Nothing new this week, however... some old hammered stuff for funzies

This has been another brutal week for typing. I was supposed to have gone to Toronto on Monday to have my computer upgraded (some of my video files -- just one of the suckers (and I can easily get 5 or 10 or 20 files in one job to transcribe) -- are 1.25 gigs or 1.5 gigs each and my entire hard drive is only 4 gigs with 1.8 gigs of RAM) but another one of those huge jobs came in that I couldn't say no to. But yeah, long past the time to get a bigger better 'puter. NOTE: All I really want to do is up stakes and get outta Dodge...

Long story short, I haven't done anything remotely resembling making jewellery all week. But this coming week, after I drop the computer off on Monday -- and then go shopping at the wholesalers! -- I will have two whole days in which to make stuff, mostly cake jewellery for Rene, rings, necklaces, bracelets, earrings and especially a whole lot of feather earrings, before I have to go back to Toronto to pick up my computer (and do yet more bead shopping... if nothing else to pick up the stuff I forget to get on Monday... at least that's the plan.

In the meantime, here are some things I made a long, long time ago in a land far away... well, 2009-ish.

Base metal dangles, red horn, hammered tinned copper clasp, black leather, sterling earwires

This lady bought the necklace before I'd even half-finished it working at my booth at the Norwich fair: brass dangles, turquoise, brass chain.

Alas... in the old days when bead stores were still (they still are!) selling howlite as turquoise and I hadn't realised the difference. I keep meaning to remake this necklace as I really like it.

Cobra bead choker, so-called because locked in the glass, created entirely by accident, a cobra can clearly be seen. Glass bead, vintage brass beads, brass chain maille. SOLD

A particularly fine chrysocolla bead, hammered brass dangles and clasps, vintage brass chain maille, leather choker.

Chrysocolla bead, hammered tinned copper dangles and clasps, plated chain, leather choker

Bornite chunks (aka peacock stone which is oxidised copper), wrapped in silver, silver-plated base metal feather, hammered tinned copper clasps, black leather.



Facetted pyrite stones, tinned copper pendants and clasps, sterling earwires, black leather choker


Some of these I've sold, some developed little legs over the years... and one or two I may actually still have on my table.

I know these are old pictures because most of them were scanned, not photographed. But it's interesting, the hammered stuff still intrigues me greatly. I am working on doing more of that and refining my techniques, but you know, I still like the rougher, more crude stuff like the last piece, the pyrite and hammered tinned copper. Love the look of the hammered brass, but it is so very difficult to hammer. Not only do I wreck my wrists, it makes great gouges in my hammer and bench block.

Well, this evening it's feeling not quite as hot as it's been the past few weeks, "only" about 30C/90F and with plenty of humidity, but they're calling for thunderstorms, and that would be such a relief. Sure hope they hit. It's brown and crunchy everywhere you go now in this part of southern Ontario.

For now, though, I'm at a good place to leave off typing, the truck is loaded up and here it is 7:10. I am going to have a light supper and head to bed. 3:30 a.m. comes awfully, awfully quickly.

Thanks for looking.

Turquoise Feather Earrings, more table tweaking & a how-to on covering display boards...

What a week this has been, and these next two weeks will be just as crazy. More and more typing pouring in, and now more orders for cake jewellery. Yay! Now to figure out how to stretch 24 hours in blistering heat and humidity to do all that is required, plus I will be without a computer for four days from the 16th to the 19th while it's being upgraded. Means that while I will be able to check my email at the library, pretty much nothing else will get done, certainly not work. I guess that's good. More time to clean up here and make more jewellery... or get a lot of reading done out on the deck amid my flowers. At least in the mornings that's what I plan to be doing. Washed down with copious cappuccinos, of course.

Yesterday at the market I put this pair of earrings together:

Turquoise blue feathers, Southwestern style pewter cross bead and sterling earwires. $18, shipping extra, please email me for details. I will be making other things with these crosses, so stay tuned.

