Duh!

It's been about a month now since Oil City had their Oil Heritage Festival.  About ten of the National
Transit Artists set up in the Grafitti Gallery for the arts and crafts show.  We could set up out in the street, but that involves having a tent, setting up at 6 in the morning (and I am sooooo not a morning person), sitting out in the heat (and maybe rain), and taking it all back down the next day.

Instead we chose to set up in the Gallery where we could leave our pieces for several weeks and not just two days.  It's still a lot of work hauling everything down to the gallery and figuring out where to put everything.  It involves hauling down the tables, the jewelry and all the displays.  True to form, the elevator always seems to give out at this time of year.  So, it's a lot of running up and down the stairs carrying heavy loads.

Swan Daashuur (another jeweler in the Transit Studios) and I had displays that took up the most room.  As we were setting our displays up we kept talking about what we did last year.  Notice...... I said talked about what we did.  And..... tried to remember.  Sometimes we remembered and sometimes we did not.

This year we wised up and took a picture of our set ups.  Duh!  How easy is that?

This isn't how it looked last year but I think it was better.  I even had a couple of people make a comment on how nice the display looked.  

Next year I won't have to strain my brain trying to remember what I did.  Duh!  An easy solution.  

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.

National Transit Jewelry Series

As I've mentioned before, the National Transit Building in Oil City, Pa is an example of gorgeous architecture.  Anyone who has ever visited has noticed how amazing the building is, both inside and outside.

Inspiration for art most often comes from the artist's life..... what they see, experience, feel, hear and more.  So the designs that I pass everyday on the way to my studio is a natural inspiration for design.

The designs I used are basically literal.  How else will people who briefly pass through be able to associate with the jewelry.  What I have done is try to use them in a variety of ways to make them each different.

The ground floor is tiled and has a narrow tile border that reminds me of a celtic design.  (Not sure that it is.)

This is the design created from the original tile. (Couldn't find my photograph of the tile itself.)

I created a couple of very long necklaces using the floor tile design; one in copper and one in bronze.   The bronze piece took awhile to make as I incorporated some of the chain I bought at the bead show.  I really like the look of combining chain with beading (not to mention how much further the chain will go.  I have enough left to make another necklace.)

Now I want to create more necklaces to be worn with these.  (One thing always leads to another!)

They're finished

The copper slip trailed earrings are all done.  Mine were finished several days ago and Deb finished hers yesterday. 

The pictures don't do them justice.

Deb chose to add swan neck ear wires which add length to the earrings.

And, since I had drilled holes at the bottom of mine (remember I had no faith on how they were going to turn out) I added some blue/copper glass beads.

I Kissed a Frog

My Etsy shop is soooooo neglected. I always put off working on it and then nothing gets done, but that has to change. (If only I could take better pictures!)

The other day I got an email that one of my items on Etsy had been added to someone's treasure site so I checked it out. The theme of the shop is Frogs and includes frog items from a variety of shops. Pretty cool... (There I go dating myself again.)

The site is http://www.etsy.com/treasury/4d7c33758c568eefead91407/i-kissed-a-frog-i-liked-it

Plus, in February I was pushing to get some hearts done before Open Studios on the 12th. Got them done but did not get them assembled (still have some to do.) Here is a photo of one that did get done. Again, nothing heavy duty (as I was working in copper and it's apparent how I feel about that) but nice.

Muscleman wanted

Copper clay is pretty; shiny and bright or when it's darkened with a patina. But......... it is a little tougher to work with.

I purposely put off waiting to use my copper and bronze clays (by now my bronze packages are probably dried up.) My friend and I decided that we would let others go through the learning stages and we would wait until all the kinks were worked out. (Didn't follow through on that plan!)

First off I didn't really want to run my kiln that long. A copper firing takes anywhere from 4-5 hours and a bronze firing takes 7-9 hours. Now I'm reading that these long firings will shorten the life of the kiln. If I decide to do lots of firings of these two metals I will get another kiln just for them.

Copper and bronze clay are dirty to work with. They stain the hands, require their own tools and a separate barrel for the tumbler. When sanding I definitely wear a dust mask (that's about as sexy as the magnifying head gear) and I have to scrub the work area down after each session. (house cleaning is not my forte'.)

Both clays have more memory than silver clay, so seams have to be carefully attended to or they will pull apart during firing.

