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April 21st, 2008
06:43 pm - Re: 500 Wedding Rings book
I forgot to add in my review one example of the not a Wedding Ring that really struck me:
The ring that consisted of a reverse telephone number, pierced out of sheet, so the wearer could use a stamping pad and stamp his/her phone number on Interested Parties.
HOW is this a "wedding ring"????
(One person I mentioned this to said, "Swingers!"
But I still feel it is not exactly aligned with the theme. Somehow.)
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06:36 pm
In addition to commission stuff, I got more of the stacking rings progressed. One just needs polishing, and the other needs the stone set into it and then polishing. For the first I used a prefab bezel cup, but the second was too big for that so I had to make the thing. It went quickly, but- still a lot more work than the prefab ones! It'll make a pretty ring, though, and go nicely with any of the plain bands.
Once I get these ready for pictures, and a couple of commissions finished up, I need to put some serious effort into clearing off the bench. Again. Too many pending projects! And if I don't finish some of them, I won't let myself start new ones, and there are some new ones I REALLY want to start!
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April 20th, 2008
07:46 pm
While I did some misc. stuff today, my main focus was making a number of the stacking rings (just the basics), and keeping track of the time they took.
I was pleasantly surprised: I made 6 today, and they only took a but under half the time I'd guessed for the very basic versions. Obviously, adding more stuff takes longer! but I should be able to offer them at a pretty competitive price, at least for direct sale; many of the other versions seem to use lighter silver stock than I am, so that does make their cheaper to make.
I'm definitely pleased by this, because I've been wanting to find some things that I can make without a ton of time needed, and so be able to offer them affordably.
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April 19th, 2008
05:54 pm - 500 Wedding Rings: A Review of Sorts
Lark Books has my number, all right. All these pretty books that are totally full of great photography of (mostly) interesting pieces, and barely any text! They know that when I look at the metals books, I'm mostly looking at all the pretty pictures and ignoring any text supplied.
This books is a wonderful example in this line. Many, many pictures that are very pretty indeed.
However- after a first pass through it, I would guess that only maybe half of the rings ought to have been included based on the theme- and that's allowing the "conceptual" ones that comment on marriage as an idea in; if you excised those as well, the eligible pieces would be fewer.
In other words- if what you want is a lot of great ideas for wedding rings- well, you'll find some. And I'm glad I got the book because there are all sorts of ideas it sparked that have nothing at all to do with wedding rings, but that sound like fun. And the pictures are very pretty indeed!
But- I think it would have been better for them to either title this book as a follow-up to their first metals book in this series, "1000 Rings," OR to have actually restricted the included pieces to ones that had at least a vague relationship to wedding rings.
And while I adore mokume gane, there was rather a huge amount of it here, mostly used in fairly basic ways. This is probably a Sign of the Times or something.
Conclusion: Definitely a gorgeous book, and one that's worth seeking out and perusing multiple times. However- while there are some truly brilliant wedding rings and wedding ring concepts, that is not quite the focus of the book. Given that understanding, I would absolutely recommend it to metalworkers, because it is fabulous.
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April 17th, 2008
05:34 pm
I'm pleased with what I've done in the studio today.
My heavy- and I do mean HEAVY prototype men's Mobius ring is now round. I started with more massive stock (OK, now it's starting to sound like some of that Viagra spam :P ) and forging it into shape was a lot more difficult as a result. (Yes, I did initially type "harder". *slaps self* I'm sure no one would guess that I just finished deleting my daily spam...) But it is forged, and twisted, and soldered, and made round... AND it ended up exactly the size I was aiming for, so that pleases me.
I plan to texture this one, so I will spend some time tonight contemplating that. And next time I may want to texture the band before making the ring... except that it would be difficult to texture both sides, since as I'm working on one I'd likely be damaging the other. So we shall see. But- this is why I like doing prototypes.
The usual stock I use for the Mobius rings is more unisex, and looks well on most sized fingers. I was interested in the challenge, though, of doing a massive one, for men who like that look or who have really BIG fingers- just like I'd probably use a lighter stock for someone with very small fingers, just to keep things in proportion.
And I made good progress on my prototype set of small stacking rings. So far I have resisted over-complicating them. :) I have all the soldering done on 5 of the initial 8, and a bit more on the other 3, including some construction for one since I want to use a largish, beautifully purple amethyst cab on it.
I'm very pleased with how these are going! I'm hoping to finish the stacking rings tomorrow or Sat., and then start prototypes for another "set" of jewelry; these will be pendants, earrings, and I don't know what else with a coherent theme and design, so they'll be mix-and-match like the stacking rings, though in a different way.
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April 15th, 2008
08:10 pm
Oh, gods, it's been a month since I've updated. Again. Sigh.
I've been doing a lot of commission work of late, which does mean I have less to post about (I don't post anything but generalities about commissions until they're done)- so that's part of it.
