Back at the Bench

The garden has been (mostly) put to bed.  I admit I have been lazy about getting it ready for next year, and I know I'll pay for it in the spring :(  I had plans to try and rearrange the fencing so I could fit in a couple more beds before the weather got too cold, but it never happened.  Those three weeks my daughter was home in between the end of ESY and the beginning of her new school year just sucked all the motivation right out of me.  I know it's kind of backwards - one would think after three weeks of being prevented from doing what I wanted in the garden that I'd want to make up for it as soon as she was gone during the day, but no - I didn't have the motivation to do much besides sit around and read.

 
I'm feeling much better now, though, and have been back to making new jewelry.  I've listed some new work at the DaisyCat Jewelry shop on Etsy, and I hope to take more photos on Monday and have the rest of my new work up before Black Friday.  This is the one time of year I go out of my way to remind everyone I know "Hey, you know someone who makes jewelry for a living - and this is the one time of year you can justify spending money on jewelry, even if it's for someone else!  Buy presents!"

So this is what I've been up to:

Work-in-Progress - Sterling Pendant with Rutilated Quartz and Rhodolite Garnet

This pendant is almost done.  I love rutilated quartz, and work with it as often as I can.  The stones are now set, and it's been polished.  I'm going to add some dangle to the link at the bottom, but I'm not sure exactly what yet.  I'll post another pic when it's finished.


Here are some new earring designs that I made earlier this year that I finally got around to taking photos of and listing:

Almandine garnet and Sterling post earrings

Handmade chain and Amethyst earrings

And another new pendant:

Sterling pendant with Carnelian and Citrine

 Hope everyone has a wonderful and relaxed (?) holiday next week!

Pretty rocks!

I finally got the package of faceted stones I've been waiting for!  Now that I'm a little more comfortable with setting them I want colors!  I now have amethyst, citrine, peridot, and two different garnets (almandine and pyrope).   This week had lots of doctor's appointments and other obligations, so I didn't get to do any work in the studio until Friday :(

I made another pair of small rectangle posts with the 2mm almandine garnets.  I'm still playing with this design.  I like the idea, but the original pair didn't sit quite right.  I'm experimenting with the placement of the ear post.  I think if I place it a little lower on the earring, the earring will not tilt down so much when worn.  I really hope I can make it work at this size, because I love the design!  It's nice and clean, small, unobtrusive - perfect for anything casual, or for when you have very small children who like to pull on things that dangle :)

I also started work on a few more basic ring designs using the colored stones, but I probably won't finish those until Monday, so no pics yet.  DH was busy that afternoon, so no process pics :(  I am planning another big photo shoot for next week (probably Tuesday) - so I will finally have some really nice photos of the new work - not just quickie blog snapshots!  This will, of course, also mean the new work will finally be listed in my shops sometime near the end of next week - I will keep you posted!

Being busy and Miso Soup :)

I was lucky enough to get three orders in over the weekend (yay!), so Monday and Tuesday were mostly spent working in the studio.  DH always tries to take pictures of me when I'm working, unfortunately sometimes what I'm doing just isn't that impressive :\

I've been working on a ton of earrings, some of which are going to be included in an Amazon promotion through my 1000 Markets shop(!), and a couple of rings.  I also have a custom piece that I'm working on for a friend, so I'm definitely keeping busy!  The rings and one pair of earrings will be shipping today, everything else should go tomorrow.  I like playing in the studio and coming up with new designs, but I like it even better when I know I'm getting paid!

All of this means I have not been able to tackle the anti-tarnish jewelry roll I've been talking about for two weeks.  Oh well.  The fabric is not going to disintegrate on me - it'll still be there waiting when I have time to deal with it.  In the meantime I can leave you with my recipe for Miso soup!

• 3c Dashi (Japanese fish stock - if you don't have an Asian grocery near you, you can probably find this at your local natural foods store.  I'm not a purist - I'm happy with the powdered stock!)
• 1/2-1 c sliced, chopped button bushrooms
• 1-2T butter (or oil of your choice)
• 3T Miso (again, available at Asian groceries or natural foods stores) White miso is milder than red miso, so if you're not sure what you're doing yet go with the white.  I like to mix them half-and-half.
• 1-2T Wakame (dried seaweed in a plastic bag - available etc., etc.)
• 1 or 2 scallions, whites and greens very thinly sliced. (I know it's a "garnish", but don't skip the scallions!)
  

Soak the wakame in a small bowl with warm water.  Use a bigger bowl than you think you need - this stuff expands dramatically!  Saute the mushrooms in the butter (or whatever you prefer for sauteing mushrooms).   Add the dashi, bring to a simmer.  Strain and add the wakame.  Adding the miso can be tricky, as it has a consistency much like peanut butter.  In Japan they have a special kitchen tool for this that is basically a strainer shaped like a small ladle.  You put the miso in the "ladle" and lower it into the soup, then you can stir and rub it against the side of the strainer so that the miso gets dissolved into the soup instead of making big lumps.  Most of us don't have one of those.  Instead, put the miso in a small bowl, add a littl of the dashi and stir until it's smooth.  Add this thinned miso to the soup.  Stir once or twice, remove from heat, and serve, garnished with the scallions!

This is so amazingly quick, and almost everything is shelf-stable or freezable (I freeze batches of sauteed mushrooms and sliced scallions) that it has become one of my "emergency meals" when I'm short on time or ingredients for anything else.  Enjoy!