Then there is the firing process. They are fired in charcoal inside a stainless steel container with a lid. (Which leaves a lovely black soot on the inside of the kiln..... more cleaning.) The container has to be raised off the kiln floor. The pieces should have one inch of charcoal beneath them and at least an inch above them. There are two kinds of charcoal, and each kind of clay works best with a specific kind of charcoal. Different firing schedules are recommended depending on where you look for information.

In earlier posts, I've talked about firing the copper (and some problems I've incurred.) For the most part, I've worked out some of those problems.

But now, I've encountered other problems in finishing my pieces. All sorts of copper findings are starting to pop up in the catalogues. If I'm using beading wire, copper crimps and crimp covers are easy to find. But, my latest piece looked best on brown leather cord. I didn't really want to go through the process of making my own ends (rather lazy there.) Finally I found some crimp tubes with loops and hooks. I use these all the time with my silver pieces. The only size available was 2.5 mm and I was using a 2 mm cord. The size difference works fine when I am using sterling silver crimps as they are easy to pinch in the middle with a pair of pliers.

Here in lies the problem. I need a muscleman to pinch them. I squeezed and squeezed. I jumped up and down. I took a screwdriver and hammer to them...... to no avail. There was very little give. So, I bit my lip and pulled out the glue (something which I try not to do.) Using glue in such a strategic place makes me nervous.

Finally!!!

No, I don't have my computer back. But, I 'm on my daughter's computer and I know how to download (upload?) pictures to it.

So.... here's a couple of pictures.

The first picture is of the copper (sort of) fiasco. It wasn't a total loss as the underlying copper was fine. But what a mess the rest turned out to be.

The other picture is an example of a piece I made as a demo during a water etching class. I'm very pleased with the final design of the whole piece. But, that wasn't always the case.

During the Arrowmont earring extravaganza, Linda Kline showed us a technique that included a tab designed right into the piece. The piece was fired flat (like the by-pass ring) and the tab was bent into a round bail after firing. I didn't get a chance to try it, but my friend Nancy (who was sitting right next to me all three days) did. She made a water etched pendant and was nervous about bending it; but it worked slicker than you know what. It turned out beautifully.

So, I never did a test piece (that would have been too logical) before my class. Instead we dove right in (thank goodness I only had one student), made our pieces with the tabs and fired them.

Then came time to bend them. (You know where this is going. Do you see a bail on my piece?)

Yes, they snapped off. Both of our pieces broke.

My student drilled a hole in her piece and hung it with a jump ring. I pasted the broken bail onto the back and re-fired it. For months it laid around my studio, while I tried to decide what else I wanted to do with it. I was listening, but it wasn't talking. Finally, one of the other jewelers in the Transit building, said she liked it just the way it was. So I took another long look at it. Looked in my basket of beads and this is what I came up with. I do really like it now. It has a South Western look.

Another unfinished piece done. Finally!

Good News, Bad News...... Damn It!

Damn It!!! There I said it. My daughter said it was okay. I don't have to be polite.

We got good news and bad news about the computers. Good news is that the old computer works. There was nothing wrong with it that the tech guy could find. So, luckily I kept the old moniter, keyboard, printer and scanner. I rushed home, dragged those all out of the closet and set it up. I got everything running (even after four years in the closet, the printer had some workable ink it.) The internet worked (sort of). Then I remembered why I got a new computer. The old bugger kept freezing up on me. What a piece of crap!

Okay, that was the good news, even though it didn't sound like it. The bad news is that the laptop is dead and will cost $500 to get it fixed. (Hope the Open House is good tomorrow!)

More good news though about the copper clay. First time I fired copper I used a two step firing which was mentioned in an eariler post. This time I was in a hurry (not enough hours in the day) so I did the one step approach... full ramp to 1700 and hold for three hours. It worked great. So, I did it a second time but fired for four hours as I had thicker pieces in. I won't know if it worked until I go to the studio this morning. About an hour into the firing I heard a crack, so I'm thinking there might be a problem If it is the piece I think it is, it was expected.

Oh, and one grandchild note. We just got a new motorhome on Monday. It has been winterized as we don't know when we'll get to take it out. My husband was showing it to my son's family last night and the middle grandson peed in the pot. Hey, that's what it's for right? I guess it has been broken in. Don't know how pee mixes with antifreeze.

Get a Grip!

