Metal Owls

Much much earlier this year, I started playing around with owls.  I have plans for these things, just..... need to make time to finish them :)

Proof of concept.... Wood + metal + Latvian designs

Here are two examples of the new idea made into actual physical real life objects....

Three newest pendants

Today's efforts after work yielded these! #27, #28, & #29 in a series of fifty. I am 58% finished with my bezel setting challenge! Yea!

A new pattern

Here are a couple new pendants that I've been excited about:

Ooooh! Shiny!

I've been playing around with a new technique: polishing stuff in a rock tumbler. Initial results? WOW!!! Sooooo shiny!

And there's an extra bonus, too. Yesterday I found out that half an hour is enough to polish the silver BUT LEAVES MY DICHRO ALONE... Which is awesome because that means I can polish all of my glass bezel pendant without dealing with the buffer!

Dirty patterns

These are nowhere near done, and in fact are very dirty. But sometimes I think that the patterns left on a piece just after soldering are just so neat.

Four more stone settings

Man. I have to work on polishing these, but I figured I'd post a picture anyway --- even if it *is* dirty. This brings my total up to 16. Thirty-four more to go....

Surprise in the mail!

Someone sent me a bunch of AWESOME little dichroic cabs in the mail :) :) :) Now to design some silver to go around them.....

12 bezel settings

Thirty-eight more to go..... The I get to install a solar tube in my kitchen! By the way, i made all of the cabs used in these pendants and earrings, too. They're glass. Some are dichroic and the striped ones were just a neat technique I learned about earlier this year.

Starting to feel lived in!

Here's how the workbench fits into a whole wall of metal-working goodies :D

Still needed: proper ventilation.

50 earring challenge

I finished 50 pairs of earrings last month.

Day 16 & 17 --- metalwork

Been working away on that metalwork project for Feb. I'm about half done! Yeah! Too bad it's a super-top-secret project because it would be fun to post pictures of it. Ah well. I can leave you with this, though. Here's a preview of what's involved in the super-top-secret-metal-project of mine :)



In February there will be more pictures.

Day 2 --- copper stuff

The beginnings of some jewelry....




.....and I think I broke my tool :( stupid cheap-o steel combo tool :[ Turns out that the inner screwy bits weren't strong enough to withstand the torque and I believe a small portion of the inside is stripped on one side. doh.



Hopefully still useable on thinner gauges.... we'll see tomorrow, I guess.

Copper disk earrings

I finally started using this etched piece of copper that I made in a class some 8 or 9 years ago. Of course, I forgot to take a picture of the metal sheet before beginning to cut it up. Sigh.

First, a pair of earrings:

Bails

Last week I practiced both basic soldering and mass production:



My mom asked for some bails for her glass work projects. The first 15 were kind of tough and rather annoying, but the next 20+ were easy peasy.

Blue Comet Pendant

Here's another new pendant finished during last weekend's efforts:



I'm definitely excited to take more of my doodles from work notebooks and turn them in to something I can hold in my hand. (or rather, wear as jewelry!)

Small Green Pendant

I finally sat down to play with metal and fire this weekend and here's what came out!



Very plain. Very simple. But still pretty. AND confidence boosting. I finished it in far less time than I'd expected AND now i have several more studio-type things set up and ready to use! (most notably: my buffer is up and running!)

Wine Glass Markers

Playin' with spare parts:

Screwed?

This weekend I:

• Fixed the shed door. New hinges = the door closes easily now :)


• Finished assembling the compost bin - it is now one cohesive piece and will not fall over if you touch it. Let the composting begin in earnest!


• Bought COE 96 glass and assembled some photo transfer fusing stuff. Photos of that to come later this week. The firing will probably be Tuesday night, so... no pictures of the outcome until Thursday (or later)


• Assembled the working frame for the stained glass window. My mom, the stained glass teacher, was right.... putting it all in the frame pointed out how off-kilter it still was and I have much work to do to get it all to fit. But I made some progress.

The only picture from this yesterday's projects worth showing is....

I guess i either got a little carried away with the electric drill or else I bought crummy quality screws. There are now two screws in the compost bin that are never coming out....

Tin can christmas ornaments