Friday 25 June 2010

website bis

FINALLY.... my gosh, it has taken me since this morning 7 am till now 12.30pm to get everything in my picture maps on my pc cleaned up and uploaded on the website again. good thing i didn t have to work today.

to be honest, i am no computer freak... meaning; i know how to type in word, i can use excel, i know how to upload pictures from my camera sd-card, i know how to use an usb-stick, i can surf on the net, i can write my post here (thanx to blogspot.com), i can go on facebook and post pictures, or youtube and download videos...

HOWEVER, getting thru to my provider and uploading pictures using ftp (please don t ask me what that means) can be very frustrating when you have to find out for yourself that the map on my pc has to correspond EXACTLY with that pubwww map over there...

jeezes, thank god i don t have to use html (don t ask me what that means either) on top of it all!

oh well, it has worked so far. i m still pretty pleased with the lay-out, which is still very very simple. i only ever wanted to post pictures of my work in a very comprehensive way. so i don t quite feel the need (yet) to design a website with jingles and jangles ;-)

for the moment, making jewellery is not my main source of income, although it is my vocation. and i m sure that, serendipitously, interest will grow.
however, i m quite happy, thank you very much, with my (full-time) job as a receptionist.

but that s beside the point, i m on my journey and i m happy.

so, once again, website is up and running... have a look and let me know what you think!

Monday 21 June 2010

daisy

yiiiihaaa! finally i had some time to start on a ring i had been thinking of the past few days...

and did it feel good to be at workbench again. the ring was an excercise on filing in a curved line... and i m pretty pleased with it, although if my teacher saw it he might only give it a 7.5/10...

still, i think it s cute and i call it my 'daisy'-ring:


the first few filings


slowly getting its shape



after a first good sanding


and a final polish


and now i m off to the store to get some stuff for dinner!

Sunday 20 June 2010

more inspiration in Tongeren

yesterday Sam and i went on a drive to the other side of Belgium, it is a small country, and usually we d go west towards the North Sea, but this time, we decided we d go east to Tongeren in the province of Limburg which is very close to the Netherlands - German border.

i had heard of the Gallo-Roman museum a few times, and it often is a destination for school study trips, but since i grew up in Japan for most of my schoolgoing years, this was a first for me.

the drive itself took about an hour, as i said, we live in a small country, and it takes about an hour to get to the seaside, so it didn t seem long at all, especially because the scenery is quite different from what we were used to. the area is very famous for its orchards and even for a few vineyards.


statue of Ambiorix in the center of Tongeren

however, our destination was the museum, where one can experience a walk through the ages from when the first nomads came to settle here, to the Eburone Germanic and the Roman periods. it was quite fascinating to see what we humans were already producing then... and incredible to see the workmanship as well.

as you would expect, i was most interested in the type of jewellery they wore, which, i learned, was at first more to protect against evil spirits (like, even now, many nomadic tribes do ie. wearing talismans to protect against the 'evil eye') and slowly but gradually became more of a status-symbol like we wear these days...

but the craftmanship of the goldsmiths of those days! to make something as beautiful and lasting without the means and the tools that we have today is simply amazing. the simple (some might say 'naive') but at the same time wonderfully complex designs, that still baffles someone living in the modern world like me... wow.

if i can find, somewhere inside myself, a little bit of this gift that these craftsmen/women had, i will count myself very lucky indeed.

i took only a few pictures of some pieces just because they spoke to me, but i have included a link to the website of the museum.


a pair of earrings in English jet

remember Commodus? if you don t remember your Roman history, he was the son of Marcus Aurelius, and depicted as the anti-hero in the movie Gladiator. this gold seal ring depicts him carved in the lapis lazuli stone

you will find a better picture of this ring on the website




http://www.gallo-romeinsmuseum.be/content.php?hmID=1875&smID=1685

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eburones

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodus

Friday 18 June 2010

website

i am having trouble getting my website updated... have a few new items that i want to upload, but the program i use is a bit out of date and since i changed the location of my picture map, i ll have to redo the whole thing!

oh well, i have some time this weekend, so might as well do it right.

also tried working with WIX but then i ll need a whole week to work out the layout and everything...

bugger!

oh, by the way, last week friday we got our results for the whole schoolyear, and apparently i passed with 80.29%... i was quite pleased with myself... hehehe

Sunday 6 June 2010

testing out the Delft casting method

now for some fun

remember i wrote about going to the wholesaler last week and that i d bought a casting set? it contains an aluminium mold, very heavy clayish sand, and a dvd with instructions... gosh, it all looked so easy, and since ofcourse it had to start raining again, Sam and i said we might as well try it out... i also wanted to test if my gasburner was gonna give off enough heat to melt some silver for casting

here are some pics:


preparing the mold


melting fine silver and copper


slowly getting there


will it, will it not?


NAAAAAH, just got these little blobs!

and the reason it didn t go well, is because i just couldn t get the heat high enough for the silver to remain fluid enough to pour...

must admit though, it was fun and pretty exciting to be able to do this at home. can t wait for the next few free days when i can try again. Sam did say he had a burner in his atelier that s a little more powerful, so we will try it out.

i must find a way to get this right, because, as ever, practice makes purrrrfect...