Category Archives: Torch Work

Bezels, Creativity, Necklaces, Pendants, Philosophy, Torch Work, Wire Work

Resistance to Closure OR Procrastination?

Several sleepless nights this week left piddlin’ in my studio wondering what to do when you are too sleepy to do much of anything. Have you ever felt that way? During one of those times, I located a number of UFOs (unfinished objects) and pondered the current state of my work.

My need for closure used to require that I rush to complete each piece. My head knew that this was not a good thing since creative people are supposed to be amble to remain open for all the artistic possibilities that might present themselves. When you decide on an idea or problem solution (close) too quickly, there’s less opportunity to exercise true creativity. This is one of the areas rated on many formal creativity tests. Yes, my head knew I should resist closure, but I still willed myself to “get it done”.

Because I understand this need to resist closure, I consciously try to remain open and therefore lay some things (pendants in particular) aside while I consider various alternatives for completing them. Apparently, I got carried away with this little practice and during one of my late night/early morning studio carousings, I discovered what I had wrought. I had an entire pile (a little exaggeration) of things left undone.

Then it hit me. Creative gurus teach that we are supposed to diverge and then converge. During my divergence, I was resisting closure and laying things aside while I thought of the myriad of possibilities for how each could be used. But, oops, I forgot the rest of the teaching . . . CONVERGE! During convergence, we are to pull the ideas together, make a decision and, in my words, finish the work. I didn’t do the latter.

So, on that fateful day, it was time to CONVERGE. (Can you here my battle cry?) I devoted one day to getting those pieces in some sort of completion form. I made the pendant for the first one, “Wing It”, last May upon coming home from a boutique run where a customer said that’s what she does. Oh well, it’s only January; but it was time for something to hatch.

wingsIt only took a short while to attach the riveted pendant to some chain and add a few dangles. What took me so long?

The next piece sports a pendant provided by one of the boutiques. The owner had it on a simple silver wire and it had not sold. She sent it home with me before Thanksgiving saying “DO SOMETHING” and she hasn’t seen it since. It’s time! I hope the store owner likes it. She will certainly be surprised to see it again and will probably take it just to get her pendant back.

sherry

I cannot honestly say how long I’ve considered the use of this S shaped pendant armature. I know it has been several months since I repeatedly annealed and whacked this shape. At the time, I just wanted to see if I could hammer a piece to the extent that a couple of my friends do in their pieces. This week, however, it finally turned into a necklace.

s3This one is fairly long and dangles from a doubled leather cord.

Finally, I found two bracelet armatures all formed and tumbled, just hanging around waiting for embellishment. They are now properly adorned.

bracelets           It’s good to finish these pieces and I’m glad I didn’t follow my urge to just throw them away when I first found them. They were worth completing. Yet, now I wonder whether I was really being creative on these by resisting closure or if I was just plain procrastinating. I think it’s resistance to closure when you are not sure that all the possible ideas have been explored on a piece and you are remaining open to receive those great thoughts. That was definitely the case on two or three of these pieces. However, I have known what to do with those bracelet armatures for a while and just didn’t want to do it. That is plain old procrastination! Shame on me! Will it every happen in this studio again . . . . . I can defiantly say “YES!” Now I hope to resist closure when needed and beware of that other phenomenon.

gifts, Metal Work, Necklaces, Pendants, Philosophy, Torch Work, Wire Work

Charming: Another Word for Sharing

I have previously mentioned a group with which I meet once a month. We get together and share ideas about working with wire and other materials for jewelry design. Although I’m not a “joiner”, I really enjoy this group and we’ve met together for over a year without any big arguments. That’s probably because we are a “faux” society. We have no rules, no officers, no dues and no big events to plan. This is probably why we get along so well.

We decided to exchange charms for Christmas. Rather than the usual exchange by designers where participants bring one thing and leave with someone else’s piece, we brought a charm for each person. I walked away with 12 different charms. Some were wired while others were soldered creating an array of very different looking objects. It was fun to see how each person approached the task of making charms in her own unique way.

I used the charms on the necklace shown here. They hang from copper tubing purchased at the hardware store. The charms are separated in a few places by larger copper tubing cut into small links. Without these pieces and the extra wire wrappings all the charms sat right on top of one another and refused to show their personality.

charm from Faux The tubing hangs from several types of fibers including yarn, silk cord and ribbon. I also attached a small copper chain. These hang down in the back where the closure is a handmade hook and oval. You may have seen something similar to this piece (minus the wonderful charms) in a recent beading magazine.

