The Wheels on the Bike Go Round and Round. . .

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. . .round and round, round and round, the wheels on the b . . . oops, I guess that song was really about a bus! Well, today, it’s about bikes! I’ve been playing with little wire bikes that some friends and I accidentally created while manipulating wire one day. Each bike is made from a single piece of wire.

The earrings were easy to do since the three dimensional shape (the handle bars) doesn’t create any problems on them. These are really free swingers and hang pretty long. I’m thinking of doing them in colored artistic wire as a “fun” summer look.

The bike links caused considerable consternation at the design table. You can see that they do not want to lie flat and one of them prefers to be in the “ready to go round and round” position.

Finally, no bike series would be complete without the bike that E.T. rode. After all, didn’t it help save him and get him home? This little riveted charm above was planned to show his upward flight when the bike left the ground in the movie. This will either be a small pendant or a charm on a chaos necklace. I’ll try to post the finished piece when it is complete.

I’m still playing with the bike shape; so stay tuned for an update and other ways to use the bikes. Please add your own suggestions in the comments section. I’d enjoy hearing your ideas.

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The Messy Metal Smith

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I wonder who it could be. Do you remember reading the August 11 entry describing how the pickle ate my pants? Well, today, the flux helped turn them white. I was happily spending some uninterrupted time with the torch when my bottle of Aquiflux fell off the table and rolled to some far away place. Oh well, I thought, I can just use the new paste flux sitting right here beside me. I hadn’t used much of it previously, but today seemed like a good day to give it a workout. All was well and I completed a ring with a bezel and two butterfly pendants before I noticed my pants. No, there weren’t any new holes in them, but one leg was practically covered in something white and powdery. Flux! Then I noticed that my hands had a good deal of dry flakes on them. Flux! The paste flux actually worked fine for my projects, but I’m not sure that I like the extra mess. I tried to take a bit more care with it on the rest of my projects, but when I went upstairs to clean up, I noticed I also had white spots on my nose and cheeks. Now you tell me how in the world I managed to get flux on my face. I guess you can just call me the messy metal smith.

By the way, I’m dangerous too. Last week, I managed to reach across the extinguished torch before it cooled. My arm came in contact with the torch and I have quite a nasty burn on my inside arm. It was becoming infected until I started flooding it with hydrogen peroxide. It appears that I’ll live to torch another day. Scars are good . . . right?

In spite of all the mess and the bandaged arm, this was a fairly productive day. As you can see from the photos below, I ended up with two sterling silver rings, two butterflies and two star earrings.

I cut the shapes on the butterfly wings with my disc cutter and then sweat soldered them onto the copper shapes. The center piece on the right flutter by is made from a beaded wire.

The sterling silver ring sports a lapis stone that I put in a premade bezel cup. It has a little sterling silver flower sweat soldered on the side.

I used some very thin copper sheet for the star part of the earrings (or pendants) below. I’m trying out a paper cutter that cuts a star to see how long it will last with this type abuse. It does a fine job of cutting and I’ll just wait and see regarding its life. I appreciate the friend who shared this technique with me. I’ll let you know if it appears to be worth the relatively small investment in decorative paper punches.

The last ring shown is from the new Kim St. Jean book mentioned in another entry.

I hope you aren’t as messy as I am, but I DO hope you’re having as much fun as I am! Does that make it OK to be a messy metal smith?

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Bird Brain

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It’s Cedar Fever season in my neck of the woods and it tends to make me feel a bit dull. After doing a few things that I felt weren’t too smart the past few days, the term “bird brain” popped into my mind. I don’t actually think that anyone has ever called me that derogatory term, but I have heard it used before. So, I wondered. Is it right that when you aren’t functioning at a real high level could you be experiencing the “bird brain” phenomenon?

As it turns out, being called “bird brain” might be a compliment. While scientists used to believe that most of a bird’s brain was a primitive and instinctual structure, recent discoveries indicate that about 75 percent of the brains of songbirds actually serve as a sophisticated information processing center. Many songbirds actually have a more powerful processing center than mammals. The bird’s brain is pretty small, but it’s also quite mighty.

