(belated) Happy New Dragon Year!

uh-oh! is it february already?

Happy 2012! Happy Dragon Year! may your dreams and wishes come true, and should some things turn out to be hard or sad, that you will still be able to pick yourself up and find the strength to carry on...

oops, that sounded a bit depressing, that last bit. anyways, it s what i tell myself... no yin without yang, yet no yang without yin either.

sorry i ve not been able to post anything, but i have been struggling with the piece i m working on at the moment.

i haven t even been able to take photos of the darn thing, because i was either trying to get it soldered, or trying to piece it together again.

oh, did i actually mention what i m working on exactly?

it s a necklace, an 'inverted round' necklace like the bracelet i made last year... it was something i worked on in-between projects and finally i had enough length on it to start working on the locket and the finish.

but it s kinda working against me. after having made the end pieces and pickling the whole thing, i saw that a few rings had opened again, and while trying to solder those, the solder flowed thru to other rings, which ofcourse stuck those together, and then i nearly burnt the necklace trying to let the solder flow so i could loosen the rings... aaaaaargh!

it is a work of patience.

which i have...

sometimes...

soon, soon it will be finished and i ll be able to show you what it looks like.

on another note: my friend loved her bracelet with the little rose clasp, yay!

here s what it looks like

and here s a few variations on the 'rose' (that s me, get me started, and i often can t stop)

tadaaa!

multifunctional...

so, next post will be about that new necklace.

i hope.

sweet little rose

there you go... another month has passed, yet it seems like only yesterday that i last posted.

meanwhile, we are nearing the end of the year, and i ve been busy trying to get the last little things that need to get done, well... done, before we welcome 2012.

which also means Christmas presents.

handmade is always nice ofcourse. yet sometimes that isn t always possible.

however, this time, i had found a little project in the january 2012 issue of Beads & Beyond and i thought it would make a perfect gift for my long-time girlfriend, oh, we ve been friends since kindergarten..., and even though we don t see each other enough, she s always been there for me.

so she deserves this one:

i started off by punching out different sized circles out of 8mm silver sheet

which i then gave an organic feel by doming them

after giving them a sanding, pre-polish and texturizing, i then stacked them ready for soldering

here they are, soldered

and after pickling, it was easy to leave them in the polishing tumbler for a while, which actually gave them both a matte and a high-shine finish (depending on where those metal spheres could reach).

remember that 4 in 1 half Persian bracelet i made at the beginning of this schoolyear? well, that rose box-clasp (shop-bought, ready-made...) wasn t quite working, it tended to release at the most inopportune moments, and i didn t want to lose the bracelet... so i replaced it with this little number.

front

and back

still have to decide what i m going to make to show off this clasp for my girlfriend, but now that the hard work is done, i still have a few days to ponder.

oh dear, i hope she doesn t read this before... nah, she s probably busier than i am right now...

so, that s all folks! at least for 2011... in the meantime may i wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Wonderful and Happy New Year!

freeze frame

some time ago i made a square ring.

there s a long story behind that, which i m not going to divulge here...

well, actually, yes, i am.

why?

because i made that square ring as a challenge.

during the summer we visited a market where young, as yet 'unknown', entrepreneurs were selling their products/wares... and most were either jewellers or fashion designers, but one jeweller s work jumped out at me.

now, before i go on, you must know, at the school where i m following my goldsmithing course, we are encouraged to share ideas and techniques. and, come on, ever since the first man or woman decided to hang a wild animal tooth on a leather string around his/her neck as a talisman or just to show off, humankind has been making things to beautify, to mystify, to show off wealth... and when a new concept, or a new technique was discovered, everybody was free to elaborate and make something better or more beautiful or useful...

anyway, so this jeweller s work stood out. it was a square ring, and i was intrigued. i loved that it fit snugly and comfortably, and i asked him how he had done it.

me and my mouth.

i won t even write what his girlfriend said.

on my way home i was already thinking how i could make one. and the next day i did.

using my bench-vice, i pulled and folded the strip of silver, turned it, pulled it again into a 90° corner, soldered, sanded and polished the thing, and it worked.

so there.

but then i found me a square mandrel! YES!

perfect corners.

freeze frame

best of all is not the fact that i now know i can make a square ring.

best is that i know there are other people, like my classmates, who enjoy making new pieces and discovering new techniques, and who don t mind at all about sharing ideas.

like this one; you might think this ring has been hammered, but it hasn t. oh yes, i did start out by hammering, but the effect was almost unnoticeable, because the metal would tend to spread out more and if i had continued, the ring would have become wider and thinner, which wasn t the objective.

so my teacher showed me how to get that hammered effect, by using a very small round burr and a very tiny sanding wheel...

time to test that technique out on something else now, hmmmm.