It’s fun to wear this piece and look down at the charms. I know who made each one and the piece reminds me that we are all so unique; yet, we can come together and make a beautiful whole.

After the experience of sharing with this group and creating this piece, I read about a group where each person contributed to necklaces that traveled around the world. The latest Belle Armoire Jewelry, Winter 2011 shares Around the World: A Necklace Round-Robin starting on page 24. I gleaned from the article that each participant started a necklace, creating several inches, and then mailed it to the next person. Individuals added specified lengths to each necklace when it arrived. The gals also kept a blog or journal about what they were adding and how it was created. In the end, each person received a necklace that had been “around the world” having traveled to several different countries. Pictures of these necklace show them to be as eclectic as mine above.

There are so many ways to share this time of year. Christmas, hopefully, brings out the best in all of us. The simple sharing of your talent is priceless. Whether you share a visual art form, the gift of gab, the sound of your music or a simple glow that makes others feel good, we all seem to feel better when we give and share.

Yesterday, as I left the nursing home where my mother resides, one of the aides waved at me and said he hoped I got everything I wanted for Christmas. You know, I couldn’t think of a thing I really wanted except healthy and happy friends and family. When I told him that, he knowingly smiled and understood. I wish the same for all of you.

Merry Christmas!

Necklaces, Pendants, Techniques, Torch Work, Wire Work

Swirling

I thought the wind would take all of our Fall leaves this week, but a few hardy souls remain. We’re not especially used to the blustering breezes nature just sent us, but the movement of the trees outside my studio window seemed to symbolize the rushing of people as they ready for the holidays. Of course the people are gathering as the trees are shedding. I hope the gathering brings good fortune to our local merchants.

I’ve been doing a bit of swirling myself this week – round and round and round. I saw a pendant made of three wire swirls in a catalogue my friend brought me. The swirls graduated from large to small in a straight line as they layered at the edge of one another. Of course, I couldn’t just make that one, mine would need to be different. Eventually, my pendant became a necklace composed of five circle swirls. swirl1

These swirls are soldered together and finished with a dark patina and a tumble. I liked this look and decided to enlarge it. Then I learned that often “less is more”. The larger necklace has the same number of swirls, but they have bigger diameters.

Before starting this piece, I didn’t realize how much more difficult it would be to keep the rounds held together. swirlchar2 I kept adding solder to these circle hoping to connect the parts of each round. This, of course, led to solder showing on the front. Hmm . . . now what? The dark patina on the first piece did a nice job of covered the solder, but didn’t do as well on the larger piece. Also, the swirls continued to want to pull apart. Finally, I soldered a wire to the back of the necklace alleviating this problem.

swirlcharback

 

You can see the solder still showing in this photo. Since it was also showing on the front of the main circle, I soldered a bezel and placed a charoite cab (from magpiegemstones.com) on the front.

Hurray! Following one last patina that required extra Q-tip applied liver of sulphur in spots to cover that stubborn solder, the piece went for a tumble and was complete.  The last picture shows the different in size between the two necklaces. Both of these are fairly heavy and used a good deal of wire. This was fine in copper, but I think I will curtail my plans for making this in sterling silver until prices for this wire go down. Do you think that will ever happen? It’s possible that the only way I’ll see this in silver made from my studio is to let that solder flow on the top!

swirls for twoThe wind blows gently today, but bodes of cooler South Texas weather. I wonder what ideas it will bring me this week.

Necklaces, Pendants, Torch Work, Wire Work

Crisscrossed

The internet’s free dictionary says that crisscrossed means  “. . . To move back and forth through or over. . . “  It makes me think of a snake swimming across our pond in a serpentine pattern or Dixie, our blue heeler (cattle dog) crisscrossing behind a bunch of cows as she tries to get them to move in the right direction. She just gets one side of the bunch going and then has to cross behind them to the other side to get those stranglers moving. By going back and forth, the cows eventually go the right way.