I made a bird necklace yesterday in honor of those little brains everywhere.

The bird is difficult to spot on the copper pendant. I used a nice stamp pad of a bird scene to apply stop out to the metal and then etched it. A close up photo follows. It is much clearer in reality.

I hung the earrings on the necklace for photo taking purposes and wanted to show you the new twisted wire I’m trying out. Although the ends are difficult to deal with, I like the look of this wire. I also used it for a couple of swirls in the handmade chain on the necklace shown in the next photo.  

From now on, when I’m struggling with those high cognitive processes, I will not think about bird brains. I will simply hope that my brain is half as power packed as those little song birds.

Tweet … tweet!

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Do You Have a Frienemy?

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You’ve probably seen the commercial on television that pertains to losing weight in which a woman calls the bathroom scale her “frienemy”. Evidently and obviously, she is encouraged to lose weight by the reading on the scale while at the same time disgusted by the same number. I CAN relate to the enemy part, but not as well to the friend dimension.

My camera is my frienemy. I’m still trying hard to get my wire technique perfected and lately have been pleased with the way the handmade jump rings close and how the wire looks post hammering. I’ve been pleased, that is, until I’ve viewed them in a close up photograph. Then I can’t believe I’m looking at the same piece of jewelry. Those beautiful closed rings are NOT perfect. That camera is definitely my enemy!

While it’s not as noticeable in this size picture as it is on my large screen computer, you may be able to see the less than perfect jump ring closures and the dent in the head pin wire. I can’t imagine how they got there between the time I completed the earrings and the time I took this photo.

Yet, as I look back at photos of older pieces, I do see some progress in my technique. For one thing, I now know what to look for whereas I used to just be happy with a sort of roundish ring that held together. I can also see that I’m doing better than I used to do and that makes the camera my friend since it has documented change over time.

The close up photos also help me find all the little wire ends on bracelets that need to be tucked under. Even if I wear my reading glasses, I sometimes miss a few, but the camera doesn’t lie and it finds them all.

   So what should a girl do with a camera frienemy? Thinking of the camera as my enemy and admonishing this inanimate object for making me look bad isn’t the answer. Also, it won’t do any good to plead with the camera to take a less upsetting photo. Therefore, I’m going to have to work with the friend dimension of my camera. I’m going to try taking a picture of my work sooner rather than later in the design process. This should provide a golden opportunity to spot and correct any technical flaws before proceeding to the next step. Often after I’m moved on, it’s too late to go back and fix certain things.

OK Camera – I’ve decided to let you be a friend. Now act like one and help me improve!

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Everything’s Comin’ Up . . .

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. . . hearts! Many of us have struggled this week to get back in to some semblance of a routine post holiday. While pondering this difficulty, I realized that the stores are beginning to thinking Valentine’s Day. This always sneaks up on me because January is so full of family birthdays. Well, not this year! I’m going to be ready for Valentine’s Day.

I’ve spent some time the last several days making heart earrings. First they were quite plain, although I tried to give them slightly different shapes.

Next, I fancied a few pair by adding beads. Pearls, garnet chips and something red helped these get dressed up.

Finally, last night I got a bit carried away with the alcohol inks. (No! I wasn’t drinking them.) They adhere nicely to the copper and polka dots seemed to add a little twist here. I also did a pair with double hearts soldered to each other, but that photo refused to work.  Now I’m thinking of all the shapes that could handle these polka dots in various colors. Let’s see there are butterflies and balls and . . .

Several of these could easily be turned into pendants or minified to become charms. I can see a necklace in particular out of the pair in the first picture that has pearl and garnet chips wired across the middle.

I enjoyed working these out in copper and am now considering going for it in sterling silver. We’ll just have to wait and see if anything hatches with that wire. Perhaps there’s more to come.

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Trolling

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We used to go trolling a good bit when we lived in the Dallas area and had a fishing boat. I never thought it was much fun, but then, I wasn’t the one driving the boat. I felt the best part about trolling for fish was in the heat of the summer when you felt so hot that you thought you would faint. At least trolling meant we kept the boat moving and that made a bit of welcome breeze on wet skin.

