TAGGED

yikes Janice from Doxallo designs tagged me now I need to list 7 random or weird things about myself and tag 7 more people.
Finding 7 fellow bloggers that havent been tagged yet is almost impossible so I have chosen 7 people who I admire on the JAN forum for one reason or another. Sorry if you have been tagged yet again.
Thinking of 7 wierd or random facts about myself is extremely daunting.

Here are the rules
Rules -1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blog.
4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog

These are my facts

1. I am extremely untidy and yet I am a perfectionist when I make or do something.
2. I hate making mistakes.
3. I remember lots of small insignificant details about everything but forget big things like baseball matches and birthdays.
4. I have a fiery temper.
5. I dont wear make up because I always feel like a little girl dressed in her mothers clothes when I do .
6. I am afraid of heights.
7. I love playing with lego.


And here are my 7 victims

1. Kay
2. Penny
3. Alice
4. Melissa
5. Swati
6. Kewlie
7. Chris

citrine earrings

I started this pair of earrings about 2 months ago.

I tapered the wire for the tear drop with my rolling mill - I love my rolling mill. Then formed it around one of my dapping punches and hammered the subtle texture.

I made the claw settings - so I had a few tries before I was happy about them and they were the right size. I swear stones shrink.

The first earring was well behaved and did exactly what I wanted. The second earring was a different story alltogether.

As I got the stone set - the claw came completely off the frame. UUgh so I made a new one and when I was checking to see if it fitted the stone flew across the room and I still havent found it.

So I bought a new stone - which is much prettier and a little bigger then the first set of stones.

but the stone fitted beautifully.

Simple pressed form earrings

These were formed with 4mm thick perspex, rubber from an old pair of slip slops and a vice.

The texture on the silver ones was from a piece of grass paper found in a scrap book shop.

The green earrings are formed copper - enameled with smashed beads and set in sterling silver with a little flower pierced out the back of the earrings - because I felt like it.

I love those earrings - I have given them to my sons teacher as a christmas present - I hope she loves them as much as I do.

forged earrings

I made a bigger copper pair of these a while ago.

I loved them so much that I decided to create a smaller version in silver.

Enamel - well sort of

I am desperate to learn how to enamel. Penny has a kiln and I have serious tool envy.

I Recently bought Linda darty's book on enamelling and set up a tin can Kiln as per a diagram in her book. All set up except uuh no enamels.

I can order enamels but I am impatient and when I want to do something I want to do it now - not wait for the mail man.

I have thousands of seed beads, from my bead obsession days.

So I crushed a few and used a tea strainer for mesh and hairspray to help it stick.

All thing considered I was really pleased with these results

Jasper Ring

I started making this ring about 2 months ago.

But it challenged me at every turn.

My biggest mistake was trying to get away with a thin back plate for the large stone.

Then I realised it was too thin and I remade the whole of the top piece using .8mm back plate which was probably too thick for my torch to handle. Then when I was setting the stone the whole thing came off the ring. AAGH. luckily I was able to remove the stone without too much damage and resolder it to the ring. I made sure it was soldered properly this time!

adventurine earrings

I have finally made something.
These earrings were a birthday present for my sister.

Double viking knit chain.

This is a double viking knit chain. I found it much quicker to do this weave then the other weave I know.

earring finding

The other day I got a phone call from Penny to find out if I knew where she could buy a silver screw on earring finding. I didnt know but managed to convince her that she could make her own. I like a challenge and thought it would be a good learning experience for me too. So here is my (unfinished) version.

Bead setting

So in keeping with my resolution to practice other methods of stone setting.
When I saw Janices work, I decided to try bead setting again.
Setting the stone isnt that difficult. Its the cleaning up with the gravers afterwards that is really hard. I have been reading a little and I see that I am going to have to invest in another graver.
YAY more tools!
This was practice it wasnt supposed to turn into anything.

Just a pendant

This was a spur of the moment pendant.

It is made with 2 tumbled stones and 5 faceted stones.

I think the tumbled stones are sodalite. Just because they are blue and Sodalite is on my list of African Gemstones.

I bought them in Pilgrims rest which is an old gold mining town in Mapumalanga (used to be the eastern transvaal) in South Africa.

I love tumbled stones because of their uneveness.

The faceted stones came in a mixed bag of gems. I presume they are smoky quartz because smoky quartz was on the list of stones included in the parcel and the colour fits. I flush set them because I always think that this is the least fussy way of setting a small stone but I did wonder at my sanity when 2 of the stones would not stay there.

Garnet earrings

Here is my next stone setting attempt.

The little stones are spessarite garnets. 6x5mm.

I hate the way photos always show up all your mistakes.

These look a lot better in reality.

Play date

I went to Pennys house yesterday. We are trying to get together once a month just to swap ideas and practice skills. It was great! Penny has a fantastic studio which she shares with her husband.(if she didnt live an hour and a half away she would be sharing it with me too!)When I arrived Penny made me coffee - I need coffee! Then We selected a stone for Penny to make a setting for. Penny has a stone collection that turns me emerald green.I then drew down a bit of wire for the settings I was going to make and made 4 jump rings. Then it was time to go home can you believe it 4 hours later and it was time to go home. I hadnt even got warmed up yet. Thank you for a fantastic day Penny.

woven earring

Melissa from JAN made a pendant like this. Ireally liked the pendant -as a pair of earrings. I dont usually copy but I had to have a pair of earrings like that.

So here is my attempt.

Ametrine ring

A year ago Penny and I did a stone setting course.When we were discussing taking another course I realised that I havent done much with stone setting. So my next few pieces are going to focus on refining these skills - I have a way to go still. This is a little Ametrine (about 6mm X 4mm).