Where all of my rings seem to end up... :)

I think it's because my fingers are a convenient place to store them!  I find that whenever I'm working on new (for me) ring styles, the prototypes always end up on my own fingers.   The downside to this is that I usually end up with rings that only stay on my index and middle fingers - its nice that stacked rings are "in"!  It is pure happpenstance that the only finger on my right hand with no rings on it is my ring finger!

I'm still working on my faceted stone setting, so two of the new rings have CZs set in them - the bead-wire ring (middle ring on index finger), and the square shank, square setting ring, which is the top ring on my little finger.  Both of these may end up staying in my personal collection!

My further adventures in earrings include this prototype pair of flowers:

This design still needs a little work.  These started with 1/2" discs of 24 ga sterling, but I think I need 26 ga instead.  I found the 24 ga to be a pain to do repousse with at this scale, and the edges of the petals didn't round off as nicely as I wanted them to.  They'll be cute when I have all the kinks ironed out of production!

In other news, I finally received the anti-tarnish fabric I'd ordered, so I can get to work designing my new jewelry storage roll next week!  I promise to take pictures and post a tutorial as soon as I can.  At my normal rate of Getting Things Done, I'd say look for it on Friday!

Using my time wisely!

I'm afraid the anticipated photo shoot for new products is going to be put off for a while.  I'd anticipated doing it this week, but my mother has a black-tie gala for the Bridgeport Hospital Auxiliary to go to, and has borrowed my Paisley pendant to wear to the event.  This takes place on October 3rd, and I'd rather wait until I have my pendant back so that I can shoot everything together.  Besides, this will give me time to make a few more new things!

I've been planning for some time to learn various methods of setting faceted stones.  I've only recently gotten to that happy place where I have both the appropriate tools and acceptable materials, but I have been making good progress!  Earlier this summer I started making and using tube settings, like the one in this ring:

This, sadly, is only a CZ, not a diamond!  I suppose eventually I will be able to afford very, very small diamonds, but I didn't want to practice on them!  People confuse "hardness" with "toughness."  Because diamonds are so hard, they are also extremely brittle, and are prone to cracking and chipping if not treated carefully!


Just this week I finally tried a flush setting, which is a way to set a stone into the surface of a piece of metal without prongs or extra "settings" around it.  It only works for fairly small stones, but I've discovered that it is incredibly easy!  This is a good thing, because small stones tend to be less expensive than big stones.  I've now found that I'll be able to accent pieces with small stones quite easily!  This is my test piece:

It's really tiny - 3/4" total length.  The stone is only 2mm, but it was really easy to set!  I was afraid such small stones would be very tricky and tedious, but so far flush settings are OK!  I'm not so sure about the earring design though.  I like them sitting on a table, but I don't like them so much as they look when worn.  They're a little too short.  I think if I were to try this design again I'd scale the whole thing up by about a third.

Now that I have some new techniques to play with I want to start branching out and using them a bit.  At least this means that when I place orders for stock I already have an idea of what I'm gong to use it for, and it doesn't end up sitting in my inventory for years waiting for the right idea to come along!  The current goal is to start to amass a small collection of faceted stones that have some color!  CZs are inexpensive and perfect to learn/practice with, but there just isn't enough color contrast for them to be noticed when they're set in silver.

My next project is to make an anti-tarnish storage roll for my finished pieces.  Everything is tarnishing way too quickly, and I have several pieces with soft stones that can't just be tossed into the tumbler!  I suspect this is because my space constraints force me to store everything in my basement, which is quite damp.  A storage/transport roll will take up considerably less space, and I'll be able to store everything upstairs!  When I've finished and worked all the kinks out of the plan, I'll post a tutorial.  Look for it to be up within the next two weeks!

What I'm working on

So far, despite losing three days of production time doing other, practical things - this has been a productive week for me!  I was able to get a lot of work done in just the two days I had free, and that wasn't even all the available time!  I'm really feeling good about my ability to sink my teeth into this and get some really creative work done.  So far I have been able to complete the onyx earrings pictured above (these are about 1/2" long), make several pairs of fairly simple sterling hoops, and four pairs of two new  styles of sterling studs.

these are maybe 1/4" in diameter

These are maybe 3/16" to 1/2" in diameter

The earrings are nice, but they're really pretty simple, design-wise.  Simple can be good - lots of people want simple, and I'm happy to provide simple, classic, goes-with-anything jewelry to people who want it.  This is the bread-and-butter stuff.  Not too difficult, not too expensive, not very time-consuming, with wide-appeal.  I sell a lot more of this basic style of jewelry than I do the really complex original jewelry, probably because it's a lot less expensive.  People can walk away with a $15 pair of earrings and feel like they got something special because it was handmade, and they didn't have to break the bank to do it.  Pieces like my Underwater Vision necklace definitely draw their attention, but whoever this piece goes home with will need to have a more specific taste in jewelry, and much deeper pockets than the average shopper!

Having time during the day with Scarlett at school is giving me time to design more of the complex pieces in addition to the simpler pieces.  Here's one I'm working on now:

my sketch around the focal stone - it was in with a pile of rutilated quartz, but things on that table were a little messed up, and it looks more like tourmaline in quartz to me.

removing excess metal from in back of the stone 

  

filing... 

adding the first bit of embellishment... 

...and that's as far as I got while the camera was still in the room!  I was able to finish all of the metal fabrication on Friday, so on Monday it should just be final polishing and setting the stones!  I'll post more pictures when it's finished.