I'd run out of little metal thingies for the feathers, so I had to wrap a loop onto them. Tedious and in the heat and humidity all the tiny featherettes were sticking to my fingers. If "featherettes" is not a word, it should be. But better to my fingers than up my nose, which usually happens when I'm in feather earring-making mode.

I also got Chris the Honey Guy to cut me some taller boards for my table, the same width that I have been using, plus two wider boards. The narrower boards will fit into my carry bag, and the wider ones will fit into the bin with the beads and necklaces on curtain rods, so everything is kept together. Lynn, my merchandising display pal from Imogene's, moved everything over from the smaller boards and the whole display looks a whole lot cleaner, more spacious and organised. The small boards are great to provide to stores to display things.

I also remembered to take pictures of the -- what? -- hangers, display thingies? -- brackets! Thank you -- to hang all my miscellaneous necklaces on so people can actually riffle through them and see them more easily. Getting the necklaces off the brackets easily is still the problem. But maybe there are way too many necklaces on them... yes, that's got to be resolved.

Bracket display:

New display boards in action:

Step-by-step covering the boards with quilt batting, velour (watch the nap direction, you want it running vertically, not horizontally) and, as always, staple-guns are your friend. Yes, this was done on my bed. Once I boot Max off, it is the only flat surface in my house that isn't covered a foot deep with jewellery stuff or books or papers (or Max).

Cut stretch velour and quilt batting maybe an inch or so larger than the board you're covering. For sure, yoiu want the batting to wrap around the edges of the plywood to protect the velour from snags:

 

Lay them out velour good side down, then the batting, then the good side of the board face down:

Firmly hold down the middle of the board, and lightly stretch the top edge of the velour down and staple gun it. Make sure the staple is parallel to the top edge, then do the same for the bottom.

Do the sides:

Do the corners. Make sure the batting covers the corner of the board:

Gently stretch the velour on an angle and staple-gun this time at a 45 degree angle to the edges of the board so the velour doesn't eventually tear. Do this at all four corners:

Bring the folded edge across and staplegun, as shown:

Do the other folded edge, as shown:

Do this for all four corners. Then go along the edges and pull in and staple on each side of the original centre staples thereby ending up with three staples positioned evenly along each side of the board.

Thanks for looking!

I went shopping online a few weeks ago...

...and lookie what showed up in the mail box today!

Cool pewter spacer beads...

Very cool, very nice pewter birds...

Pewter heart clasps...

Pewter Mexican cross beads...

Fair Trade Javanese recycled glass beads and one string of African recycled vinyl beads just to see what they are like to play with...

Of course, I wish I'd bought more. But in the meantime what am I going to do with them you ask? I have no idea, but they sure are purty. If you have any suggestions, let me know! Thanks for looking.

5-Strand Turquoise Blue Seed Bead Necklace

I'm still not sure why I've been so obsessed lately with making seed bead necklaces, but here is my latest: 38" long, 5-strands, turquoise blue and multiple different yellow-orange through red seed beads, bundled into base metal cones and fastened with a large silver-plated lobster claw clasp. Plus a picture of Max at the end to round things off -- literally. Look at that round little -- large! -- belly he has.

But he sure is a lot cooler and more comfortable with all that hair gone. He has the most gorgeous brown eyes and scrawny little freckled legs. And he's now on a diet.

I will be soon... as soon as I finish with the vat of lemon chicken I just got. ...........it IS the long weekend... and it IS Max's birthday.

Necklace is $55, shipping extra, please email for details. Max is NFS.

Thanks for looking!

Chinese crested pot-bellied dawg........... HAPPEEEEE BIRTHDAY, MAX!!!

Weeeellll, he LOOKS like a Chinese crested... or a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig. Old age sure sucks, don't it, Max?

He's definitely a lot happier with all his hair gone. I assume it's much like skinny-dipping in the cool air for him now.