There certainly are some beautiful jewelry designs that feature crisscrossing strands or wires. I worked with this idea and hope to be on the right track. I wanted the waves of these crisscrosses to be consistent, but found that especially difficult to construct. Although I measured carefully and worked with care, when I put the two separate pieces of wire together and curved them for the neck pieces, they became a bit whoppy jawed.  (Is that an Oklahoma term?) Alas, I finally just went with that look and once again called the work “organic”. I never actually thought of sterling silver as organic, but today it is!                              silver

You can grasp the idea of the crisscrosses more easily by observing the following pictures. The close up of the silver shows that the main piece is attached to my hand made chain.  silver2

The copper wire in the other photo shows a better view of how the two pieces of molded wire crisscross together to form the neck wire.

copper wire

I made the silver dangles from heavy gauge fine silver wire using the torch to fuse each ring. I then hammered and textured the pieces. I tried putting on more dangles, but three turned out to look the best.

The second necklace shown here displays larger crisscrosses. It wasn’t what I envisioned, but I do like the shape. The dangles on this piece have either blue or red copper patinas made with household products. I’m still debating whether to leave them on or take them off as the piece looks fine without them. What do you think?

copper

Crisscrosses have many possibilities for use in designs and they present me with a nice new challenge not only for necklaces, but also earrings, bracelets and pendant wrappings. Look for more of this design in another entry. If you don’t see any in a few weeks, you’ll know they just didn’t work out. I believe it’s OK to take a challenge and fail. You just have to try!

Metal Work, Necklaces, Pendants, Philosophy, Torch Work, Wire Work

Like a White Tornado

 

tornado2

Like many of you have probably been doing, I’ve been racing around the last few days cleaning my house to prepare for company. The phrase “like a white tornado” kept creeping into my thoughts only I seemed to be moving like a GREY tornado. My interpretation of that means an older slower version of a cleaning wonder. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if a “white” tornado is racist. Go ahead and laugh, strange things enter my head when I’m inhaling those cleaning products.

I seized the opportunity to sit down at the computer and prove how silly my question really was. The initial information provided online was about a cleaning product, Ajax, and a slogan used to advertise it in 1972. No wonder I thought about this phrase;, that’s when my son was born and I was “into” cleaning. This link should take you to a video of one of the commercials used for Ajax.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vurmg1yffg  The commercial could lead you to believe that the product makes cleaning go faster.  That’s when, at the rate I was moving, I was sure I was a grey tornado this week.

I was still curious about white tornadoes and found more information which might have produced the idea behind the Ajax slogan. I learned about white tornadoes from http://www.chaseday.com/tornadoes.htm : A tornado can appear white when it is “front lit” by the sun. Since most of them are photographed with the sun behind them, they look black or dark grey. (Perhaps being a grey tornado isn’t that bad.) You may also see a white cloud of water rotating into a froth at the base of the tornado. I’m sure you’ve really been wondering about that for quite a while.

The picture at the top shows my version of what might be left behind by a white tornado. The “ditch” in it reminds me of what I was taught as a girl in tornado alley Oklahoma. If you are out when you see a tornado coming and you can’t get to shelter, lie down as flat as possible in the ditch beside the road. I’m thankful I never had to do that.

I’m also thankful for readers like you who go all the way to the end of my entries, even those that are silly like this one.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Earrings, Metal Work, selling, Torch Work

Trolling

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We used to go trolling a good bit when we lived in the Dallas area and had a fishing boat. I never thought it was much fun, but then, I wasn’t the one driving the boat. I felt the best part about trolling for fish was in the heat of the summer when you felt so hot that you thought you would faint. At least trolling meant we kept the boat moving and that made a bit of welcome breeze on wet skin.

I went trolling yesterday . . . for bottle caps. I was reminded of the time when my son was in fourth or 5th grade and his gifted class was collecting bottle caps. As best I recall, they were trying to get to one million to see how much that actually was. When I picked up my son and his friend at the Social Studies Fair, I found that they had been outdoors picking up bottle caps in the parking lot. They weren’t nearly as clean (the boys) as when I first left them there, but they did have a few more bottle caps to add to the class collection. It seemed the bottle cap hunt was more interesting than the Social Studies Fair.

I’m not trying to get to a million bottle caps. I just needed a few more for making earrings. I’ve previously posted a number of pictures wherein these were used and you may recognize a few of those that follow. cap earrings

ear west

bottle cap 3 botttle cap ears two

 

 

 

 

 

Since we don’t drink anything that has bottle caps, the few that I have used previously have come from friends who remembered to bring them to me. I don’t know if I’ve run out of those friends, but yesterday, I was definitely out of bottle caps and set out to find them.

