When it Counts

Practice, as the old saying goes, makes perfect. And in jewelry fabrication, just like anything else, practice is necessary to get consistently good. Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 Hour Rule indicates that it takes about a decade to become great. Great, not just consistently good.

That means that I'm a little less than a third of the way, on my path to achieving greatness (and of course "greatness", like prosperity, wealth, happiness, is personally subjective). I wish I'd started earlier (don't we always) but it's really amazing to me how much my skill set has changed even in roughly 30 months.

This? Could. Not. Have. done this when I first began to fabricate:

What used to happen when I turned on the torch was that I'd stick some solder where I thought it should be, heat up the metal and...hope for the best. I'd had the classes, listened to the instruction, written copious notes, but all of that was no substitute for actually *doing* the task.

So sometimes the solder would go where I wanted it to. Sometimes it wouldn't. Sometimes it flowed the wrong way and I had to file it off. Sometimes it flowed the wrong way and I couldn't clean it off without ruining the piece. A good friend of mine told me, "You can clean up or you can cover up". Sometimes covering up is the better option, but sometimes covering up doesn't work. And you can't really clean up a textured surface without losing the texture. 

Sometimes I thought the solder flowed, but I couldn't really tell. And when I picked up the item from the soldering brick, the join wasn't actually joined. Or the two pieces that were supposed to be soldered together...weren't. I spent a LOT of time working on joining two separate pieces of metal together. My own personal mountain, that.  :)

I couldn't tell when the metal was ready, heat-wise, for the solder to flow and overheated a number of pieces. I melted some, too. I ruined some designs because of solder flowing in the wrong direction and had to remake them. The scrap jar was full of wasted metal.

But little by little, I began to notice that things...worked. And they were working on the first try (um...usually). The designs got smarter - and by this I don't mean that I am making such brilliant designs, but that I designed to incorporate less clean up (thus less labor cost) and figured out what worked and what didn't. What I could do more efficiently. How to make fabrication work for me. Because everyone has their own issues, their own preferences, their own ways of fabricating. The basics remain the same, but the ways we do them are individual to each of us.

And now, with these more complex pieces, these new designs that make me finally feel like I am doing something new and different in the jewelry world, these pieces that are so far from the simple pieces I first made, I feel like I am peeking over the wall and catching a glimpse of the view on the other side. And that feels SO good. Especially for a girl who was fairly convinced that she'd never get there.

So when it counts, as it does when I'm making these pieces:

I'm glad that I've put the time in and had all of that physical learning, all of the the trials and errors, because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to execute these. It would have been an exercise in frustration and I think I would have felt like such a loser. But now I'm able to design and create things that are so much cooler than I ever thought I could. And that's worth ALL the time and effort it took to get here.  :)

Bezels and Bezels and...

...more bezels.

Note: I *don't like* to make bezels. It's one of my least favorite parts of the fabrication process. I find the fine silver to be too flimsy, floppy, and delicate-feeling for my hands (and yet also stubbornly resistant to being formed into a bezel at times. Odd, that). Last year I paid someone to make bezels for me, because I figured if I wasn't going to get them made, I'd never get the rest of the process going.

So I got my bezels, and set some cabochons. It was a start! But though this woman has made excellent bezel-making skills, her costs added to the price of my finished work. And she could only deliver every two weeks - totally understandable, but what if I needed some pieces for a show and couldn't coordinate with her? And really, if I can't at least comfortably know how to do the work myself, I'm not truly owning that part of my business, am I?

So this year, while taking a fabrication course at the Spruill Center, I made bezels my focus. For the first four weeks of January, every Thursday morning for three hours, I made bezels. The first Thursday I only made 4 bezels. Can we say, "rusty skill set?" Yikes. But the second Thursday I made 10 bezels. Then I made several small bezels (it's trickier to work small). Then I tried some bezels with corners. Ugh! So, so much more difficult. But they took, in the end.  :)

Below is just a sampling:

And all in all, I made 48 bezels between January and early March. Whew! I can safely say that my skill set is far less rusty. And I've learned so much (for example, stay the hell away from sharp / pointy - cornered stones. There are a few left in my stash that I will be farming out to the lovely bezel-maker extraordinaire, but otherwise it's rounded- / curved-cornered stones for me).

Due to travels this first quarter of the year, I missed several classes, so I only have one left. And it's going to be used for setting stones (I have already set a few, the ones I posted about here) so I can get that skill set up to par a little more as well.  Then I'm taking a quarter off from jewelry classes, both because of time constraints and because I need some practice doing the things I've learned in my own studio for a while. Hopefully I'll rejoin the jewelry school world around June or so.

But for now, as time permits, I'll be bezel-ing and stone-setting away!  Let the fun begin!

