Tag Archives: silver

January 18, 2012 · 11:42 pm

An afternoon spent, taking photographs

I followed the sun from room to room, starting just before noon and ending around 3.  Setting up, taking down and resetting my little props and photo cube and tissue paper to try to get 5 decent images for 10 pieces I want to list on Etsy. Some of them came out well, and some need to be reshot. There are so many things to consider.

How do I show a shiny surface without reflecting myself and my camera in the pieces I shoot? What are the best ways to show scale? I don’t know. I just keep trying, and following the learning curve.

When I look at someone’s jewelry on Etsy, I want to see both sides of a piece. Show me the back, please!

Hey, don’t I have some little plastic doodad that would fit onto that knothole in the drift wood?

(I bet you thought it was going to be one of the angry kitties.)

Along with the mischievous angry kitties I also have a nice little set of creepy creeping babies. I never know if using them, as a prop, is pushing the limit; but they crack me up. (No wonder it takes me so long to take photos.)

Bruce dropped a candy wrapper onto my table, trying to distract me.

I just asked him to bring me a couple more of those Trader Joe’s dark chocolate peanut butter cups he was eating.

Really…the focus of taking images for my Etsy shop is to make my jewelry look like some kind of eye candy.

I had hoped to have at least some of the new pieces up on Etsy after this afternoon, but Bruce and I went out to a pot luck dinner, and I have been packing to go away tomorrow for our 8th annual girls’ weekend. I’m meeting up with 3 very dear friends in Portland. Etsy will have to wait until I get back, but at least I’ll have some photos to use.

1 Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , ,

November 11, 2011 · 11:10 pm

Tomorrow in Greenwich…

 

 

…and so much more!

 

 

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , ,

August 2, 2011 · 10:35 am

Kiln back in action

At last! It’s not like I’ve been waiting for a repair, or anything like that. Summer is just so full of good things that there is hardly room to work or breath. But, I’ve managed to do both lately.

While firing a batch of silver clay pieces, I got out the bronze and copper clay for the first time since June. With the current high price of silver clay, I felt less constrained with the base metals. My goal this week, with all three kinds of clay, was to come up with some birds for a little show on Sunday at the home of my sister-in-law Karen and her husband Hugh. Birds play a big part in our lives and it’s going to be fun to see what several friends have made for “Island Birds,” at the Smallwood’s house on Sunday, August 8 from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Everyone is welcome to come and the various birds will be for sale. Jim Bright has bird carvings, Karen and Hugh have paintings, Rick Alley has paintings, Joy Sprague has photographs, Jeri Spurling has bird-inspired floor cloths, and I will have some birdy beads on necklaces and earrings. This could be the year I start my Christmas shopping early!

Silver pieces out of the kiln and headed for the tumbler:

Bronze and copper pieces ready for the kiln. It’s such a different firing process from silver. Everything above went easily into one load. Whereas the pieces below required two loads. My fingers are crossed that the first batch wasn’t too crowded, and will have sintered properly.

8 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , ,

June 15, 2011 · 10:48 pm

Beach rock brooch in silver


Alone Moose Gallery , where I have my work in Bar Harbor, is celebrating their 36th year of business with a show.

“36 Brooches…Made in Maine” will open on Saturday, and I wanted to be part of it as soon as I heard Sherry Rasmussen’s plans for the show last winter. Did I design and make a brooch last winter? Um, no. I am a last minute girl who needs the pressure of a deadline for just about everything I do. (Hmmm…no wonder I like living on an island with a ferry schedule to follow.)

When Sherry e-mailed me last week asking if I was still going to participate in the show, I figured I’d better get going. I actually had been thinking about this brooch for a while, but just couldn’t come up with a design until I sat down at the bench with my metal clay. Since beach rocks are a part of my everyday life, I decided to go in that direction.

The brooch is slightly  heavy; probably more suited to being worn on a sweater or jacket. The pin findings are soldered on, but the two smaller rocks were attached and fired in place in the kiln.

I like the shape of this elongated beach rock, so I decided to explore it a little more.

 

 

14 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , ,

May 10, 2011 · 10:49 pm

A tiny bead day

Today was a day I had  looked forward to and dreaded. I made PMC beads, using a package of PMC I had purchased at a higher price than I would have paid today. Ah well, I will just have to get used to the up and down of the silver market. Once I let go of worrying about how much it cost, I got to work.  It had been a while since I last worked with PMC and I sat down with a blank feeling as to what I would make first. I looked through my sketch book and made a list of the kinds of beads I wanted to make.

I started with the beads at the top of my list. Some flat “heishi” type beads made from my old scrap clay. The flat sections won’t show, but the burnished edges will, and they  give a nice accent to other beads in a necklace. This is my new favorite thing to do with rehydrated dried clay. I then left off the list to make some tiny beads to use in some specific necklace designs.  Tomorrow I’ll work on earring components and a few brooch ideas.