I’d been told I should just go to a bar and ask the bartender to save me some. I told the suggester that I’d feel strange in a bar and he said not to worry that I’d look better by closing time. (I think that was an insult!) At any rate, I chose not to visit a bar, but rather went searching as I ran my errands.

The first stop was a hit! I found one root beer cap when I stopped at the office supply store. Although I searched around the entire area where I found this treasure, there were no other caps around.  Later I found another cap at the filling station, but obviously the people who go there are very careful about getting things in the trash can, because I couldn’t find any others. I searched around all the various filling stands and people probably thought I must be very poor and was looking for change. I guess I could have dug in the trash can, but I chose not to. That would have made me look really desperate!

I drove very slowly through the parking lots on my way home as I looked for bottle caps. Finally, I realized that it would be hard to explain that I had run into something or someone because I was looking for caps and I gave up. The sum of my trolling is in the next picture.  caps

Oh well, don’t you think these are good ones? The exciting part of working with them was when I used the torch to anneal them. Either the plastic center in the cap or the cap finish created a beautiful little flame that I feared would set off the fire alarm. Luckily, it burnt out quickly and all peril was averted. Tonight these little jewels will become some sort of earrings.  I sell these at a very low price, but after yesterday’s effort, I’m thinking that price may just have to go up. Trolling is hard work!

Earrings, Metal Work, Torch Work, Wire Work

Ah, The Sweet Smell of . . .

. . . metalwork!   I never imagined that working with metal would produce so many different odors, or aromas, depending on whether or not you like the particular smell. Most days I’m not even aware of this, but on an unusually sensitive day, my nose took offense to one project.

I was making three pair of etched leaf earrings to fill an order.  First, I used the torch and annealed the copper to make it easier to handle. Ah, the smell of propane . . .leaf earrings

Then I  painted nail polish on the back of each of the 6 leaves to use as a stop out for the mordant. Ah, the smell of nail polish . . . Then, I used a permanent felt tipped pen to mark the flower shapes, etc on the front of the earring. You really can’t see them in this photo. I tried hard not to inhale the marker.

Next I mixed an acid with hydrogen peroxide (outdoors, of course) and produced a smelly mordant for the etching. Yucky odor!

After the etching was complete, all that nail polish had to come off with that sweet smelling polish remover and the black ink had to be removed with alcohol. Can you smell it?

Since I needed the metal to have a red patina, I again used the torch and heated all six leaves until they glowed red hot. While still hot, I plunged them into a container of cooking oil producing an almost pleasant aroma. It was similar to that of chicken fried steak and all I could think was that finally I could fry something that wasn’t fattening.

Once the clean up was completed after the oil bath, I polished the metal with Renaissance Wax which I can also say produces an odor. Even the dog doesn’t like it!

I made the ear wires out of copper wire and used liver of sulphur to give them a dark patina. Ah, it was like the sweet smell of boiled eggs . . . After the earwires’ tumbler bath, the odors were all gone and I was able to assemble the earrings.

Now why in the world did I end up with a headache?

Bracelets, Earrings, Necklaces, Techniques, Torch Work, Wire Work

When Gold Turns to Silver

I believe this saying has to do with the color of someone’s hair (Knoffler sang something about when the gold of her hair has turned to silver). It might also represent a tact for saving money in the jewelry design business. With today’s spot price for silver at a practically intolerable $22.70/ounce, it’s still more economical to use than gold which lists at $1,330.50 per ounce. You won’t see me using any gold any time soon.

Of course, that’s the same thing I said about silver last year. I was working exclusively with copper, a good deal of which came from the recycling establishment. Lately, however, feeling that my skill has progressed, I’ve delved a bit into silver wire. Today’s photos show the use of fine silver which fuses to itself without solder. Sterling silver requires the use of solder for fusing. One problem that arises with fine silver is just how quickly it melts. My pieces have a few bumps on them where the metal got too hot. Still, I feel it is better to see small flaws that lumpy solder.

The first pair of earrings turned out much bigger than I anticipated, but they do make a statement.silver large I’ve wanted to incorporate seed beads with the wire for some time and enjoyed using needle and fishing line to attach these embellishments to the ovals. They are very lightweight.

