a little too centered for my taste.)  Oops, another design technique exposed.

The texture was created with my tear-away, mentioned in a previous post.

Christmas from the heart

There have been several students these past months who've been working on Christmas presents.

My most prolific student is Virginia who has been working diligently on her presents for all of her family members since June. She's had her own seat in my studio where she's spent many hours in class, during open studio days and other days. We've become good friends and it will seem strange not to see her during the winter months. (Metal clay has brought me many new friends!)

My cousin's grandson, Ryan, who is ten wanted to make his Mom a necklace for Christmas. (The last time I taught an elementary student was 25 years ago...... not counting my grandson.) So, a week ago he came in after school. He already knew what he wanted, circles and a piece of dichroic glass. He even knew what shape he wanted it to be (a tooth shape. At least that's what it looked like to his Grandma and me.) He drew the shape (I enlarged it to allow for shrinkage) on an index card and cut it out to make a pattern. Ryan rolled it out on a texture plate, traced around the pattern with a needle tool, sanded, and drilled the hole.... all by himself. (This kid was good.) I did enlarge the hole after we decided to hang it with two jump rings and used syringe to circle around the glass. (That syringe is tough, even for an adult!)

After firing (and about 3 hours to let the kiln cool down ...... during which time he did his homework and went for pizza) he brushed it to create a matte finish.

I do have to say that Ryan has been my most exuberant and excited student. He did manage to wait until Christmas to give his mother her present (after threats from his Dad.)

It was fun working with him and so far he is the only one able to avoid the motion detector chime at the door to my studio. The trick is to be young and get a running jump! (There's no way I am even going to try!!!)

Still cleaning

The cleaning continues.......

This past week I spent many, many hours, trying to figure out what to do with a fairly large (actually to me it is down right huge!) piece. I made the piece probably about two years ago; mostly as a what if project.

When I was teaching, the last six weeks were tough. The students were tired of being in school and were more focused on getting out of school than on their assignments. It was a perfect time to introduce a new medium to them. So, we spent the end of the school year creating with polymer clay. (The bad thing about doing it then was how warm the room was. Not the best thing for polymer.)

Of course, I played with the polymer too. I made a couple of pieces that I used to decorate the tops of some wooden containers. One was in warm colors and one in cool colors. The design reminded me of a Van Gogh painting.

It was one of these polymer pieces that I used for an impression with the silicon mold. It was rather a large mold, but I used Standard PMC since it shrinks 30%. (Even still the finished metal clay piece is big!)

It was also my first try with Aura 22. I used the gold as an accent on the small circles within the piece. But I don't think the consistency was right as the gold came out rather lumpy. Aura 22 requires having a medium mixed in with it and I wasn't sure exactly how much to add.

I really didn't like the piece when it was done. So away it went to be hidden in a drawer. Every so often I would pull it out, take a look and put it back in. Occasionally I would ask someone for some input. It wasn't until Laurie Kulkulski suggested that I turn it on it's side, that I decided it wasn't so bad. A different viewpoint was just what was needed. So, I drilled some holes in it and put it back in the drawer.

Another year would go by before I would pull it out again. Every so often I would take a look, still not knowing what to do with it. But, some ideas were formulating.

I had it laying out in my studio, when Swan, another jeweler in the Transit, said she could see it curved. So, I did just that. Another couple of months went by while I kept trying to find the perfect beads to compliment the piece. (You won't believe how many different strands of beads I bought for this purpose.... most ended up in other pieces.)

Now I am not a beader and maybe that is why this was such a struggle. I finally finished the necklace on Saturday. Even then I had to go ask for help on how to keep the twisted strands from untwisting.

I'm still not sure it is finished. I wore it today to see how it would hang (even though it is not me.) It didn't hang quite the angle I thought it would and it might be too long. I really don't want to work on it anymore, but that is exactly what will probably happen.

But I'm still considering it as one more piece finished. Haven't opened a package of clay in over a week. (I think I'm having withdrawal symptoms though.)

Cleaning House

The process of making jewelry isn't always a straight road of designing and finishing a piece. Instead it is often a zig-zag process. (At least my approach is a zig-zag process.)

As I said in an earlier post, I do have a sketchbook full of ideas but most of my creative process is intuitive. (I design as I go, which is not the most economical method.) So, this method lends itself to lots of unfinished pieces. My goal this month has been to not open one more package of clay until I use up some of those pieces.

The little dove was punched out of a doubled piece of metal clay sheet. I didn't realize that it was not a solid piece on the back, but I liked the negative shape that showed up. When the dove was torch fired, little bumps showed up on it which interestingly were positioned well. I think there must have been a gap between the layers which is why it puffed up. I had a massive stone bead (don't ask me what kind of stone it was) that I glued it to. I named this piece "Wounded Dove". He's been through the war and survived.

The other piece was a water droplet, (actually there were three of them.) I tried several variations where I strung them on a chain, but that didn't work. Not only am I trying to use up fired pieces, but I'm also trying to reduce my inventory of beads. So, the turquoise bead and the water drop were a simple solution to achieving that end. The other two droplets became earrings to match the pendant.