I went trolling yesterday . . . for bottle caps. I was reminded of the time when my son was in fourth or 5th grade and his gifted class was collecting bottle caps. As best I recall, they were trying to get to one million to see how much that actually was. When I picked up my son and his friend at the Social Studies Fair, I found that they had been outdoors picking up bottle caps in the parking lot. They weren’t nearly as clean (the boys) as when I first left them there, but they did have a few more bottle caps to add to the class collection. It seemed the bottle cap hunt was more interesting than the Social Studies Fair.

I’m not trying to get to a million bottle caps. I just needed a few more for making earrings. I’ve previously posted a number of pictures wherein these were used and you may recognize a few of those that follow.

Since we don’t drink anything that has bottle caps, the few that I have used previously have come from friends who remembered to bring them to me. I don’t know if I’ve run out of those friends, but yesterday, I was definitely out of bottle caps and set out to find them.

I’d been told I should just go to a bar and ask the bartender to save me some. I told the suggester that I’d feel strange in a bar and he said not to worry that I’d look better by closing time. (I think that was an insult!) At any rate, I chose not to visit a bar, but rather went searching as I ran my errands.

The first stop was a hit! I found one root beer cap when I stopped at the office supply store. Although I searched around the entire area where I found this treasure, there were no other caps around.  Later I found another cap at the filling station, but obviously the people who go there are very careful about getting things in the trash can, because I couldn’t find any others. I searched around all the various filling stands and people probably thought I must be very poor and was looking for change. I guess I could have dug in the trash can, but I chose not to. That would have made me look really desperate!

I drove very slowly through the parking lots on my way home as I looked for bottle caps. Finally, I realized that it would be hard to explain that I had run into something or someone because I was looking for caps and I gave up. The sum of my trolling is in the next picture. 

Oh well, don’t you think these are good ones? The exciting part of working with them was when I used the torch to anneal them. Either the plastic center in the cap or the cap finish created a beautiful little flame that I feared would set off the fire alarm. Luckily, it burnt out quickly and all peril was averted. Tonight these little jewels will become some sort of earrings.  I sell these at a very low price, but after yesterday’s effort, I’m thinking that price may just have to go up. Trolling is hard work!

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Ah, The Sweet Smell of . . .

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. . . metalwork!   I never imagined that working with metal would produce so many different odors, or aromas, depending on whether or not you like the particular smell. Most days I’m not even aware of this, but on an unusually sensitive day, my nose took offense to one project.

I was making three pair of etched leaf earrings to fill an order.  First, I used the torch and annealed the copper to make it easier to handle. Ah, the smell of propane . . .

Then I  painted nail polish on the back of each of the 6 leaves to use as a stop out for the mordant. Ah, the smell of nail polish . . . Then, I used a permanent felt tipped pen to mark the flower shapes, etc on the front of the earring. You really can’t see them in this photo. I tried hard not to inhale the marker.

Next I mixed an acid with hydrogen peroxide (outdoors, of course) and produced a smelly mordant for the etching. Yucky odor!

After the etching was complete, all that nail polish had to come off with that sweet smelling polish remover and the black ink had to be removed with alcohol. Can you smell it?

Since I needed the metal to have a red patina, I again used the torch and heated all six leaves until they glowed red hot. While still hot, I plunged them into a container of cooking oil producing an almost pleasant aroma. It was similar to that of chicken fried steak and all I could think was that finally I could fry something that wasn’t fattening.

Once the clean up was completed after the oil bath, I polished the metal with Renaissance Wax which I can also say produces an odor. Even the dog doesn’t like it!

I made the ear wires out of copper wire and used liver of sulphur to give them a dark patina. Ah, it was like the sweet smell of boiled eggs . . . After the earwires’ tumbler bath, the odors were all gone and I was able to assemble the earrings.

Now why in the world did I end up with a headache?