 

The second pair of earrings is, obviously, just a simple set of ovals.

small silver

Also, I fused some fine silver circles and put them on a double strand of sterling silver wire. This piece is very simple and delicate. It was trickier than I expected when I tried to get the circles to hang correctly.

silver neck

What’s a girl to do with earrings, a necklace and no bracelet? I answered that question by getting brave and using some 14 gauge sterling silver wire to make a small simple wave bracelet. I’m still debating as to whether or not to embellish it with beads.   silver brace

 

 

 

These pieces are a very different style than what I usually make, but were fun to do once I got past my panic of cutting the expensive wire.

I suppose the title to this blog entry should really read When the Copper Turns to Silver since that’s the change I made today. I’m just too much of a tight wad to work with gold right now. They don’t ever seem to have any at the recycling place!

Color, Earrings, Metal Work, Techniques, Torch Work, Wire Work

I Think That I Shall Never See . . .

. . . an earring lovely as a tree. I must certainly apologize to Joyce Kilmer whose original work compared a poem to a tree. Didn’t many of us have to learn to recite those verses in school?

The last few days I’ve been working with tree shapes. It may be the anticipation of the changes soon to occur with the leaves on the trees or simply an inclination to get away from things that are circles. For whatever reason, I’ve been working with the shape of some trees, triangles. This is always a bit of a problem since triangular shapes in jewelry mean you must deal with three sharp corners, but I decided not to let that deter me.

The first trees are a bit large, yet interesting looking. These earrings are copper triangles sweat soldered together to imitate firs. The liver of sulphur patina seemed appropriate on these.  I also made a smaller, upside down pair.    fir large

 

 

 

    small tria

 

 

 

 

The next pair is made of copper that spent several days turning blue. The household concoction worked well and I didn’t want to spoil the color; therefore, I chose not to solder them. That would have removed the blue patina. I made them into pretty good swingers by using the copper rings.

small blue

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last pair of earrings initiated with a picture of a pair that a friend gave me. I intended to use silver circles as part of the embellishment, but the bottle caps sitting on the work bench begged to be used. The star in the cold connection adds a little western flair to this pair. Yes, I do realize that this tree shape is upside down, but it seemed like the way to go.

western

Maybe the next tree shapes should be rounded at the top – I’ll have to give that some thought.

In the last line of her tree poem, Kilmer wrote:

Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.

I could certainly say the same about these silly earrings.

Necklaces, Pendants, Philosophy, Torch Work, Wire Work

Copy Shamelessly?

I enjoyed going to the Texas Metal Arts Festival in Gruene today. It’s a fairly small gathering of metal artists displaying both large and small pieces. For example, there were giant metal flowers that stood about 3 feet tall and tiny metal flower earrings made from aluminum cans. This particular artist group always has demonstrations going on and this year these included torch formed metal clay, fold forming and many other techniques. Unfortunately, I always find it way too hot to sit outside and watch these demos; but happily, there were plenty of hardy souls who appreciated this opportunity.

My husband has been kind enough to go with me to this festival the past couple of years. Today, he figured out that it’s really a reconnaissance mission where I compare my work and gather ideas. On the way home, he queried what I learned. This year was enlightening because I could see that my work appears to be getting closer to those of the artists I admire. While there is still much to learn, I was able to recognize techniques they used and think about the needed materials and tools.

It’s always interesting to see that some artists want to share how the work is done but shut down the conversation when they realize you are trying to learn rather than trying to buy. Others will tell you everything about a piece and are excited to share and encourage you. So at what point is it rude to ask about process? Since I meet monthly with a group of people who are willing to share everything about what they make, I may be a little too brazen with my questions. At least I didn’t take my camera today. . . I think that would have been over the top!

It appears to me that people who are both teachers and artists are quite willing to share and encourage others. For example, my friend at Magpie Gemstones always encourages me to copy her designs and is helpful regarding technique. So, when is copying a design the same as plagiarism in writing? I think it’s very difficult to tell when a design is your own as opposed to a version of something you’ve seen.

As an example, the necklace shown here was inspired by Sally, an artist at Sunroom Studios in Ellicott City, Md. (sunroomstudiosonline.com). I wrote to her about a necklace on the Sunroom Studios website and she was kind enough to answer my questions. While my necklace may resemble charoitehers, it is also quite different. Should she sue me? Gee, I certainly hope not. I hope she will be flattered to learn that someone liked her piece well enough to make it the inspiration for another. But, where do we draw the line?

I don’t have the answer to that question. All that I know is that my conscience is my guide and I hope that someday, if someone wants to view my work as a starter for their own, I’ll be willing to share.