Barbara S Fernald Jewelry

Lots of time spent today working on several new incarnations of these flat PMC silver beads. I made some flat beads to match those toggle clasps I worked on last week, and worked on hollow form earrings. 

To make the flat PMC beads,  I place a piece of “wax wire”  across the “equator” of  one side of the circle. Then I place the other circle on top, to make a  flat disc bead with a hole through the center. (The wax melts away in firing, leaving the hole intact. I won’t have to drill.)

I tried the Bronze clay today for the second time. Good thing I watched some of the videos that are available on You tube. It made a big difference to condition the clay before using it.( Something I had not paid attention to the first time.) When I made the flat, two-sided beads in bronze, they did not warp while drying, as other flat bronze pieces have done. Might have been the wax wire through the center, or the fact that two sides pushed against each other create some kind of counteracting tension? I’m not sure what will happen to the wax when I fire the bronze.

The glass in the necklace above is not sea glass. I wish I had such a collection! Instead these are pieces of glass that have been commercially tumbled. I love their translucence, color, and consistency in size, and how they compliment my hand made beads.

We took our dip at 4 p.m. by Frannie Jo’s boat house, where Stefanie has been getting her lobster boat ready to launch. Here we are just after a refreshing dip in the 39 degree water. It was windy, but the wall felt warm after we dried off.  Good spa effect, as usual!

Joy, Cindy, Stefanie, Eliza

Joy, Cindy, Me, Eliza

The dastardly ice slugs are gone! 

And so is the ice in Echo Lake and Upper Hadlock Pond. I spent the day off-island going from Northeast Harbor to Southwest Harbor to Bar Harbor. Errands planned and unplanned. Off again tomorrow to take Mom in for a CT scan. This is when island living interferes with studio time. Because of the boat schedule, I leave the island at 8:15 a.m. and return by 4 p.m. for a 1 hour appointment at 10 a.m. C’est la vie d’ile.

I was starting to photograph things for my Etsy  shop, and this museum gel came in really handy for getting ear wires to sit straight on some of the earrings.

I finally spent some time at the polisher finishing the beads I fired before my trip. These will be combined with the drilled rocks, in necklaces.    

Beads, clasps, and a few earrings.                                                                                         

…what is it?

Hint: Related to Keum-Bo0

Real life takes time away from the studio yet again. One of these days I’ll get back to posting jewelry photos. In the meantime:                                                                                                                                                                                                     

And here’s the hint: