SilverBlueberry

Thursday, January 26, 2012

The sweat of the sun and the tears of the moon

Weird title? A few days ago I went to see the Inca gold exhibition in Stockholm and I wanted to remember this.

According to the Inca, gold was the sweat of the sun and silver the tears of the moon. Isn't that pretty? Of course it had implications - no regular people ever wore gold or silver, only royalty did, since they were believed to be the living descendants of the sun god, Inti.

Anyway, they showed the most amazing and delicate gold and silver work there. Some of the jewelry could be mistaken for modern art jewelry - big solid gold ear plugs, giant (giant!) ear pieces or neck pieces, forehead, chin or nose decorations.. Not your everyday jewelry.

I definitely got inspired - now I feel like making all kinds of nose jewelry :)

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Just married!

Last Thursday (Aug 4th) John and I got married. We had originally thought to have a simple ceremony in the city hall of Stockholm but it seemed nice to be away for a few days and in the end we settled on having the wedding on Gotland. We saw this little guy on our way to the wedding:

I'm sure he was a good omen. :)

We had the - very short! - ceremony in this pretty pavilion in the botanical garden of Visby:

The registrar read this poem by Nils Ferlin. Below are both the swedish version and an english translation.

I folkviseton

Nils Ferlin

(1898-1961)

Kärleken kommer och kärleken går,

ingen kan tyda dess lagar.

Men dig vill jag följa i vinter och vår

och alla min levnads dagar.

Mitt hjärta är ditt,

ditt hjärta är mitt

och aldrig jag lämnar det åter.

Min lycka är din

din lycka är min,

och gråten är min när du gråter.

Kärleken är så förunderligt stark,

kuvas av intet i världen.

Rosor slår ut ur den hårdaste mark,

som sol över mörka gärden.

Mitt hjärta är ditt,

ditt hjärta är mitt

och aldrig jag lämnar det åter.

Min lycka är din

din lycka är min,

och gråten är min när du gråter.

Translation by Fred Lane

In Folk-song Fashion

Love comes along, love drifts away

No-one can tell us the reasons.

But here by thy side, love, I know I shall stay

through all the passing seasons.

My heart, it is thine; thy heart, it is mine

and mine shall remain till I die.

My happiness, thine; thy happiness, mine

- thy tears, they are mine when thou cryest.

Love is so strong, so wondrously strong

- naught in the world makes it yield.

Roses spring up from the hardest of ground

as sunshine spreads over dark fields.

My heart, it is thine; thy heart, it is mine

and mine shall remain till I die.

My happiness, thine; thy happiness, mine

- thy tears, they are mine when thou cryest.

Monday, July 25, 2011

July Project Blogroll - What are you working on?

This month's blogroll of the Aspiring Metalsmiths Team we're showing what we are currently working on. And there is that word, currently. Are all the half-finished, half-started things on my bench included in this? Or just the items that I have actually touched recently?

I have no idea if my way of working is similar to that of others or not. I sometimes sketch but most often don't. Usually I have bits of silver and stones lying around on my bench and sometimes they align themselves in a pretty way and I have a new pendant. I start things, and then forget about them. I make metal clay findings and then they lie around for a while (a while being between a few days and a year) until I find a use for them.

So my bench looks very much like the two upper pictures below. One thing that I really do work on is of course my wedding jewelry. I finished all the segments of my necklace and I'm working on a way to attach the focal stone without it hanging wonky. Another thing I'm working on - just started today - are matching earrings, but I have no picture of those yet.

Upper left: stones, half finished rings, and PMC stuff in progress
Upper right: my dish with some scrap, findings, solder, small stones
Center below: wedding jewelry in progress

Below is PMC work in progress. I did a big batch of fern earrings and some other stuff yesterday. Today most of that has been fired and the two pendants in the lower pic are still in progress. I touch up some areas with slip, let it dry, forget about it, sand, touch up again, sand, etc. That goes on until I either finish a piece or my cat steps on it and it's ruined. ;)

Below is a spontaneous project that started after a few etching attempts that didn't really turn out great. I cut off the etched parts and two rectangles were left. Earrings of course! I decided to make a rough texture by banging them against a piece of granite and then I decided I would try and flush set two emeralds at the ends.
In the pictures below I am 1- about to solder on the posts; 2- about to throw them in the pickle after soldering; 3- showing off flushed set emerald #1 while I still struggle with #2. The match functions as a support while I try and flush set, since the stones stick out slightly at the back. I stick the earring post in a drill hole in my wooden block while I work on setting the stone.

Below are some miscellaneous things in progress. The blue slag has been on my bench for ages, and recently it's become more clear what I want to do with it. It's to be combined with garnet, a color combination which I love. I sawed out the back plate for the pendant and I'm going to try and set the bezel around it, so I need a perfect fit of back plate and stone.
The PMC leaf and boulder opal have also been on my bench for ages but only recently I started on the bezel. It's tricky to solder on the bezel because of the leaf vein structure. I'm cheating a little with PMC slip - I hope it works!
The pretty agua nueva agates have been set in step bezel wire from Rio, but I can't get the stones to stop wobbling and I'll have to take them apart again (I really don't wanna, so they're just sitting beside my bench right now).
And then there is the prong setting. I made this months ago from a piece of square wire. I intended it for a red spinel. Who knows, it may still end up in that setting!

Upper left: blue slag necklace in progress
Upper right: leaf with boulder opal
Lower left: agua nueva agate earrings - paused
Lower right: home made prong setting

Check out the blogs by my teamies to see what they're working on:

Sunday, July 10, 2011

From berry to ring (and tummy)

The smultron. Or wild strawberry. I had found these occasionally in the Netherlands, where I'm from, but somehow they didn't have that smultron flavor. Only when I came to Sweden, and was prepared not to like them (as opposed to every body else here; saying you don't care for smultron is like blasphemy), I found out what they Could taste like. It's hard to describe the flavor if you haven't tasted it. It has hints of strawberry but is much more aromatic.

There is nothing like picking smultron on a warm summer's day. You stand there in the sun leaning forward and the warm sweet scent washes over you. They are tiny but even so I managed to fill an entire bowl the other day. Doesn't this look great:

John and I divided the harvest and had them with vanilla ice cream. Yummy.

For my jewelry I use a different part of the plant. When a strawberry plant sends out runners, the first leaves that come are these tiny tiny strawberry leaves. Here is a close-up:

I take these and paint several layers f metal clay paste on them, and after drying and firing they are silver leaves. I use them as details on for instance rings, like on this strawberry ring below:

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Production mode

Someone recently contacted me with the request to make about 25 of my willow rings. My first reaction was, I think, some weird combination between 'eek!' and 'yay!'. Yay reflected obviously that a whole group of people apparently liked my rings well enough to order one each, and eek was 'I hope I can do this in time' and 'I hope I don't need to make three rings until I get one ring that is the right size'.

The way I did these rings before is described by me in an earlier blog post. I then started firing them in my kiln, where the rings shrunk more than when torch firing (and became stronger, hence the kiln firing). The sizing was always a big difficult. I roughly knew what size a ring was going to be, but not entirely. And yes, that is annoying when you have to make 25!

So this is what I do now. I still cut out the leaves from the clay as before. But instead of letting them dry as rings, I dry them flat, and fire them flat.

Four willow leaves baking in the kiln

Afterwards I shape them on my ring mandrel until they are the right size, solder, add patina and tumble them. And here is the result:

Now I just need to keep track of which ring is whose...

Friday, May 20, 2011

Thing a Week - Weeks 16-20

This has been a most stressful time! My job keeps getting in the way of my jewelry work. So finally I have another Thing a Week update, this time with six different items. I will show rather than tell this time - all pieces are described in my Etsy shop.