Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Isn't he cute! Not quite wordless Wednesday!
Since it's exactly one month to Christmas today I thought I'd try and put you in the Christmas mood with Dino! There are two of these living in front of the Museum of Natural History in NYC!
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Doesn't this look like fun?
This is what I've spent the last three days doing.. I made the focal bead etc.. before I left for NYC and bought the seed beads while I was away... The necklace was inspired by the necklace "Turning Tides in the Jewelry designs with art glass beads magazine published by Bead & Button.... Is it finished? Probably not completely but for the time being it is as I lost my needle!
Labels:
Blue,
brown,
Daisy,
Fireballbeeds,
Free Form,
Islandgirl,
Pearls,
Peyote Stitich,
Seed Beads,
Yellow
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
From scrap to...
I ran out of 20 gauge wire making earwires for an order last week... when I went on line to order more $17 / oz US caused me to rethink my order....
Like most artists working with silver I have little bags and boxes of scrap all over the place.. at >$17 / oz now was the time to haul out the Christmas present I got last year (this only took 10 months to use remember the gin bottle that took 3 years to cut up and turn into beads?) So my ingot mold and my crucible got hauled into the bead studio ... I tried melting the silver with my Smith little torch... that took way too long! My minor was much more gratifying... soon I had a puddle of molten silver I carefully lined up on the ingot mold and got this lumpy bumpy mess... (some of it was even in the ingot mold!) Back into the crucible for the silver... after about 4 tries I got something that I deemed usable and actually fit into my Rolling Mill ...(Oh I forgot the 4 hours I spent changing the rollers on my easy change roller mill... before I even got started! There wasn't one part that wasn't taken off of that thing to change the rollers!)
Now to change the ingot into wire... 4 hours later I have a small coil of square wire... Out comes the draw plate... Got it down to 20 gauge but it's still somewhat square... then I coiled it cut it and soldered it back together... Pretty crappy job if I do say so myself but anytime I think I want to save some money by making my own wire... I will take out that chain and look at it!
However if I need some wire now and square wire will work.... I have the technology!
Like most artists working with silver I have little bags and boxes of scrap all over the place.. at >$17 / oz now was the time to haul out the Christmas present I got last year (this only took 10 months to use remember the gin bottle that took 3 years to cut up and turn into beads?) So my ingot mold and my crucible got hauled into the bead studio ... I tried melting the silver with my Smith little torch... that took way too long! My minor was much more gratifying... soon I had a puddle of molten silver I carefully lined up on the ingot mold and got this lumpy bumpy mess... (some of it was even in the ingot mold!) Back into the crucible for the silver... after about 4 tries I got something that I deemed usable and actually fit into my Rolling Mill ...(Oh I forgot the 4 hours I spent changing the rollers on my easy change roller mill... before I even got started! There wasn't one part that wasn't taken off of that thing to change the rollers!)
Now to change the ingot into wire... 4 hours later I have a small coil of square wire... Out comes the draw plate... Got it down to 20 gauge but it's still somewhat square... then I coiled it cut it and soldered it back together... Pretty crappy job if I do say so myself but anytime I think I want to save some money by making my own wire... I will take out that chain and look at it!
However if I need some wire now and square wire will work.... I have the technology!
Labels:
recyling,
roller mill,
scrap silver,
sterling,
wire wrapping
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Sunday, November 1, 2009
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