To Have the Wolf by the Ear

Somehow "between a rock and a hard place" was not nearly as evocative as the synonym Wikipedia gave me, "to have the wolf by the ear". I definitely prefer the more colorful phrase.  :) 

Yeah, it's been since February that I posted. A long, long time. And a lot of changes in my life...some of which are still ongoing. So as August opens to more hot-hot-hot days in Georgia, I am feeling a bit caught in between, and probably will be for a while. I'll try to give you the nutshell version of why:

- I am no longer doing wholesale in any great way. I stopped doing wholesale shows after the utter disaster that was Baltimore last year. Too many years, too much money, too little profit. So I regrouped and left my ego on the wholesale floor. If this was playing with the big kids, I'd rather play in a smaller sandbox. Or another sandbox entirely.  :)

But even though I no longer have the wholesale show expenses, we're still in a recession, y'all, and revenues are not what they used to be. So the first order of business was to increase cash flow.  This meant that I took on more festivals this year. Where I usually begin the festival circuit in April, this year I began in February, traveling to Miami for my first show of the year. And I have added in more shows than I usually do...so I have been either away from home more or busier than ever trying to keep up with production so that I have enough inventory for these events. Doing so has made me feel like I couldn't take a deep breath for most of 2011.

- I am still climbing the fabrication mountain. I persevered with fabrication classes at the Spruill Center through May, but with traveling to festivals, I missed a fair number of classes. And I didn't have any spare time to work on the projects at home, so I was constantly behind and couldn't keep up. I learned a lot and I do feel more confident about my skills, but after the Spring session, I needed a break, for two reasons. First I needed some downtime to really work on designing, not just fabricating projects that the instructor gave us, and second:

 

- I had major surgery in mid-June. Some of you know that I have been in braces since December 2009. The braces are not meant to straighten my teeth but to align my jaw (as much as possible) prior to having this surgery. If you're squeamish, maybe you should stop reading now...I won't bore you with all the gory details, but I had both jaws surgically broken and re-aligned. The upper jaw was not straight (it sloped to one side) so it was made level and also moved horizontally because it was not aligned evenly with the rest of my face. The lower jaw was pushed back because I had a fairly strong underbite. I'm skipping the details (honestly, most of them even *I* didn't - and don't - want to know) but essentially that's what occurred last month.

So now I'm in a bit of a waiting period...the bones will not be fully healed until mid-August, and then I can start physical therapy because all the facial muscles have been realigned too.And they are NOT happy about it. They want to go back to their original positioning, and they are stiff, sore, and really giving me grief. So in about a week, PT begins in earnest. I am not excited about it because I still have plenty of pain daily and I am not looking forward to adding more...but right now I still can't open my jaw wide enough to eat a sandwich, I can't really chew well, and I need to get the range of motion back at some point. Otherwise I am going to look pretty funny (and have limited food  choices) at restaurants for the rest of my life...

The additional problem with the surgery (and not being back on my regular diet) is that my energy is exceptionally low. I am tired all the time and I sleep a lot. And I don't feel rested when I wake. Some of that is pain, some I assume is lack of exercise (no exercise until the bones are healed), and some of course is that I am on a diet that is not really about eating healthy. It's not about eating un-healthy either, but I usually eat a lot of protein and fiber and for months now I've been having soft foods and carbs. So I feel very lethargic overall.

And the odyssey isn't over yet, kids! Next week I go back to the orthodontist to get rubber bands put on my braces. Why? Because my bite is still not aligned. Despite the 18 months in braces, AND the surgery, my back teeth still don't meet at all. This is partially normal for most jaw surgery patients, and partially an issue because I have a bridge on my upper jaw that is now obstructing the back teeth, since the jaws have been re-aligned. Eventually it will have to be removed and replaced with one that now fits my new jaw...by the time this is all over I will have a $10,000 mouth. It had better be worth it! And I can't really say that it's worth it...not yet.

So that's the scoop on my 2011 so far! If anyone wants more details on why I had the jaw surgery in the first place, feel free to contact me directly or leave a comment and I'll answer back.  Otherwise, I am communing with my sketch book, working (at least on paper) on new designs, as part of this summer was intended for just that purpose. Unfortunately, the surgery recovery is much more involved than I first anticipated, but I'm doing what I can, when I can.  In the meantime, I leave you with something new (completed in my spring fab class):

A deeply patinated wrap ring with some fun elements on it! 

Somone to Watch Over Me

Do you control your life? Or is it controlled...let's say directed...by something greater than yourself? I tend to believe in both. I think we get a great deal of latitude in managing what happens in our own lives, but that a higher power also exerts itself on us. We can choose our mate(s), friends, careers, where we live, how we act...but I believe that if we are choosing poorly, the Universe will nudge us in a more appropriate direction. And I think that if we don't listen, it will nudge us a little harder. Like going from stubbing your toe, to spraining your ankle. And if we still don't pay attention after the small nudges, things will really get messy!

