...okay, not exactly. I'm not that lean, and I don't have the big, soulful eyes. And I am (hopefully!) slightly less neurotic. But it seems like all I do is run, run, run...I get why those dogs are tired.
Brett and I arrived home late Monday (later than expected, due to equipment problems on the plane), only to find that the air conditioning was out AGAIN. I'll spare you the details, but it pretty much goes out several times every summer. Long story short, we got it fixed yesterday around 5 p.m. Guess who works from home? Guess who spent two full days with no air?? It was a little uncomfortable, to say the least. I like working with a HOT TORCH much better in the winter. :)
But I did manage to get several pieces to the clean up stage this week, and I'm pretty happy about that. Of the big grouping I started two weeks ago, I have fully finished four (plus one designer piece), I have seven partially done, and eight more to go.
It's going a little slower now because I'm doing earrings. And for every sale-able pair, I need to double the work of making one pendant. Less efficient, but so much fun when they are finished. :)
The above quick-n-dirty bench photo is of two pendants and a pair of earrings. I LOVE how the pendant in the upper right corner came out! You can't quite see the top details, but it went together exactly how I'd imagined. Which doesn't happen as often as you'd expect (or as I'd like).
The middle two are going to be biiiiiiiig earrings. Those bezels are built for these babies:
Mmmm...hiya, big guys. I can't wait to get them set and cleaned up. :)
Then there's these:
Two more pendants, one for a Kingman (upper right) turquoise, small oval with cute little streamer-like embellishments, and one for a Morenci (lower left) turquoise with a sort of Asian feel to the top embellishments. And the two pairs of earrings are both chrysocolla. They're fairly small stones, so I wanted to do something a little more exciting than what I used to do last year:
All I did for every pair of earrings last year was add a jump ring. Woo! I was a beginner...and just adding that friggin' ring at the top was hard. I file a flat spot on my jump ring attachments, so that they join better (more surface contact means a stronger join) and it took me so long to be able to file straight / flat. I swear, sometimes I think I must be the MOST remedial of learners when it comes to jewelry fabrication. But I've done it so often now that I don't even have to think about it. :)
So my earring designs are advancing...thank goodness. I feel very comfortable with pendants for the most part, but getting creative with earrings (and not adding too much weight with the sterling or making them too oversized to wear) has been a challenge.
Next up...rings. It's a whole other scenario, with shanks and all that, but I think it's almost time to start playing with gemstone rings. I've been waiting to get my skills competent enough but I think rings are moving to the top of my 1,587,652,213 things on my list of "design and create". :)
Brett and I arrived home late Monday (later than expected, due to equipment problems on the plane), only to find that the air conditioning was out AGAIN. I'll spare you the details, but it pretty much goes out several times every summer. Long story short, we got it fixed yesterday around 5 p.m. Guess who works from home? Guess who spent two full days with no air?? It was a little uncomfortable, to say the least. I like working with a HOT TORCH much better in the winter. :)
But I did manage to get several pieces to the clean up stage this week, and I'm pretty happy about that. Of the big grouping I started two weeks ago, I have fully finished four (plus one designer piece), I have seven partially done, and eight more to go.
It's going a little slower now because I'm doing earrings. And for every sale-able pair, I need to double the work of making one pendant. Less efficient, but so much fun when they are finished. :)
The above quick-n-dirty bench photo is of two pendants and a pair of earrings. I LOVE how the pendant in the upper right corner came out! You can't quite see the top details, but it went together exactly how I'd imagined. Which doesn't happen as often as you'd expect (or as I'd like).
The middle two are going to be biiiiiiiig earrings. Those bezels are built for these babies:
Mmmm...hiya, big guys. I can't wait to get them set and cleaned up. :)
Then there's these:
Two more pendants, one for a Kingman (upper right) turquoise, small oval with cute little streamer-like embellishments, and one for a Morenci (lower left) turquoise with a sort of Asian feel to the top embellishments. And the two pairs of earrings are both chrysocolla. They're fairly small stones, so I wanted to do something a little more exciting than what I used to do last year:
All I did for every pair of earrings last year was add a jump ring. Woo! I was a beginner...and just adding that friggin' ring at the top was hard. I file a flat spot on my jump ring attachments, so that they join better (more surface contact means a stronger join) and it took me so long to be able to file straight / flat. I swear, sometimes I think I must be the MOST remedial of learners when it comes to jewelry fabrication. But I've done it so often now that I don't even have to think about it. :)
So my earring designs are advancing...thank goodness. I feel very comfortable with pendants for the most part, but getting creative with earrings (and not adding too much weight with the sterling or making them too oversized to wear) has been a challenge.
Next up...rings. It's a whole other scenario, with shanks and all that, but I think it's almost time to start playing with gemstone rings. I've been waiting to get my skills competent enough but I think rings are moving to the top of my 1,587,652,213 things on my list of "design and create". :)
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