Beer jewerly

Added an new addition to my fine silver "Beer" Jewelry Collection.  (Could also be referred to as my "Road Kill" collection.)

Joining my Bud Light Earrings

and my Busch Light necklace

are my new Sam Adams earrings.

Bottoms Up.

In a much earlier post I mentioned that the drugstore is near the beer distributor.   And that I found a couple of flattened beer bottle caps in the parking lot.   One is a Bud Light cap, the other is a Busch cap.  (I think I've already share the earrings I made from the caps....... but I'm going to share them again.)

Two part silicone mold is an amazing material.  One part is usually white and the other is a color.  Both parts come in their own containers and don't do anything until they are mixed.  Equal parts of each compound are mixed into a ball.  Then the item to be molded is pushed into the ball and left to firm up; which usually only takes a few minutes.  When the mold sets up, the item is removed and voila...... a mold of the piece.

When the mold is ready, it doesn't need to be oiled as the clay will not stick to it.  The clay can be taken out while wet and used, as it was for this ring.  This way it can be shaped around a piece.  Or it can be left to dry in the mold before it is removed.

The beer caps molds .........

The finished silver pieces.....

"Bud Light"

"Busch"

Roll Reversal

In a previous post (June 26, 2009) I shared a picture of a ring that was way too large and way too feminine to be a man's ring.  So, I cut it in half, filed it, soldered on some earring posts and turned it into a pair of earrings.  Yesterday I did just the opposite.

In 2009, PMC Connection had their first retreat at the Arrowmont School in Gatlinburg, TN.  (Oh what a great time that was.)  Anyway, I took a class from Linda Kline in which we learned many, many techniques to make a large variety of earrings.  

One of the things we learned was the making of photo polymer plates (without the use of a UV light...... we went outside and did a happy dance with our plates extended toward the sun.  Can't do that in PA!) The earrings were made in a flat strip with a little tab at the end.  After firing the pieces, we bent them around a ring mandrel to create a hoop and used a pair of pliers to bend the tab up.  Then we learned how to solder posts onto the tab.  Just this one pair of earrings incorporated multiple techniques.  We made a lot of earrings those two days ..... sort of a mini-course in working with metal clay.

I never wore those earrings.  They were beautiful but I don't wear hoops very often and this pair was exceptionally heavy.  

Lately I've been trying to go through pieces and re purpose them or save them to send into Rio Grande to be recycled (for some money...... the price of metal clay took a big jump! )

My first thought was to recycle them but I loved the look of them too much to take that route.  Since I love rings, that seemed like the most sensible approach.  It was actually very easy too.  Took the cutters and cut off the tab, filed the little ridge that was left (how can anyone find filing relaxing) and hammered the ring to size on the ring mandrel.  Since it is a split band, it can be adjusted to fit .

Fine silver is soft and rings need to be made thicker for longer wear ability.  I usually make my rings six cards thick and the bands are usually at least a quarter inch in width.  This ring has width but since it started it's life as an earring it is not as thick as normal.  (Although it was made thicker since a PPP plate was used to create it's design.)

I'll have to wear it for awhile to test it's strength and how well the split in the band works.  

As I've often said..... my jewelry talks to me.  This one told me it didn't want to be an earring anymore.