Thing a Week- Weeks 10-12

I'm getting worse. Now I'm writing one blog post about three entries for my 2011 Thing a Week challenge. Oh well. One blog post is better than none!

So, my week 10 items is a little different in that it's a PMC item. PMC is Precious Metal Clay, and this is the material that made me a jewelry-making-holic. The reason why I haven't had many PMC items in my Thing a Week challenges is that I mostly use PMC in non-challenging ways. If you're too broad with the techniques you use, and you don't have all the time in the world, you have to pick and choose which technique you want to dive deeper into and which technique you want to maintain but not refine. Currently I'm not refining my PMC technique too much, but I got a request for an orchid pendant. Luckily I have two flowering orchids at the moment and I asked one of them if I could have a flower. I interpreted the answer as 'yes, but only if I get nutrition in my water every week while I flower instead of once every two weeks'. Okay, deal! I dissected the flower and used every part to make a silver orchid flower. This is the result:

Week 11 is this ring:

My inspiration for this ring was a beautiful Art Nouveau opal ring, with platinum leaves framing the stone, and tiny diamonds set into the leaves. I have no idea how to even attempt something like that, and the ring I saw may have been cast, but I loved that the leaves formed the setting of the stone. This is my first attempt at such a design, and it's not entirely like what I had in mind, but I will definitely explore this again. I have listed it on Etsy and called it the 'sunny garden ring'. The stone is a beautiful red brown sunstone with multicolored glitters that sparkle in the sun.

Week 12 is a ring with a raw tourmaline crystal. I set it between two H-shaped pieces of silver and folded the corners over. Steady like a rock :) 

The back plate is a piece of reticulated silver I made a while back. For the longest time I didn't really know what I wanted to do with it, so it was on my bench along with a lot of other small pieces of silver. But then I got the tourmaline and it looked rather nice on top of the reticulated silver. 

I love how the stone looks with the sun shining on it!

That's all for now. I have no idea what my next creation will be. :)

Thing a Week- 8 and 9

For these Things a Week I have actually stepped out of my comfort zone. It's not always easy to do so. Like with everything, you need time, a healthy dose of optimism, and a certain disregard for things that can go wrong (especially with the silver price being as high as it is).

Week #8:

These filigree moonstone earrings are made with traditional filigree patterns and thin twisted filigree wire. Making filigree is tricky because of the thin wire and the many soldering points - always a risk for melting. Time will tell if these were a result of beginner's luck or if I have finally learned to control my torch a little.

Week #9:

This little hedgehog has been sculpted in metal clay. I don't sculpt much, but I'd like to do more of it, especially with results like these. I made the sterling silver band of the ring in a wavy pattern, to symbolize the erratic way animals sometimes walk when following  their noses. This little hedgehog will soon appear in my Etsy shop.

My addiction

Whenever I do fairs and markets I see how children are drawn to polished colorful stones. Sometimes a little girl or boy walks slowly by my table and touches every single stone with one finger. On one market one of the other sellers had a big bowl of 'magic stones'. They were a random mix of tumbled agate, aventurine, tiger eye, quartz, etc. They didn't cost more than $1 each but to the children they were magic treasures.


I must say, this hasn't changed. Not for me at least. I remember getting my first stone, it was a pyrite crystal. Whatever my father said to me about what it was, to me it was as valuable as solid gold. I put it on my display shelf with other pretty rocks and rinsed it whenever it got too dusty. In the end, however, it ended up in a box and I almost forgot about it.


Then I started working with silver and talking to other metalsmiths on Etsy. They were drooling over stones, licking stones, showing off new purchases.. and through them I discovered the world of cabochons. Beautiful, colorful, smoothly polished stones, made by mother nature and a talented lapidary artist. And now I could buy stones, not just for looking at, but with a Purpose! 

Since I started buying cabs, it has become a small obsession. I have to introduce stone buying moratoria to pace myself. Very few things make me so childishly happy as receiving new stones in the mail.  I have written about my stone collection before (here) where I showed off a small part of my stash. This time I won't show you my entire collection either, simply because it normally looks like this:

Baggies. They contain all vital information, the kind of stone, price, seller or origin, dimensions or carat. The way I have currently divided my stones is heat resistant (can be fired in place in metal clay), faceted, small cabs and big cabs. It's no great system but it's something. I'm open to any storage tips, btw.

