Waiting on the Work Table

Heading to Arizona tomorrw, but here's a quick glimpse of what's currently on the work table...waiting for settings.

 Sorry again for the quick snap - but left to right: dendrite opal, boulder turquoise (you may remember it from this post, and a lovely piece of larimar.  :)

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!

Finally, I'm Official

In late February, I went to Arizona for the Fountain Hills Great Fair. And I had a moment that really made me stop and appreciate where I am and what I'm doing. I've had many moments to cherish in my chosen profession, though in recent years it definitely feels like swimming upstream (luxury product in a recessionary climate, anyone?). But I love what I do...so I still get up every day and do it. There are worse things!

But at the Fountain Hills festival, I sold my first stone-set piece of jewelry. And I know that stone setting isn't the holy grail...there are so many more things for me to learn (tube setting, hinges, etc) but....for me, being able to set a stone in metal is pretty much the mountaintop of jewelry making. For so many years I was a "beader", then a "wire worker", and I always felt like that was never  quite good enough for me. I wanted to be a "real" jewelry designer, and by that I mean designing from scratch...jewelry fabrication.

I've been collecting cabs since long before I knew what to do with them, and I just started learning to set them in late 2010. The first few were gifts (or trades - my hairstylist and my massage girl are always happy to trade!), and I started displaying my stone set work in November 2011. So I showed those pieces at two festivals last year, and then at my first festival this year...I sold one. It went home with a fabulous woman who, I believe, will cherish it for years. And as happy as it made her...it made me a million times happier. I climbed the mountain and finally reached the top - and someone stepped up and said, "Yes! I love it!".

So much of our own selves is tied to what we create...it's hard not to take the bad (show rejections, the mistakes, the slow sales days) personally. And I do take them *all* personally, despite my best efforts not to. But I have also learned to savor the good. And this was one of those really, really good moments.

Here's my first stone-set piece that sold:

I couldn't be happier.  :)