I'm pretty enthusiastic, though, because in the past few days i've been getting a ton of ideas for nifty stuff. Today I started work on one of the concepts, and I may have stuff to show on it in a few days. Yay! I generally tend to elaborate and over-engineer stuff, so I've been trying to work against that temptation of late; it increases the work and the cost, but does not necessarily improve the resulting piece in ways that anyone but me cares about. :P
So- I hope to have some new stuff up in the next week or so, either on my website, or Etsy, or both.
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March 14th, 2008
09:39 pm
Also: I have sent nice un-messed-with pics of my enamel smileys (plique and cloisonne) to the Lark "500 Enameled Objects" book submissions. The pictures are excellent, and yet I have little hope of getting in; I think they are way too goofy.
But! I entered them!
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/niaha/kitty/ankgeekg.gif) accomplished
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07:54 pm
Done! I finished Mobius Ring #3, which I am very happy with indeed. There will, I expect, be pictures within a few days.
Also lots of work on various other projects, but less spectacular than actually fininshing 1 of them!
By the way, I've just listed this blog on Technorati, so if anyone with a similarly listed blog wanted to post a link to this- or to http://www.beemused.com , our beekeeping journal- I would be appreciative and will reciprocate. Thank you!
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March 13th, 2008
05:22 pm
Eep. I just realized that today is the 13th, which (am I not brilliant for deducing this?) makes tomorrow March 14th. Otherwise known as the postmark deadline for submitting entries to Lark's "500 Enamels" upcoming book.
And since J was nice enough to spend far too much time getting really good pics of my Smileys, it would be stupid of me to miss the deadline. Right?
So I am now burning the CD, and apparently also need to fill out a form and print pics of the CD files.
I am not really expecting to get in the book. Yeah, I'm very proud of and happy with my Smileys- but they're very goofy, and in general this series has not inclined toward the goofiness. Still- they're some of the best work I've done, and I'm proud of them, and since I had too many other commitments to do something specific for this book... well, these are it.
(I did do several pieces specifically for the first jewelry book in this series, "500 Brooches," and none of them got in and I sulked. Although I'm proud of those, too- the "Revelations" brooches on my site are some of them- and there's another set that I plan to re-work the basic designs into insanely ambitious Art Nouveau-inspired pieces. So it was not a dead loss. And yet, I sulked. :) )
In other news- more work on various Mobius rings. One's about ready to photograph. I'm still wrestling with the sterling/Pt one, since I'd really like to get a damn nice finish on it and the metal is not allowing that; as I sand away some flaws, others are exposed.
I made Pass #1 of twisting some of the sterling/Pt for filigree. It sort of held up OK, but broke where I'd put it in the vise rather than at the end I'm twisting, which is unusual. I need a much tighter twist, but it does not seem to need annealing yet, so I'll twist it more tomorrow.
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March 12th, 2008
05:24 pm
Ah, polishing. I really don't mind it- it can even be fun- when I'm polishing 1 or 2 pieces and doing other things with other pieces. Right now, though, I'm at the polishing stage of the next few pieces I need to have done ASAP, so today was all polishing, all the time. (At least tomorrow I'll probably be setting a stone or 2!).
My enthusiasm was not helped by the work I was doing on the sterling/Pt mobius ring. As I began working on the flattened part of the band, some flaws started showing up there, too; I'm pretty sure it was the relics of the porosity again, albeit modified by the rolling process. They were definitely not tool marks! It was frustrating, since I'd previously been doing much the same thing with gold and sterling, and those showed no such issues (and so were much more fun to polish!).
I think I've polished and burnished past these flaws enough so that the ring will be OK, though I'd be hesitant about its ability to fulfill a commission to my standards. Getting a really good, smooth, mirror-polish on the outside of the band is very important for this ring, because I want to see how the metal holds up to heavy wear. The twist, with its sculptural aspects, will also be a good test, so I want that as perfect as possible so I can see if the metal deforms in wear.
Internal flaws in the metal are a problem with this style, since I need to do a fair amount of sculpting in the pre-polish stage to make the lines flow that way I like. That means removing metal... and it's one thing if the metal is solid, and quite another when removing the surface reveals flaws! Then I have to balance working on the flaws with getting the proper sculpted lines, and that makes my brain hurt! Seriously- it means a constant evaluation of 2 separate criteria, and that is not fun.
Fortunately the gold and silver are both a delight to work with, so it was not all frustration and angst! Both are turning into very pretty rings indeed. (Well, so is the sterling/PT one, it's just giving me more grief.)
Tomorrow I should probably start twisting the light-gauge sterling/Pt wire for fiigree. I figure that if the wire has internal flaws, it'll break in places that I would not expect- so it should be an interesting test.
J has been discussing the issues I've found with the sterling/Pt guys, and I have a couple of things I ought to do to see if I can provide them with samples of the problems I've encountered. I flat-out refused to send them the ring I've put enough work into it now that I'm not giving it away! Plus, I have mostly minimized the problems at this point. And it'll still be interesting to see how well it holds up to wear.
I've decided to put one of the dark-red diamonds in it. The blues and yellows were just kinda boring with the metal color- too pastel.
I only stopped because my eyes were getting fizzy from so much close work, and my right elbow was complaining. Apparently I torque it into some weird angle when polishing.
Current Mood: accomplished
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