Color and Insomnia

Most people who know me know I suffer from chronic insomnia. I can’t really remember a time when I didn’t have trouble falling asleep. This would probably not be a problem if I was free to go to bed when I wished (3am) and wake when I wished (10-11am). I’ve never, ever been one to bounce out of bed, cheerful and ready to attack the day. Oh no. Not I. It’s more of a slow, staggering, where-the-heck-is-the-shower type of rising.

I have a husband and a son, so I therefore get to bed at 11pm (read for an hour to try to relax the mind) and then get up at 7am (staggering) to start the day with the kidlet. My first attempt at creativity doesn’t start until 1:30pm, after I’ve dropped Zack at preschool and hit the gym, and by that time, I’m eyeing the bed with longing and hoping that maybe, just this once, caffeine will actually WORK on me.

So, many times, I fall into a color rut. I can design a pretty bracelet while I’m tired, but often I can’t get my mind to think of new, exciting, or unusual color combinations, and I end up making something pretty, but (to me) “normal and boring”.

I get tired. I just can’t think. So I’ve come up with a solution called a Color Book. I cut out clipping from magazines — bits of clothing, photos of flowers, Pantone swatches, paint chips, anything that gives me an “a ha!” moment.

This helps get my mind out of “I desperately need a Starbucks” to “oh yeah, I do have other beads I can play with”. It’s amazing, like a walk outside, when I flip through this book. Ideas start clicking and I start grabbing beads out the cabinet and cool things start to happen…..

The color book helps me get out from under making an all pink, all blue, or all purple bracelet (easy for me to do!) and gives me a much needed injection of mental caffeine. It’s a great artist’s tool that I highly recommend!

Now, if I could only do something about the insomnia……

Lori Anderson designs and blogs from her studio in Easton, MD. You can buy her work at her website, Etsy, and craft shows, and read more about her at her blog.

A Kilo of Happiness

I got a kilo of happiness in the mail!

No no no. Not that kind of kilo. Although it did come from a tropical island!

I love, love, LOVE larimar. Larimar is a rare blue gemstone found in only one square kilometer of the world — in the Dominican Republic. Larimar is a volcanic rock, and since it’s in such a limited area, it won’t be around forever.

It’s not often that you find jewelry made with larimar beads. There’s a lot of wasted stone when cutting beads, so it makes sense that they aren’t readily available. I feel lucky to have a source.

The other day I emailed my supplier and asked if any beads had come in (last time I’d asked, in February, he’d said there wouldn’t be any until September, but I figured there was no harm in asking). He said no, and he doubted there would be any at all until late next year.

Panic mode. No no no.

And then Divine Intervention — it must have been. Because he said, “Oh wait. I do have a kilo sitting here of all random beads that never made it onto strands. You want ‘em?”

Heck yes I wanted them.

Three days later, FedEx arrived, and I poured them out into a big serving bowl. (Cue angels). Aaaaaaaah.

I don’t know why, but I dearly love to sort beads. Sorting is also something I tend to do when the Creative Muse isn’t bothering to make a house call. So not only is this a mega mother lode of larimar beads, I get to sort and string and weigh and it will be an enormous pleasure.

However, I’m not looking at my credit card bill for a while.

Lori Anderson designs and blogs from her studio in Easton, MD. You can buy her work at her website, Etsy, and craft shows, and read more about her at her blog.

Adventures in Metalsmithing — Insomnia Talisman

At last, the final installment of the adventures of my weekend metalsmithing class!

This project was actually the second piece I made, but I saved it for last because it was the most complicated, and the one of which I’m the most proud. This is also a piece that I’ll never sell.

I sketched out a design ahead of time — a shield with a stone bezel set in the center.

For a stone I ended up with a round piece of blue dichroic glass, about the size of a dime, but tall, and I decided that the blue would look best with all silver, so scrapped the copper/silver idea.

I was a bit afraid of the saw, so instead of sawing the shield out of 20 gauge silver sheet, I cut it out with shears. That meant a lot of heavy-duty filing. And we weren’t using any power tools whatsoever in this class. Hand drills, hand files, (and of course no pickle) — all elbow grease.

(I think next time, I’ll use the saw.)

