Fiddly repair of a broken artisan-made glass pendant...

This is a signed, artisan-made glass pendant (not the cheap flower-burst kind), and it means a great deal to my customer. Somehow the curved glass at the back that formed the bail broke off, and she asked if I could rescue her pendant. She agreed that in this case I would have to glue on whatever bail I could come up with, and she also wanted me to use silver wire.

The pendant is barely 1-1/8 inches high.

The break was fairly clean, but I filed the edges first before I did anything else.

First I made a wire yin-yang symbol with 18 gauge dead soft .999 silver and hammered it flat so I'd have the maximum glueable surface on the back. I started wire-weaving with 28-gauge wire to form the bail and, after using a ball point pen barrel to get the curve, wired in a simple hammered S-swirl (no photo) on what became the top front for interest, and immediately below the S-swirl hammered two swirls at the wire ends to glue on the front.

I used Super New Glue, as it dries crystal clear and it appears to bond very well to smooth surfaces.

I did warn my customer to not let her pendant get too cold (we're heading into winter here) as thermal shock might possibly cause the glass to shatter as it and the silver metal expand and/or contract when going from super-warm houses into cold air.

I left it overnight to dry thoroughly. Because I wasn't sure what I was doing, this took me about an hour and a half to do, but now that I'm more familiar with the wire, I suspect this would take 30 minutes tops to do again.

View of the back yin-yang -- and I sure hope the shapes are facing in the correct direction! I still don't have the heart to look it up and find out I've made a grave error. :-)))

I used .999 silver wire for this, and this is the first time I've used it. I'm very pleased with the malleability, but not so pleased with the work produced by my stumpy fingers! I found out the hard way earlier this year that so-called dead soft .925 sterling wire isn't as dead soft as it needs to be, and that I should've bought .999 fine silver wire instead. 

Thanks for stopping by!

November 2017 GEM EXPO...

I haven't posted pix from the shows all year, but here are my setup photos this time, largely unedited. So happy the show was two weeks earlier than usual, we had a much better turnout even with parts of different subway lines shut down on Saturday and Sunday.

Have to start the trip with sufficient fuel: crispy hot french fries from my favourite chip stand at the top of the hill on the western edge of Paris -- Ontario.

My usual show strategy is to get the tables in place and everything out of the bins and onto the tables on Thursday night, then arrive at 7:00 a.m. on Friday and begin arranging everything.

9:03 a.m. everything is roughly in place; behind the scene, it's a mess and didn't improve at all during the show...

...in front of the scene, everything is roughly in place but I was not in a mindset to make decisions about where things should go. I had new bins of beads that were really throwing me off and some I didn't bring.

At 11:45, the doors have been open for 15 minutes, and this is as good and pristine as my booth will get.

I found stretch velcro bands at Dollarama to keep my plastic drawers and bins closed. I'll be cutting the lids off the translucent bins and using the velcro bands to keep the lids on for transportation. Without the lids it will make for a much cleaner display. That does not look good up above!

LOVELOVELOVE these clear stacking containers with partitioned trays as they are the perfect size for my collection of 6mm beads. I now have at least 100 different beads for my Chakraluscious line of healing bracelets and I'm sourcing more.

For now, I'm using a wooden spool holder that I found at the Goodwill for $3 and spray-painted black to hold my Chakraluscious bracelets. I finally had the absolutely delightful experience of selling an anti-negativity bracelet right off my wrist at the show. Very cool when that happens!

Since arriving back home, I scored two more small type trays to put goodies in, pre-loading being the way to go and these trays fit perfectly into plastic bins for storage and transport.

Some great meals:

Dinner crepe, Crepe T.O. is located a few doors south of the HI-Toronto hostel on Church, just above King. I read a great review in the Toronto Star several months before and have wanted to try it. Yum. I think they were planning on closing early, but they stayed open a bit later for me and several other people who'd wandered in after me.

Sunday night, Ruth and I hit the ever-reliable Jason George for a late night shared meal after packing up the van:

Pusateri's on Bay in Yorkville, Ruth launching an attack on an unsuspecting chocolate almond croissant, sitting there minding its own business. We spent a good hour going through beads and assorted loot.

The show was a lot of fun all three days and Sunday was fantastic. Packed with people all day and I had such great conversations. The classes I taught went well, and it looks like I'll be offering a third, different class in March, so stay tuned.

The next Gem Expo will be held the final weekend of March Break when everyone will be back from their holidays! Whoo hoo! See you then. In the meantime, you can find me every Saturday morning 7:00 a.m. until noon at the Woodstock Farmers Market on Nellis Street. I'm also taking part in the Quarter Auction on December 7th next door in the Auditorium, and on Sunday, December 17th I'll be at the Burnt Brick Cafe on Dundas Street in downtown Woodstock.