I've had it happen many times in my life. It's not always easy to see when it's happening, but it's quite clear when looking back (that hindsight thing is pretty accurate). I've encountered people who seem to have no other purpose in my life than to nudge me one way or the other. Some seem to be aware of their purpose, others not....but I don't believe those encounters are random. I've run into incredibly painful or frustrating (or both) situations that have made me take a huge step back and reconsider nearly everything in my life up to that point, and realize that things need to change...in a big way. Or in several small ways.

One of my more recent toe-stub nudges (that turned into an ankle sprain, and then practically a broken leg!) has been career-oriented. I've been designing jewelry since the early 1990s, moving from bead work to wire, dabbling in PMC, and then a little in metalsmithing...then PMC again, followed by more metalsmithing...but somehow I felt that I couldn't get past the wire work, which comprises most of my current designs. I have had it in my head that metalsmithing was this HUGE mountain, so high that climbing seemed impossible. And forget about reaching the top! That was never going to happen...as much as I really thought I wanted to try.

So the Universe stepped in, in two ways. First, it brought me in contact with my friend Delias, who is an extremely talented 'smtih herself. Not only have we become close friends, but her studio is my Learning Annex and she teaches me about so much more than how to make cool stuff with the torch. We've been friends for just over a year now, and I have learned so much - both personally and professionally - during that time.And there is no question about her purpose...Delias doesn't "nudge". She pushes you forward despite yourself, refuses to accept "no" for an answer, and problem solves all roadblocks into oblivion. If you're ever fortunate enough to have her take you under her wing, count your blessings!

Second, my business has struggled over the last 16 -18 months. It's not been horrible , but I was not achieving what I wanted to achieve. The business wasn't growing, and I wasn't enjoying it like I used to. I felt stuck - to old designs, old ideas, old routines. I felt trapped. This didn't happen all at once, of course; it has been more like a series of hurdles that I couldn't seem to get past, disappointments, and frustrations. I didn't know what to do to shake things up, make the appropriate changes. Everything I tried seemed to bounce back in my face.

And then, slowly, the process itself has started taking over. I've become more proficient with the torch, and a bunch of other tools. I've started to "get" why some things will work, and some won't. I've melted some things, made some cool stuff, and become comfortable with the idea that maybe I, too, could really metalsmith one day. And even if I never reached the top, the journey was going to be one hell of a fun path. As this began happening, I almost literally felt the doors opening. Ideas blossoming. Possibilities shining so clearly in the distance, beckoning me to try them. Now I can't wait to get into the studio every morning (and I'm not even set up to solder here yet...but I am doing everything else possible in the meantime!).


I'm nowhere near where I want to be, of course. I still feel like I don't have a ton of fully formed ideas, because I don't truly understand the possibilities of what I can do - and there's a lot I still can't do right now. But I feel like thoughts and plans are rushing into my head, and I can't wait to try them out!


Oddly enough, though I felt so unsure about choosing the fabrication path, I have managed, over the years, to amass nearly everything necessary to do it. The big things - torch/tank, a true studio, a couple of necessary items (pickle pot, firebricks, etc) were missing, but I have had all the other tools at my disposal for some time. I just didn't have the confidence to start the climb. So...was I getting the subtle message from the Universe, and gathering items necessary for my next career journey? I believe I was...and could have considerably shortened the wait time by paying closer attention to the first few nudges.

What's nudging YOU lately...?

Small Changes

I recently bought a pair of fuchsia pants. They're linen, they're fun, and I can think of about ten things I will wear with them. "Pink pants!?", someone said. "I could never wear those." And why not? It's just color...

I don't know if this is regional, but I find that a fair number of people who are browsing my tent at festivals are afraid of color. Black will always sell, blue (most shades) will always sell, but stick a red or purple or green out there and people will say, "I don't know what I would wear that with." I'm always a little surprised by this (even after all these years), because I love color and I like to mix colors up together. There's more to life than making sure your blue earrings go with your blue jeans.

It seems like such a little thing, this fear of color. But it made me wonder, how many other small fears hold us back in our lives? How many times do we do the same things (respond the same way to compliments, go about the same tasks, in the same order, reach for the same outfit - in black, white, or gray) repeatedly? And what might happen if we handled them differently? Would compliments be savored, instead of dismissed? Would we find more efficient ways to handle our tasks, so we have more free time? Would we wear...red, purple, or green?

Why not try it and see what happens? Letting go of some small fears (or at the very least, some ingrained patterns) can be very eye-opening. And small changes often lead to bigger ones. Imagine letting go of some great fear, or some perception you've been carrying, about how you "just can't" do something. Or maybe it's how you "always" do something one way. (And you always get a negative reaction...food for thought, that). Try something new today! Start with something small, and see where it leads. And then try another...

But be careful - before you know it, you might be wearing pink pants. And liking it. :)