Next, I made the bezel. In my summer class, I worked way too quickly and subsequently didn’t do such a good job. This time, I took my time, took deep breaths, and got that bezel just right. Once the bezel was done, though, I realized, the glass bead was a good 3mm taller than the bezel wire. “What do I do?” I asked the teacher.

She thought that if the bezel fit tightly enough after soldering, and I pushed the bezel wire in enough, it might hold. That didn’t work. So we looked at the piece, looked at each other silently, and she said, “You know. You could put a dab of glue in the bottom.”

Thank heavens she wasn’t against glue like some metal teachers!!!! Besides, this was my piece, not something for MOMA, so who cares. ‘Tis mine. Glue it is.

While soldering the bezel to the shield, a cool thing happened — the solder “bloomed” in a beautiful pattern all the way around, just like a sun’s corona. I marveled at how that happened, and decided that was a sign that it had to become part of the design. So I took a repousse tool and deeply scratched the surface of the metal to create sun rays around the dichroic glass.

Next, I wanted to stamp the word “DREAM” under the glass, but heaven forbid if I screwed that up after all the work I did soldering and filing. I practicing on copper first, but when I tapped the stamps on my pendant, I hit them HARD — all except the E. So I got little half circles above the letters. Oh well, I thought, we’ll call those clouds.

And then I got brave.

I had some empty space at the bottom of the shield that just NEEDED something. And it needed negative space — it needed me to cut something out. That meant using a saw. So I drew a tiny heart, drilled a hole in the center, threaded the saw blade through, bit my lip, and began to saw.

And I’ll be dipped, but it worked. I didn’t even break a saw blade.

Here you have it….

My Insomnia Talisman. Blue sky, suns rays (to help me wake up), “DREAM”, to help me get to sleep, a heart for Heart’s Ease and Relaxation, and those clouds over “DREAM” because who doesn’t like to look up at the clouds?

Finishing the pendant was a challenge. I should have drilled the holes on the sides, per my sketch, but forgot in my excitement. I tangled wire up on a 16 gauge branch, thinking for some reason about bird’s nests, and finally, it’s done.

Not in the least bit perfect. But I am so incredibly proud of myself for doing something that is completely against the grain of my comfort zone, working with metal in this way, making something rustic when I normally like whimsical, and taking the time to work without power tools so I can feel what I was doing.

No idea where this will lead. But I’m glad I took the road.

Lori Anderson designs and blogs from her studio in Easton, MD. You can buy her work at her website, Etsy, and craft shows, and read more about her at her blog.

Adventures in Metalsmithing, Part 2 — Going Green

Earlier, I wrote about my first project in my metalsmithing class, a three-day Jewelry Intensive that was meant to introduce people to the joys of wrangling metal to make pretty things, and give each person the chance to experiment on their own and find their own way in creativeness.

My instructor, Sue Stockman, has a very green approach to jewelry making. She has an intense concern for the environment, and doesn’t just talk the talk — she majorly walks the walk in every aspect of her life. To that end, she believes in metalsmithing with a minimum of chemicals. Solder and flux are a necessity — without them, you can’t marry the metals together. But in her studio, and in this class, you’ll never, ever find pickle.

No, not this pickle.

Pickle is an acid that removes the flux and oxidation and turns it nice and white. In seconds, all the icky black fire scale that occurs as soon as your torch hits the silver is gone.

But did I mention pickle is an acid? It can be sulfuric acid or nitric acid, it has to be warm to work, and it’s toxic stuff. Mmmm, warm acid fumes. Bleh. So Sue taught us how to use elbow grease rather than acid to create our jewelry.

Don’t get me wrong. There were more than a few times when we were all muttering under our breath, wishing for that pickle pot. But using files, steel wool, emery paper, and our own energy, we got that fire scale off and didn’t create toxic fumes and didn’t have to worry about pouring that stuff down a drain somewhere.

So that’s how to be green while metalsmithing.

On to my project. This is actually my third project — a very simple rose quartz pendant that I found languishing in a drawer. I goofed and drew my pattern too small and ended up with less of a negative space point than I’d intended.

However, there were two major triumps in this piece (even though you can tell it’s not finished, not polished, there’s no bail yet, etc etc etc)…..

