Sweat soldering

Last Sunday, I took my third soldering class and things finally clicked. The first class was basics - soldering closed jump rings and I wasn't sure it was for me. The second class was about rings, I liked that was and I actually wear the rings I made.

This class was about soldered pendants and I'm very pleased with the results. I finished the pendant with the houses in class - completely. All soldering, polishing, patina-ing and polishing was done. The second pendant - mountains and cloud (which I drew and cut out and shaped all by myself) was mostly finished in class.
The third pendant, though, gave me trouble. Nothing would stick together and then I lost the dot and there wasn't enough time in class to start over. So, I dug out all my equipment this morning and it came together beautifully. The dot stuck, the jump ring behaved, I aged everything in liver of sulphur and polished.
The picture isn't doing the pendants justice - you can't see the patina very well. But I'm no pro when it comes to photography even though I did this with my new, rather nice camera. Okay, so I've had the camera for over a year and never used it (I'm very resistant to new things), but now that I've tried it, I'll use it again. And I'll be soldering again, too, even though my set up is very inconvenient.

Balloons, fall & new jewelry

Fall is definitely in the air. Nevermind that the days are still relatively hot - we need the A/C on occasion - the leaves are turning, the geese are flying overhead all the time, North for some strange reason (I think towards the reservoirs in the vineyards) and the balloons are back in full force. Depending on where the wind moves them, they either drift over the east or the west side of the valley. Right now, they end up on our side and we have multiple balloons landing in the field behind our yard every morning.

Three landed within minutes of each other yesterday (that would be picture 1). I caught three more this morning in various stages of deflation, but there were four baskets. Makes me think I was too late to catch the very first one.

Since I had no errands to run this morning, I was going to sew. Couldn't decide on what to work on, though, so I did something entirely different: stamping on metal. I took a class a couple of years ago and have been collecting shapes and stamps ever since. Beaducation (http://www.beaducation.com/) has a nice selection of supplies and they offer classes, some free, some not. That's where some of my ideas came from and just about all of my supplies.

Unfortunately, I still haven't figured out how to do good close-ups with a camera and the scanner refuses to do a decent scan of metal and Photoshop isn't much help with the adjustments. So, a less than perfect picture of slightly less than perfect pendants. I think the word is "organic."

I signed up for the 5 k walk this weekend in San Francisco and decided I needed some new jewelry for that event, hence the pendants with "Henry" on them. I still haven't gotten over the need for visual reminders.

I'm having fun!

Last Sunday, I took a class called "Metal Manipulation" from Kriss Silva. Among other things, I learned to use bezel wire as a decorative element and how to make rivets using wire. My riveted pieces look a little too wonky to show the general public but I'm quite proud of my bezel-embellished bead. I plan on making more.

This morning I decided to finally use what I learned in a class last year and make spiral rings. Lisa Claxton taught that class and I enjoyed it a lot but never got around to making more than the 2 rings we made in class. Finally, I dug out my instructions, wire, torch and all the tools I needed and spent the whole morning hammering, torching, shaping, oxidizing and polishing. I obviously had too much fun, I almost missed lunch. The rings are tumbling as I type - fine silver is too soft to wear without some form of hardening. I know they won't scan but if I can figure out how to take a good picture, I just might post them here, too.