Get a grip!!! That's what my friend's husband told her after she thought she peed on a poisonous snake in the woods. I've never heard such a decibel of a scream coming from the human mouth. It was like something out of a comedy.

Oh, right, this is a blog about metal clay (and sometime grandchildren.) Sorry!

Get a grip!! Don't lose that necklace or bracelet because the clasp failed. (Done that.... more than once.) More often than not I just reach for a ready made toggle, clasp or lobster claw to finish off a new piece. But I know that taking the time to make my own clasps will move my jewelry up a notch.

One of the projects in Level II Certification through PMC Connection is to make a clasp. Since sterling silver oxidizes in the kiln, we used fine silver wire as our connector. Now fine silver wire is softer than sterling. So, there are tricks to working with it to make a sturdy clasp. We first bent the wire into a loop at one end and heated the other end to create a ball. Then we hammered the wire flat to work harden it and bent the balled end to create a hook. To keep the wire from pulling out of the metal clay clasp, the wire is embedded into the middle of the clay and runs completely through the clay from end to end. I used my clasp to finish off another Level II project, a piece with a mirror finish. (My mirror finish is very tiny as metal clay can scratch easily. I just didn't see any reason to put all that effort into polishing something that might get scratched. This is sort of my philosophy on dusting too.)

One of my newest pieces, Lola's necklace II, was created from a mold I made from a pair of my Granddaughter's shoes. The shoe had three different patterns on the bottom that all suggested an underwater theme. (For some reason lately I've been on an underwater kick.) I had already made a necklace last year from the biggest shape and finally got around to using the other two designs. The mid-size design was used to create the pendant and the smallest shape made the clasp. I found some really neat purple coral looking beads (I don't know what the heck kind of beads they are) that work great with this design. I can see some younger person wearing a strapless sun dress in this. (Someone without a wrinkled neck and wrinkled cleavage.)

The original plan was to use the Hattie Sanderson magnetic set to create the clasp. Now I really don't think I'm stupid, but I found the directions difficult to follow. I think I had it figured out, but did too much sanding and now the magnets would be sticking out too far. The clasp would have a depth of about 3/4 inch. I think that is just a little too much. But it sure would have "gripped" well. Those little magnets that come with the kit are strong suckers. Every time I get into the drawer where I keep the kit, I have to pry them (and I do mean "pry") off my locking tweezers. I'm not sure that I could get the necklace off once I got it on if I used the magnets.

Instead, I made my own clasp with the fine silver wire. In class, I made both sides of the clasp. For the latest piece I made one clasp, took a ready made soldered jump ring, and beat the heck out of it to make it look handmade for the other side. Whatever works!

Tomorrow I'm teaching a class on toggles. I've already lost a couple of bracelets. One with a handmade toggle and one with a ready made toggle. I'll be stressing in the class to center the hole, roll extra thick and make the bar on the toggle more than two times the width of the hole.

We work too hard to lose our jewelry because we couldn't get a grip!

A Copper Christmas

The copper pieces are done!! The above photo shows fired and polished pieces next to the unfired pieces.

It was a surprise when I took the lid off the stainless steel container they were fired in. I expected dark gray pieces of metal, but was greeted by a very orange color. After the first firing the pieces were a dark gray but that is probably because they were exposed to oxygen during that firing process which doesn't happen when they are buried in charcoal.

It is a messy firing though. The kiln has to be vacuumed out from all the black dust.

The construction joints were fine and they were what I was worried about. The tiny charm had a loop attached to the top and the oval earrings had a circle cut apart, put into the hole in the oval and the seam was pasted back together.

There were a couple of cracks though on the back of the disk earrings where the stones were. The cracks weren't anything major and I'm not going to do anything about them. The worst thing that happened had nothing to do with the copper clay. (I forgot to clean the stones and now my pretty pink czs are rather hazy.) They look okay since it is an even haze but I really liked the pink with the copper. (Oh, and peridot looks pretty with a haze too! That's why I have a last minute checklist posted on my wall. Obviously I don't look at it. Maybe I should move it over by the kiln. Uh, I have one on the wall by the kiln. What is it going to take? Usually once is enough but not in this case.)

Sorry, but my photos aren't the best. I didn't have time to take better ones but at least you get the idea. The finished pieces do have a patina added. The shiny copper was really pretty but the patina just added the right contrast for the textures to show.