1) I got over my fear of the saw, and sawed the entire oval out of 20 gauge sheet silver. And I only broke one saw blade!

2) I got that bezel down JUST right. There is just the tiniest bit of bezel pushed around the edges (and it took some muscle to get it done right) but it turned out beautifully, if I do say so myself. WAY different than my first bezel attempt six months ago.

I still haven’t finished all the filing around the edges. And I haven’t polished it. And it’s certainly not perfect. But making this piece gave me the confidence that I CAN do this, if I just take my time and don’t rush. I also learned that it’s possible to go green in a traditional field, which gives me hope and makes me look at other aspects of my life to see what the possibilities are

Lori Anderson designs and blogs from her studio in Easton, MD. You can buy her work at her website, Etsy, and craft shows, and read more about her at her blog.

Adventures in Metalsmithing, Part I - Dapping Tips

In an earlier post, I stated that I was a scaredy cat when it came to metal smithing. I’m intrigued by it, but wasn’t sure how I was going to apply it towards my own jewelry style. However, I’ve tried to take at least one class in every medium of every type of bead that touches my work bench. What better way to be able to explain to customers why something is special, why this was NOT made in a factory, how it IS made, and why it costs what it does?

After my last class last summer, I purchased a very basic metal smithing kit — a saw, solder, files, and a few things I wasn’t quite sure of. They sat in a box in the corner of my studio, quietly giving me a guilt trip. So when Sue Stockman’s next class rolled around this March, I signed up. Nothing better to force me to learn something new than to pay money for it!

One of the things I like about Sue Stockman’s class is that it’s very low stress. Most serious metalsmiths spend a LOT of money and spend hours upon hours being classically trained at reputable schools. Sue herself went to college for this. Me, this would completely not work for me. I was the kid in school who loved to read but completely rebelled at being told WHAT to read. I wouldn’t do well being told what to make and would subsequently really suck at it.

Sue’s class is billed as a three-day Jewelry Intensive. On Friday night, she showed us how to use a dapping block and punch, how to fuse, how to shape a bezel around a stone, how to solder the bezel, how to solder the bezel to a backing, how to fold form, how to use a hand drill, and how to use a pitch pot for repousse. Quite a lot. And then she set us loose to come back the next day to try our hand and creating whatever we wanted.

I had three objectives. All involved fixing mistakes from class six months ago.

First, I wanted to learn to use a dapping block without folding up my form into a mess. Secondly, I wanted to make a nice bezel. And third, I wanted to use a saw without breaking all the blades and without it looking like a hyena had been chewing the edges of the silver.

So, the dapping block.

I started with two circles of brass. I learned that my mistake from last class was putting the circle of metal into too small of a space in the dapping block (that’s a dapping block in the photo above, the thing with all the depressions). Metal wants to be stretched, not abused. So, the circle of metal started out in a large depression, and I put a large dapping punch (see the picture? the long stake with the ball on the end) on top of the metal and tapped gently with a hammer. Depending upon how deep a “bowl” you want, you progressively put the metal into smaller and smaller depressions.

Here’s where my first mistake was made. To texturize the top of the dome, you put the domed disc on top of the rounded part of the punch and tap around it with the ball end of a ball peen hammer, careful not to hit the edges of the disc so as not to distort it.

However, if you slip or hit your finger, that theory tends to go out the window. So I decided to make the edges organic (yeah, organic, that’s what I’ll call it).

I drilled a hole in the top and bottom of each disc, and gave them a patination bath. This is what the bright brass looked like afterwards:

Rather dark. (This is the inside of the domes, by the way.) I flipped them over and took #000 steel wool and brushed the tops, which left the dark color in the hammer “dings”, but brightened up the brass. I gave them the barest of swipes with a polishing cloth, and added ear wires that I made, and the glass bead dangles.

You can see the edges aren’t perfectly round — but I think that worked with the overall style.

I also didn’t hit the discs evenly with the hammer, so there’s not an even pitting, another effect that I actually was going for.

So that was my first elementary, rudimentary project! I have two more, much more complicated ones to write about, but I’m still finishing them up! So stay tuned!

Lori Anderson designs and blogs from her studio in Easton, MD. You can buy her work at her website, Etsy, and craft shows, and read more about her at her blog.