It suddenly got very hot and muggy here in Camberville. Luckily, my basement (which is where I work on jewelry) is at least 10 degrees cooler than our apartment. This evening, "jewelry is all I can think about" was an even more accurate statement than usual. My brain is like a Discworld troll's--hot weather, especially humid weather, reduces my mental capacity to "reading the internet is so... hard... but everything else is harder... ugh". I can feel myself getting smarter with every step down into the cool basement.
So I went to the basement and wrangled things instead of being an internet zombie this evening! This time I remembered to take pictures (though not always at the points that make for good narration).
Bit of backstory: a week or so ago, I made a ring of metal to go around a watch movement. Tonight, I thought I was going to solder this ring to a back plate, then set the watch movement in it, put it on a chain, and be done. So I went to work sawing out a teardrop-shaped back plate. Decided it would look cool with a border of heavy wire around it.
Buuuuut, it turns out that my minitorch is too small to heat something this big. You can see in the picture that the (silver-colored) solder has kind of blobbed out on the outside of the border. It did that rather than melting along the seam between the plate and the wire and, you know, holding the two of them together like solder's supposed to.
While waiting for the vinegar bath to clean off that guy, I was fiddling with some strips of silk fabric. More on this later. Much as my sewing machine might want you to *think* it was involved in the process, it was really just a convenient draping-things-over-it surface.
So after at least 3 tries at soldering the teardrop back plate, I dug through my supply box and found a smaller back plate that I'd been thinking of doing something with at the old studio. It had been made with a slightly smaller center piece in mind, but I realized it would work. Only took 2 tries to get the ring to stick to the back plate this time! (The first failure seems to have been related to the back plate not being entirely flat--then I hammered and sanded it and it was.)
Once it was soldered on, I went upstairs and oxidized it using liver of sulfur. (It's a boring but smelly process.) Then I came back downstairs and started setting the watch movement. In this picture it's very uneven, since I'm just starting...
That's better!
Took the silk and some brass rolo chain... then added some more goodies and fiddled a little more. ("Fiddling", meaning wrapping and beading and coming up with interesting arrangements of beads and objects, was the majority of the jewelry-making I did before I started metalsmithing last summer... so it feels like a boring/mostly-obvious step even though it's a huge factor in the character of the final piece.)
Final piece:
(I'm going to list it as a custom-fit choker, so the ends aren't finished yet.)
That's a vintage flash bulb and some garnet chip beads on a little section of brass chain. I think I'll credit![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
scheherezhad's "Circus" prompt for getting me thinking about those flash bulbs--I've had them around for a while, and somehow the idea of lights and circuses and carnivals made me remember them. Of course, the decision to use it at all only came after abandoning the too-big teardrop pendant plan :)
I'm hoping to list this on etsy soon, along with a make-to-order pair of earrings and two necklaces that I made a while ago but didn't list. Also! I got accepted to a craft fair in July! So more making is very much on the agenda :)
So I went to the basement and wrangled things instead of being an internet zombie this evening! This time I remembered to take pictures (though not always at the points that make for good narration).
Bit of backstory: a week or so ago, I made a ring of metal to go around a watch movement. Tonight, I thought I was going to solder this ring to a back plate, then set the watch movement in it, put it on a chain, and be done. So I went to work sawing out a teardrop-shaped back plate. Decided it would look cool with a border of heavy wire around it.
Buuuuut, it turns out that my minitorch is too small to heat something this big. You can see in the picture that the (silver-colored) solder has kind of blobbed out on the outside of the border. It did that rather than melting along the seam between the plate and the wire and, you know, holding the two of them together like solder's supposed to.
While waiting for the vinegar bath to clean off that guy, I was fiddling with some strips of silk fabric. More on this later. Much as my sewing machine might want you to *think* it was involved in the process, it was really just a convenient draping-things-over-it surface.
So after at least 3 tries at soldering the teardrop back plate, I dug through my supply box and found a smaller back plate that I'd been thinking of doing something with at the old studio. It had been made with a slightly smaller center piece in mind, but I realized it would work. Only took 2 tries to get the ring to stick to the back plate this time! (The first failure seems to have been related to the back plate not being entirely flat--then I hammered and sanded it and it was.)
Once it was soldered on, I went upstairs and oxidized it using liver of sulfur. (It's a boring but smelly process.) Then I came back downstairs and started setting the watch movement. In this picture it's very uneven, since I'm just starting...
That's better!
Took the silk and some brass rolo chain... then added some more goodies and fiddled a little more. ("Fiddling", meaning wrapping and beading and coming up with interesting arrangements of beads and objects, was the majority of the jewelry-making I did before I started metalsmithing last summer... so it feels like a boring/mostly-obvious step even though it's a huge factor in the character of the final piece.)
Final piece:
(I'm going to list it as a custom-fit choker, so the ends aren't finished yet.)
That's a vintage flash bulb and some garnet chip beads on a little section of brass chain. I think I'll credit
scheherezhad's "Circus" prompt for getting me thinking about those flash bulbs--I've had them around for a while, and somehow the idea of lights and circuses and carnivals made me remember them. Of course, the decision to use it at all only came after abandoning the too-big teardrop pendant plan :)I'm hoping to list this on etsy soon, along with a make-to-order pair of earrings and two necklaces that I made a while ago but didn't list. Also! I got accepted to a craft fair in July! So more making is very much on the agenda :)
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