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When Gold Turns to Silver

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I believe this saying has to do with the color of someone’s hair (Knoffler sang something about when the gold of her hair has turned to silver). It might also represent a tact for saving money in the jewelry design business. With today’s spot price for silver at a practically intolerable $22.70/ounce, it’s still more economical to use than gold which lists at $1,330.50 per ounce. You won’t see me using any gold any time soon.

Of course, that’s the same thing I said about silver last year. I was working exclusively with copper, a good deal of which came from the recycling establishment. Lately, however, feeling that my skill has progressed, I’ve delved a bit into silver wire. Today’s photos show the use of fine silver which fuses to itself without solder. Sterling silver requires the use of solder for fusing. One problem that arises with fine silver is just how quickly it melts. My pieces have a few bumps on them where the metal got too hot. Still, I feel it is better to see small flaws that lumpy solder.

The first pair of earrings turned out much bigger than I anticipated, but they do make a statement. I’ve wanted to incorporate seed beads with the wire for some time and enjoyed using needle and fishing line to attach these embellishments to the ovals. They are very lightweight.

The second pair of earrings is, obviously, just a simple set of ovals.

Also, I fused some fine silver circles and put them on a double strand of sterling silver wire. This piece is very simple and delicate. It was trickier than I expected when I tried to get the circles to hang correctly.

What’s a girl to do with earrings, a necklace and no bracelet? I answered that question by getting brave and using some 14 gauge sterling silver wire to make a small simple wave bracelet. I’m still debating as to whether or not to embellish it with beads.  

These pieces are a very different style than what I usually make, but were fun to do once I got past my panic of cutting the expensive wire.

I suppose the title to this blog entry should really read When the Copper Turns to Silver since that’s the change I made today. I’m just too much of a tight wad to work with gold right now. They don’t ever seem to have any at the recycling place!

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I Think That I Shall Never See . . .

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. . . an earring lovely as a tree. I must certainly apologize to Joyce Kilmer whose original work compared a poem to a tree. Didn’t many of us have to learn to recite those verses in school?

The last few days I’ve been working with tree shapes. It may be the anticipation of the changes soon to occur with the leaves on the trees or simply an inclination to get away from things that are circles. For whatever reason, I’ve been working with the shape of some trees, triangles. This is always a bit of a problem since triangular shapes in jewelry mean you must deal with three sharp corners, but I decided not to let that deter me.

The first trees are a bit large, yet interesting looking. These earrings are copper triangles sweat soldered together to imitate firs. The liver of sulphur patina seemed appropriate on these.  I also made a smaller, upside down pair.   

The next pair is made of copper that spent several days turning blue. The household concoction worked well and I didn’t want to spoil the color; therefore, I chose not to solder them. That would have removed the blue patina. I made them into pretty good swingers by using the copper rings.

The last pair of earrings initiated with a picture of a pair that a friend gave me. I intended to use silver circles as part of the embellishment, but the bottle caps sitting on the work bench begged to be used. The star in the cold connection adds a little western flair to this pair. Yes, I do realize that this tree shape is upside down, but it seemed like the way to go.

Maybe the next tree shapes should be rounded at the top – I’ll have to give that some thought.

In the last line of her tree poem, Kilmer wrote:

Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.

I could certainly say the same about these silly earrings.

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9-11

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What should you do on the anniversary of the 9-11 tragedy?

I watched some of the news reports and heard some of the names of the fallen as they were read aloud, but I wasn’t sure what to do. 

My family was fortunate that we did not personally lose anyone on that day. My son, who was working in NYC at that time in a building not far from the towers hadn’t gone in to work that day. My daughter, who was working at one of the high rise offices in Atlanta was evacuated and sent home since authorities feared the possibility of other attacks. When my husband and I talked with each of our children, the distance between us seemed extreme, yet we felt close, and we wished we could still protect them as we did when they were little. Alas, we wondered if any of us would ever regain the sense of security taken from us on that day.

Of particular interest to me on the news was the report on the Ground Zero Memorial that is to open in another year. I was taken by the description of the two pools, titled Reflecting Absence, that are to lie in the footprints of the towers. The reporter referred to them as the inverted vertical of the buildings that formerly rose so high above New York City.

Today was 9-11. Today I made angels. It was the least I could do.

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