So here are a few highlights:

I love purple. These are a few examples of the purple stones I have.
Charoite is a special weakness of mine.

I'm prone to buying stones of similar shades. I'm very fond of blue chalcedony and agates,
gem silica,  labradorite, larimar and Anything that is green

Fossils! I love looking at these and trying to grasp what they once were and
when that was.

These two I call my demon stones:

And this is my beloved cat paw that I will never part with:

I mentioned before that I separated big and small cabs. I love small cabs. I don't know why, but they are just extremely appealing. Don't these look like candy?

I'm not the only one who wrote about my stone collection this month. Have a look at the posts by my Aspiring Metalsmiths teamies and let them tell you about their favorites:

Autumn Bradley - http://www.autumnbradley.blogspot.com/
Clarity @ Scrollwork Designs - http://thesquarepegnation.blogspot.com/
Stacy Low - http://www.formandfunktionaccessories.blogspot.com
Chrissi Lynn Designs - http://www.chrissilynn.blogspot.com
Sylvia Anderson - http://www.sylviaanderson.blogspot.com/
Jessica @ Abella Blue - http://www.abellablue.com/blog
Contemporary Jewelry by Beatriz Fortes - http://cjbf.blogspot.com/
Esmeralda - http://jewelry-by-silverblueberry.blogspot.com/
Steph Stargell - http://www.stephstargell.com
Pennee - http://allwiredupjewelrydesigns.blogspot.com/
Silver Pearl Jewelry and Metalworks - http://silverpearlmetalworks.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/show-us-your-stones/#more-4
ArtistiKat - http://artistikat-scratchingpost.blogspot.com/
Claire - brightstar109.blogspot.com/

Thing a Week, week 6 and 7

Thing a Week #6

Is it spring soon? I thought so last week, I even saw catkins in my garden! The rest is buried in snow but catkins! That means spring soon. I was so excited that I made this pendant using metal clay:

It's not that easy to get flower imprints to show well, since petals are so delicate, but in this case it went pretty well. I put a nice ruby cab in the center. I'm happy with how this one turned out, the flower looks real and alive. :)

Thing a Week #7

I'm continuing the red theme. I have made similar earrings like these before, when I didn't know how to pick solder. Now that I can pick solder they are still a challenge! There's a lot of soldering and to make them matched is not that easy either. I left the backs of the stone settings open so the light can come through and you can see the amazing color in the stones.

Treasury of the week

Check this out, this treasury is so my style! It can be found here if you want to comment or check out these beautiful items.

Treasury of the Week

Check out this beautiful treasury featuring my gothic lolita pendant:
(you can find it here)

Thing a week, week 4 and 5

Ha! Already I am slacking with blogging about my Thing a Week creations. Sadly this probably is a forewarning of things to come this year. If I may predict: I will not manage to do all my THaWs, I will definitely not blog about all of them, and if I have any readers then they will be lucky if I blog about anything else in between. But making jewelry is always priority number 1, and blogging will always be priority number, well.

So this post will show you two THaWs, number 4 and number 5, which is nice for you because looking at pictures is always nicer than reading text by someone who obviously has no significant writing skills.

THaW 4 is this turquoise ring with a little leaf. These leaves have grown on me. I use them as details in a lot of my jewelry. They are the perfect size and have the perfect little leaf structure for being a great little decoration that goes with a lot of things. The stone is a high quality turquoise that I managed to snatch up from Lapidarious before anyone else had the chance. It's rare to find natural untreated and high quality turquoise nowadays - usually you don't know what you buy, so this is a true gem!

THaW2011-4

THaW 5 is another ring (yes, next time I'll try to make something else, but I do love rings) that looks like a stacking ring but isn't. Stacking rings are immensely popular and I understand why. You can combine them just the way you like them, adding a personal touch to your jewelry. For me, as a jewelry maker, stacking rings are difficult terrain. Whatever I do I will make something that someone else has already made. You could say that this goes for any jewelry item, and it does, to some extent, but the stacking ring is a very limited area with relatively narrow space for letting imagination flow. Hence this stacking ring illusion. You can find both rings in my Etsy shop.

THaW2011-5