Locket

I havent been Idle for the last couple of weeks I have been busy with this. Once I started making letter stamps for my name I came up with this idea. And I needed a lot more stamps which took a long time.

These are the letters of our names. I know its not obvious but I am not an obvious kind of person I figure the only person who needs to know the significance of the words is the person wearing the piece. I am going to make a loop in loop chain to make up for it. and put a family photo probably sepia with resin on the inside.

hand made bead earrings.

Here are the earrings I made to match the the necklace made with my first bead .

Oh dear bye bye bead

I am so frustrated with myself.
When I did my first real jewellery course 2 years ago we made a bead as one of our projects. and I love that bead. I wear it on a piece of tigertail all the time. Its simple and I made it.
Anyway I decided to make a pair of earrings to match.
So I made two perfect silver beaded earrings. I finished them and they are beautiful and shiny. They would go perfectly with my first bead but my first bead is 2 years old and not so shiny anymore - it also has a few scratches that look suspiciously like file marks. So......... I decided to polish it up. and wouldnt you know I dinged my original bead! So now I have a pair of earrings and no necklace to match. I think I am going to ding the original bead all over with my dapping punches and possibly add a few balls and holes to match my dinged up earrings I already own and make another necklace to match my new earrings.

Link to the dinged earring story

home made stamps

It's an unusually cold day in Durban today (about 23 degrees celcius).

So I spent a couple of hours making a few stamps.

flush set pendant

We have just spent a wonderful weekend at my parents farm. Before I went I made a pendant for my sister (her birthday was in February) I never had time to take a decent picture but this will give you a rough idea of what it looked like.

Its made out of 2mm sterling plate and garnets.

second attempt at anticlastic forming

Ok so my first attempt was way too big so its still unfinished.

This was my second try - it proved much harder then the first one.

I guess all I need to do is practice practice practice!!!

sinusoidal stake

I find Aticlastic forms quite fascinating. Art jewellery magazine had a bangle project in the January magazine. The problem is they use a sinusoidal stake to form one.
I dont have one of those so I rushed off to Jewel tec to buy one - have money will shop -
they never had one but I wanted one so I showed the article to Andrew (my husband) and managed to convince him that it wouldnt be that diffucult to make one. Which he did and I have a new toy it just needs some refining which is a lot of sanding but that is my job and its a lot of work so I am going to do that after I have expoerimented with it.
Today I attempted to make a copper cuff - UUgh not as easy as it looks. The cuff is still unfinished.

curb chain

I enjoy making chains once in a while. This is 1mm wire. The links are formed around a 3mm round mandrel. soldered together then I used a 1.5 mmm round mandrel to form an oval shape. Each link is twisted 90 degrees. Taken directly out my new chain book.

beach glass earrings

I have finally used some of my beach glass.

I wanted the matt glass to contrast with the shiny metal.

I am interested to see how long the metal stays shiny.

Play date

Today Penny and I got together to play.We set aside everything else and just made stuff it was great. I love having someone to bounce ideas off of.

fused glass pendant

Penny and I took time out from our schedules on Friday to go on a fused glass course - just for fun. It was great. I got lazy towards the end and never glued the top piece of glass down. So it shifted a bit in the kiln making my hole skew and the top and bottom piece not line up. It doesnt look too bad though and is definately wearable.

Now all I need is a kiln - I want to play more!!!

hollow copper ring

This is a prototype for a silver ring I want to make. I never had a template so I had to make my own So I made this test in copper first. Copper solder is not my favourite thing to work with - it makes so much mess and and and.... but here is my first hollow ring with a resin.

etched copper earrings

With these earrings I drew the basic shape with a scribe and my oval stencil.
I then made the form a little more 3 dimensional using dapping punches.

I got a recipe for a copper etching solution from Jewelry artist network forum (thanks Tammy)which I used to etch the inner pattern. I used candle wax as a resist. I melted the wax in a tuna tin then dipped the whole piece into the melted wax. I then used a toothpick to remove the wax where I wanted my pattern. The resist seemed to work well. Although I noticed that the acid was starting to get under the wax at the edges when I removed my pieces.

Earring Bonanza

I havent posted for a while.

We went away for christmas and new year . I wasnt all that motivated in January so I only have a few pairs of earrings to show.

Here is a picture of my birthday/ christmas present. needless to say I have been melting scrap metal and turning it into plate then texturing it then melting it down again and starting the whole process over - not very productive I know, but I was having fun. because I can. I still need to get a stand for it but the g clamps are working in the meantime.

This is a pair of shell earrings I found the shells at St Lucia (SA)Unfortunately I broke the second shell in half when I was trying to set it. So I havent finished them.The shells are set with a bezzle. the front of the earring is the backplate with a hole pierced out of it. As seen in the top earring. The shape of the shell made it a challenge to make these simple earrings, as the sides of the bezzle needed to slope from 2.5mm to about 1mm. With the bottom earring you are looking at the broken unfinished earring from the back

These are a pair of domed, dinged and drilled earrings.

I cut the circles - with a saw (I dont have a disc cutter.)

Domed them . Then put the domes into pitch and textured them with my dapping punch. I then drilled a few holes and tried unsuccesfully to add a few balls. Then I soldered them to a backplate and added a post.

Because I now have a rolling mill I thought I had better use some of my textured metal. So these werent that technical to make but I really enjoyed the process. I used "tutu" netting to get this texture.

Finally I bought a mixed bag of stones (all tiny) from bid or buy.

I know I need to practice some of the stonesetting skills I learnt in July.

So I gypsy set these 2 turquoise stones. This was a challenge because both stones were very unevenly cut. They took a while but I got there in the end