I left him with a little dignity fore and aft.

The glory days... only two years ago:

He's closing in on 14 now. No idea when his actual birthday is, just that it's the end of June-beginning of July-ish. July 1st works for me. As of around 27 September 1998, we began our life together. Big happy birthday to my fuzzy little guy who I love more than anything in the world.

A simply great Saturday at the market and how my garden grows on Sunday...

Just saw this... http://theflyingtortoise.blogspot.ca/2012/06/beautiful-bohemian-interiors-of.html This is how I want the interior of my (as yet unbought, let alone found) RV to look. Sigh......... 

I had a great day at the market yesterday. I sold my first Kingman turquoise heishi necklace.

As well as an adjustable pipestone choker and bracelet.

These beads were from Titan Beads and yet again I only bought the one string, and a half-string at that. Ditto the pewter saucer beads. I'm almost or completely out of all of the metal beads I bought there in the spring and they don't appear on their website. I have to remember to email them, see if they have any lurking or will be able to get more in. I believe I got the round beads from Arton, my go-to people for so many things. I cannot get over how useful all these metal beads are mixed in with semi-precious beads and the rough-looking beads in particular. The character changes constantly as they're combined and recombined, hence the riffs on just one bead of the previous few weeks. I would have done more variations of this set, but I have no more of the pipestone.

I'm finally remembering to bring my camera every week to the market as a lot of things I make while I'm sitting waiting for customers for some reason will sell on the spot before even hitting the table. I'll show what I'm working on to anybody that stops, "Hey, check this out. What do you think?" and very often they tell me they'll take it. I still find that totally amazing.

I was so pleased with my sales yesterday that I bought three more baskets of flowers from Boris. I now have ten and so far they've managed to survive being drowned in monsoons, sauteed in the humidity and baked every day in the sun, although there is a lot of shadow cast by the building throughout the morning and end up in direct sun for only a few hours until the big maple tree to the west casts its long shadow over all, which helps as well to keep the living room fairly cool if there's no humidity. Humidity is the killer but with the tree blocking the sun I still rarely have my fan on at more than low speed. I am scrupulous about keeping the plants watered multiple times per day this year. I tried to have plants outside the porch door but it's far too hot there with direct sun all day after 10 a.m. or so.

I just went out to take pictures of the deck, got one photo and of course the camera batteries are now out of juice.

...half an hour later...

Max shaking his head over the folly of having so many plants.

Oh, well, I guess She Who Feeds Me could have ten cats instead...

One of the first planters I bought. The wave petunias are really taking off...

The new and super lushly planted wave petunia basket...

Time to get to work and finish another long 7-strand seed bead necklace, this time in turquoise blue with yellowy-oranges and red splotches. I've just discovered that I can't get any more opaque yellow-orange seed beads, or at least no store I've been to in this region carries them. This particular yellow-orange colour was from a 25-plus-year-old stash of seed beads. Ain't it always the case, the most useful item in your arsenal is always guaranteed to be out of stock, if not permanently out of production.

Thanks for looking, and if you want to commission similar items to what I've shown here or elsewhere, please email me.

Riveting...

Went to the Grand River Bead Society meeting last night in Guelph and the demo/workshop, taught by Caroline Andrews of Metal-Artz, was about riveting. I overheard many participants marvelling at how simple this process turned out to be, many of us coming into this believing it required some type of heavy-duty, complicated equipment. Basically, after punching a couple of holes in a piece of sheet metal, texturing if desired, and stacking up a couple of components on a copper nail which is then snipped to 1mm, it's all about gently, gently almost stroking that little bit of nail sticking up with a ballpeen hammer, alternating the ball side with the flat, to moosh it down and out to extend past the holes in the doodads and metal piece and make them fit nice and tight. What could be easier?

This was what I ended up with:

...which looks kind of like a cracker... or is that just because I haven't had dinner yet?

Thanks for looking!