Monthly Archives: December 2010

Progress towards Arisia

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So I have a table in the Arisia art show, and not enough work to fill it. I’ve made some progress towards that in recent weeks; the previous post showed a couple of necklaces in the Spring Rites series, which will be in the show.

Anyway, this week, my office was closed for the holidays, so I’ve made some more things! Pendants, even. And another (slightly different) version of my original Spring Rites necklace.

The tiara is entirely new this week.

Wire-wrapped pendants. The pinkish-grey oval is imperial jasper. No clue about the other stones!

The wire on the pendants is all stainless steel, but I am feeling like I am finally ready to see how the sterling silver I have on hand goes.

I’m also not wild about the jasper pendant. It’s a nice enough stone that it really doesn’t need any special treatment or accent. Also I hate that with the addition of the leaf on the bottom, it’s just a long piece.  Maybe I should bend the leaf up so it wraps around the bottom; I don’t know.

I think one of my biggest problems going forward is going to be naming things. I have a HUGE list of names for Spring Rites items, and selecting from that is going to be its own painful process. Coming up with names for random pendants, though, beyond “Stone Pendant 24,” argh.

And yes, it has crossed my mind to just go find a random name generator and use that! Random drow elf names, random Martian names, whatever.

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Jewelry Happy Hours!

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I’m running a couple of jewelry work sessions at the Asylum this month.

They are classes in that I and 2 or 3 other jewelry makers will be around to show people how to make shiny things, and also to work on our own projects. We don’t have lesson plans; we’ll cover whatever it is people are interested in.

We had our first night last week, and it was fun and productive! Cider was drunk! Necklaces were knotted and bent! Not both at once, mind.

I also learned that the hunting and camping supply store near me is a good place to buy feathers.

Khrysti and Sara (who run Khyamara together) both worked on knotwork projects; Sara also made a lot of progress on a wire-wrapped ring.

I finally – FINALLY – went through my sketches from StrowlerCon and prototyped a couple of designs:

A simpler "tooth" design and a geometric shape, accented with a glass bead.

The leaf shapes come from my original Spring Rites necklace and ear cuffs design.

Leaf and tendril detail of Spring Rites necklace.

The Spring Rites pieces are probably going to be listed on Etsy (if not those exact two, then I’ll be making more much like them). I also came up with a loooooooong list of ideas for that series, so I am excited to get more variations on that theme out of my head and into the wire.

Jewelry Happy Hour is meeting two more times this month, and I believe that our 4th instructor will be joining us both of those times, along with a jewelry maker who does some metalsmithing work (Purpleshiny), and at least one person who wants some lessons.

I am really looking forward to it! It was great to see different kinds of work in process, and to understand the amount of time some seemingly very simple projects take (Khrysti made a very nice, very simple bracelet that took something like an hour).

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