You can see the flat heishi beads in the background of the photo above. Once I used up my scrap clay, I got going on hollow beads. I made some fat coin shapes (but tiny) and some flat rectangles. The sides are smooth and the tops and bottoms are textured. These hollow beads are production pieces. I make a bunch at a time by wrapping a brass tube with metal clay, scoring it to mark off bead sections, drying it on a cup warmer, then sliding the dried tube of clay off the brass tubing. With a jeweler’s saw I cut the bead sections off the clay tube. With just a slight bit of sanding they are ready for the tops and bottoms.

I had a rectangular brass tube so I gave that a try for a batch of beads. I drilled some widthwise and some lengthwise. Do these shapes remind you of anything?

16 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

April 8, 2011 · 11:07 pm

Opportunity

Less than 2 months ago I asked the question, “How much is too much?” when it comes to paying for fine silver metal clay. The price of silver was $33.70 an ounce. I could not imagine that price would ever sound like a bargain, but today the price of my favorite precious metal reached $40.41, making that February 22 price look a lot better than it did then.

Today this much PMC would cost me  $95.16. I have 2 packages on hand that cost me about $20 less, and I will not be rushing to open them or to order more. It’s hard to think that in another 2 months I may kick myself for missing out on the “bargain” price today. I would rather hope that the price will come back down sooner than later.

Most of the people I know who work with PMC, (myself included) are starting to freak out, wondering how much higher the price of silver will go. But whining or worrying is not going to get us anywhere. What’s the worst that can happen if we stop working with it for a while? If the demand goes down will the price go down?  Who knows?  In the meantime, we have  an opportunity to grow as artists. We can find ways to make jewelry from other materials, learning new techniques and expanding our base of experience.

Think of Alexander Calder and the jewelry he made from brass and copper.

Alexander Calder (1898-1976) Untitled (spiral pendant), copper, 3½ x 2 1/8 in. (8.9 x 5.4 cm.). Executed circa 1957.

Not into forging wire? The world of base metal clay is expanding all the time. There are a variety of manufacturers of bronze and copper clay, and the price is very reasonable. For those of us who still like a silver colored metal, Hadar Jacobsen has developed a white bronze clay, and there is a wealth of information available on her blog.

My friends Angie and Marly, from Studio 28, have been working with Hadar’s white bronze clay lately, and they have a wonderful blog entry about it.  Their earrings below are a combination of white bronze and copper. (Looks like silver, eh?)

The white bronze is something I hope to try soon.

But first, I have ordered some patina solutions and an e-book from Shannon LeVart at Miss Ficklemedia. Her patinated beads and components fascinate me, and the process is one I’ve wanted to try for a while. I like the idea of creating my own colors on copper and brass to use in my necklaces and earrings. I will use silver, too, but I can stretch my silver supply a little farther when I combine it with other metals.

After I ordered the solutions and instructions from Shannon, I checked out some of her sources for copper beads. I also found some copper and brass pieces at the Beadin’ Path. So I ordered a few things on which to apply patina. I spent some studio time stamping, dapping and drilling holes in some of the flat pieces to leave my own marks on the metal.

See the plain willow leaf shapes in the center of the photo above?   This is how I made them “my” copper leaves:

The next step(s) will be to clean all the metal surfaces, making sure any grease is gone. I’m excited and nervous to try something new, especially applying the patinas that require heat.

6 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

March 23, 2011 · 10:07 pm

A good day for earrings, but photos…

…not so much. I had a great morning in the studio, finishing some earrings with rivets, and some with copper pieces I had patinated last week. I spent the afternoon taking 118 photographs of 5 pairs of earrings I was planning to list on Etsy. I thought I was getting some good shots until I began to crop and edit them. Some were okay, but there weren’t 5 decent images of any one pair. Etsy will have to wait until next week, because I have something really exciting to do this weekend.

Silver was $36.97 today. Yikes. The cost of silver clay has become prohibitive. I’ve started thinking about sheet metal and simple fabrication. After an experiment with patina on copper discs, I decided to rivet them to some earring shapes I had cut from sterling silver sheet. I hammered the silver and gave it a hand finish, rather than a high polish. Not sure if I like the concave discs on this particular pair. The shape is from a template I made for toggle clasps, but it works out pretty well for an earring too.

I love the colors in the copper so much, that I decided to learn more about it. I’m waiting for the arrival of some patina solutions from Shannon LeVart at Miss Ficklemedia. The pdf file for the Color Drenched Metal tutorial is well written and looks like it will be easy to follow when my supplies get here next week.

Oh yeah…rivets!!

More copper discs with patina, mounted on PMC discs, mounted on beautiful glass head pins made by Sue Kennedy at SueBeads.

Hey Sue, check us out!

I had some copper discs lying around…. and I’m waiting to learn more about patinas….but I just want to keep riveting! Check out Sue Kennedy’s off-white glass head pins below. The white disc inside the rivet is some kind of bone. (I think.)  Sterling silver and gold filled head pins are used as rivets.

The photos below are the best of my worst ones. (Faint praise.) I didn’t feel like taking the time to deal with everything they were reflecting. That’s the problem with shiny silver and photography. I was happy with the decorative rivets, though.

Finger reflection and finger print….eeeesh. Not recommended.

Whoa baby!

10 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , ,