Worth every minute!

Sunday was Metal Studio Day again, something a small group of us try to do once a month. Often we go in 12 different directions, and just do our own thing, but this time we decided to tackle one project together.

The project on the cover of the Oct-Nov 2011 issue of Step by Step Wire Jewelry had been calling out to us ever since we received the issue in the shop last month. The colors are "my colors" - seems like I am always returning to blue and green when I make jewelry, and green and blue look so fabulous with copper!

This necklace was a mix of cold connections and wire work, and we knew it would take a large chunk of time to create, so we gathered at 9:30 Sunday morning, and started to create.

I have to say that this project was unusually poorly written for a Step by Step Wire project; I can't recall ever seeing such vague instructions in a Step-by-Step project. To begin with, rather than telling you how much wire to use for the base piece, the instructions call for working directly off the wire spool, and coiling until "you have the right size". Yet the "right size" is never specified, and when a group of people are trying to create a project where they are sharing one spool of wire, they can't all "work off the spool" - an approximate length, and a template, would have been very helpful. So we spent quite some time on this step, futzing around, and wasting a lot of wire.

The size of this coiled wire base - its width, the height of its coils, and the number of coils - is critical to all the rest of the steps in the project, and determines the number and size of the beads and domed copper cups that will fill in the design. Without any clear measurements provided by the project, we sort of worked in the dark, cutting and doming our copper cups ("Make as many as you like.") while the base coil tumbled, not knowing really how many or what sizes we needed. But we made several different sized domed cups, and then had fun rummaging through the shop looking for green, blue, and brown beads to add to our project.

I decided to patina some of my copper cups using a method described in my brand new copy of Jewelry Lab.

This is an exciting book for metal workers - loaded with tips, tricks, and project ideas. I am particularly excited about the patina section right now, and after my success with the colored pencil & gesso technique, I can't wait to try more ideas from this book.

These are my colored-pencil patinated discs - I really like how they turned out, and it was so easy!

Assembling the necklace was tricky, as we discovered that getting the beads and copper cups to wrap tightly was not going to work as described in Step 6. We each attached 4 or 5 units according to these instructions, and they slid and wobbled on the base, so we figured out how to use some 24g wire to stabilize their attachments, and then we modified the attachment instructions for the rest of the units, to get a nice tight wrap onto the coil.


We finished the project, attaching the copper chain and S-hook as the last step, at 7:30 PM. So from start to finish, 10 hours. And worth every minute. Though some measurements and a template for the base coil would have saved us over an hour - but, to use my very least favorite colloquialism, it is what it is.

I am absolutely thrilled with my finished necklace, and now that I have completed the project and worked out the kinks, I am ready to make another one!


Edited 10/24/11 to add: In respect to the Step-by-Step Wire project instructions: A customer came into my bead shop on 10/22/11 and perused this particular article after noticing the project picture on the front of the issue. After about 4 minutes, she commented on how badly written the instructions were, and asked how she was supposed to know how much wire to purchase in order to make the project? Good point - I had only looked at it from the aspect of making it as a group; as a bead shop owner, I had not even considered the difficulty a customer would encounter if trying to purchase supplies for this project.

Custom Design

A good friend dropped by the shop about 3 weeks ago, carrying a garment bag.

Inside, she had a gorgeous, peacock-blue satin evening gown. Just below the plunging neckline was a diamond-shaped beaded design, about 3 inches square; the design had a hematite-colored background, bordered with peacock-blue bugle beads, with a beaded flower in the center.

My friend wanted a necklace and earrings to match the dress.

I took a photo of the beaded design, and gathered some beads together, and started stitching. I didn't have any peacock-blue bugle beads, but I had these size 8 delicas, which I figured would substitute nicely, once I got them lined up on the sides.

20 hours later, I had the beaded pendant stitched, and set out to design the necklace and earrings.

I chose 2 Swarovski square rings to bling it up, and hung them so that they mimicked the pendant.

My friend was really happy with the end result, so Yay!

It's been a really exciting week for me, Etsy-wise.

I've had 3 sales in the past 2 weeks!

And I just realized, as I was grabbing the pics for this post, that each sale was from a different medium, so that is pretty cool, in my book.

This pair of cold connections copper earrings, with loads of beaded embellishment, sold yesterday.

The buyer is a great lady who I actually met 2 years ago at the William Holland Lapidary School when we both happened to take the same class - so it's a pretty small world, after all. We had e-mailed each other a couple of times after that class, talking about our mutual Etsy shops, but this it was the first time I'd heard from her in about 2 years (or more), so that is pretty neat.

This wire-wrapped pendant sold over the past weekend. I also made the dichroic glass cabochon, so that's like 2 jewelry-making mediums wrapped up in one. Pun unintended, but apropos.

This beadwoven spiral sold right before Christmas - it features a gorgeous handmade lampwork starfish (certainly not handmade by me, however - lampworking is one area I do not claim world-domination in, lol)

Bailey and I did not encounter any snow when we were up in the mountains 2 weeks ago, but we are actually supposed to get some snow HERE tonight (but not much) - but he and I will get up extra early tomorrow just in case, so we can play if anything does fall and accumulate.

Hope everyone is having a great New Year!

Loving the Cold Connections!

I have become addicted to Cold Connections - it is the process of creating metal jewelry using basically any methods except soldering. You rivet, grommet, weave, etch with acid, hammer, saw - lots of fun!
This piece is my latest, and in my opinion, my best - it took days of planning and work, and is 3 dimensional. I used copper, sterling silver, stainless steel, and brass, plus a few seed beads, and I just love its asymmetry.

I ended up opting for a simple chain to hang it, because I didn't want to take anything away from the pendant.

This is one of a pair of Cold Connections earrings that I made recently, and heavily embellished with Swarovski crystals, Swarovski pearls, freshwater pearls, and seed beads - embellishing is one of my favorite things to do in ALL of my pieces, but cold connections really allows me to go wild with it.

The earrings were designed to match this pendant - where I actually set a cabochon into the copper sheet without any soldering or weaving - really cool! And, of course, lots of embellishing (or "crapping it up") as one of my friends calls it...

This set is actually available in my Etsy shop - but I just can't part with my 3-D masterpiece!

Cold connections will probably never be my favorite medium - my heart really belongs to Chainmaille, but cold connections is a close second.

If only it were portable, like chainmaille projects....

And on a non-related note - I am currently reading "Open" by Andre Agassi, and I just have to say that this is one of the best books I have read in a long time - I hate to put it down!

A Pause for Nostalgia

This necklace is the very first piece of jewelry I ever made, back in April or May of 2007:



It was the second item I added to my Etsy shop, way back in November, 2007.

A lovely customer just came into my bead shop, and fell in love with it, and bought it - and I'm delighted it has a good home after all this time, but a little sad, it a funny way - it was my first!

Something new

One of my William Holland teachers showed me how to bead crochet (rope crochet) last summer when I was up there taking a totally different class. This particular teacher is a good friend (she is nice enough to put up (and put up with) Bailey and me whenever I go up there for school, and she teaches Beadweaving, Wire Wrapping, and Cold Connections. I was up there that week taking something else entirely, but she met with me one evening in the dining room and taught me how to bead crochet.




And after that night, I didn't pick it up again until about a week ago, and it is now my new current addiction.

This is the first bead crochet project that I actually did myself from start to finish, and I think it is pretty cool.'

When I get a little more adept at it, I may start teaching it in my bead shop.

OMG I'm Bored

I am so incredibly bored today that I am wandering around the living room taking pictures of stuff.

The boredom started yesterday - I spent some time beading (bead-crocheting, actually) - but making a bead crochet rope is just (to me) incredibly repetitive and boring.

And there was nothing good on TV, to keep me rooted to my seat while beading. So I didn't get much done - and the same was true today - I worked for about 2 hours on the rope crochet, but then I had absolutely had it.

So I just grabbed the camera, and started walking around.

I have an absolutely incredible lapidary collection - I have been collecting specimens for over 40 years. I even had a rock tumbler in elementary school, and tumbled rocks I found around Minnesota (where I lived at the time) for weeks, and weeks, and weeks.

This picture shows an agatized coral head, from a riverbed in Tennessee. And in the foreground, a gigantic piece of raw malachite, purchased from a published collector who travels through Afghanistan collecting malachite. (Or at least, he used to). This particular specimen is about 8 inches in diameter, and over 12 inches long.





When I was 5, I was hospitalized for about 3 months, and desperately needed things to keep me busy. I had a Lite-Brite - remember those? But after a couple of weeks, I had finished every single design available, and so my Dad brought in some fabric, and beautiful threads, and needles, and a embroidery-frame he had made himself just for me - it was adjustable to many different sizes, and the tension could be finely adjusted - it was a piece of art itself!

And then he taught me all kinds of needlepoint, including crewel.

And I spent hours doing crewel - and continued until I was in my 30s.


I made these 2 wall hangings, which have moved with me over the years, but always find a place in my living room, wherever I set up house.










This lamp was handmade by Wishon-Harrell in their Muncie, Indiana, studio. I lived in Muncie for about 5 years, and knew both these gentlemen well, and have a lot of their artwork - many lamps, and a wall clock, and vases, and candle-holders, and entire set of dishes, including a casserole and drinking tumblers.

I have heard rumors that their studio is closed - of course, it was back in the early '80s that I lived there and frequented their studio.


OMG - I'm not only bored, I'm old.

I finally finished a personal project!

I have taken better pictures in my day, but at least I am happy with my new necklace.

It all started when a bead vendor came to the shop about a month ago, and I snagged this gorgeous fluorite specimen from a strand of fluorite that consisted otherwise of much smaller, though still gorgeous, fluorite beads - this big one just stood out too much, so I just had to take it, don't you see?

I spent a few hours looking around the shop for other odds and ends to pair with it.

I have always wanted to use one of these sterling silver mesh beads (I call them tumbleweeds) that I nabbed at a GL&W show in Franklin, NC 2 years ago. I have had these beads for 2 years, and never used them, and they are luscious! I actually took them all out of my personal stash and out them up for sale in the shop last week, and no one has purchased any yet, so now I have used the first one.

I found a few stray teal freshwater pearls that really make the fluorite "pop."

I found a huge white freshwater pearl that I loved, and some smaller white button freshwater pearls, and some Swarovski pearls in various blue and green hues.

I've had this gorgeous sterling silver connector with 3 rings on the bottom in the shop for ages - and again, I think I'm the first to use one. Once I started dangling things, the opening in the middle of the connector just seemed to cry out to be filled, and I found this great hammered sterling disc that fit in there perfectly.

So I set about making my dangles, and attaching them to chain, and it took 2 full days to get everything hanging at the right lengths and positions to satisfy my eye. Late yesterday (after the shop had already closed, actually) I attached the bail, and found a rolo chain with a great look and weight to carry off my new "pendant", and I am just right pleased with myself about now.

And while all this was going on, I decided to look up the metaphysical properties of fluorite - and that made me feel even better about this whole combo. I have never put a lot of stock in this kind of stuff, but I liked what I read, and I figure it can't hurt...

According to what I read, fluorite is considered one of nature's most powerful mental healers (and goodness knows, I could use some of that about now). Fluorite allegedly has the ability to influence the activities that occur on the mental plane of consciousness and to amplify, focus, expand, and create new pathways for the mind. Fluorite is also believed to connect a person’s being on the mental and spiritual plane. This allows it to increase abilities of concentration, discernment of truth and clear decision-making. Other properties include bringing order to mental chaos, increasing objectivity, enhancing creativity, curing mental disorders, easing meditation and freeing one from bad habits.

The many colors of fluorite are believed to have different mental healing specialties. Green can energize and still the heart and mind. Blue is for inner peace. Purple is for focus and helping to get one out of a mental rut. Yellow is for comprehension and group communication and dynamics. White is for creating pathways between the individual and universal spirit.

I take all this with a grain of salt, but like I said, it can't hurt!

OK, about those millipedes...

Dan Karaty is a hard act to follow, so I might as well go in the complete opposite direction, all the way to disgusting, and tell the millipede story.

Some of you may have seen the pictures over on my Flickr. But here they come again.

You have been warned.

Along about May 30, 31, I strolled into my kitchen, with its white linoleum floor, and spotted something small, and dark brown, over near one of the baseboards.

Now, my vision isn't all that great in the mornings, and I'm not going to lie here - I am NOT Suzy Homemaker, and I frequently have small brown things on the floor of my kitchen - I mean, seriously, people - I work 80 - 100 hours a week (a have 2 jobs), I don't have a housekeeper, and I have a BIG dog who comes and goes through the kitchen to reach the great outdoors, so there is usually yard/dog detritus on the floor - bits of leaves, pinestraw, etc. And it's not all Bailey's fault, 'cause I freely admit I drop stuff, and don't always pick it up right away.

But even with my extremely impaired vision, I instantly knew this small brown thing was different.

For one thing, there hadn't been anything in that particular spot the night before, when Bailey and I headed upstairs for bed.

And for another, it was moving. Albeit, slowly, but still, it was moving.

So I crouched down, and identified it as a millipede, about 3/4 inch long, and strolled past it and let Bailey out.

And then I grabbed a paper towel, scooped it up, and put it in the trash.

And then I saw another one.

Hmmmm.

I have never, ever seen a millipede in this house before. Twenty years, and no millipedes.

One, I can excuse - but 2, in the same room?

But I went on upstairs, and readied myself for work, and left; promptly forgetting about the 'pedes.

And there were a few more when I got home.

And even more the next day. Always in the kitchen.

So the next day, I turned on the lights in the halls and dining room, where I have dark brown hardwood floors, and I see more of the 'pedes, cleverly camouflaged by the brown hardwood.

So now I'm concerned - here in the SC midlands we are used to the occasional Palmetto bug (or roach, as we call 'em) - because we are surrounded by pine trees, and those Southern roaches love pinestraw, but I knew these millipedes had to be coming from somewhere, and I wanted them gone.

They don't scare me (like the roaches do) - but I want to be able to walk around barefoot without crunching on them!

I was coincidentally leaving for a week away at William Holland on June 7, so I formulated a genius plan: I would set off a bunch of those bug fogger things, and come home in a week to a few dead millipedes, and be done with it. Problem solved.

So for the rest of the week I continued to pick up a few millipedes every morning and evening, and on Sunday I loaded my stuff, and Bailey, into the car, set off the bombs, and drove away, peace in my heart.


And as I drove into my driveway the following Sunday night, I remembered the bug bombs, and knew I might have to do a little housekeeping before I went to bed, but I certainly wasn't ready for this.

There were hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of millipede carcasses - especially in the carpeted areas downstairs.

And I had not EVER seen a millipede crawling on the carpet. So I figure that when they were alive, they must crawl along the base of the carpet, well beneath the fibers, and when they die, they curl up and rise to the top of the nap. Because this is what my living room carpet looked like. Can you get an idea of the scope of the problem, here? This is just about 8 square inches of carpet!

So I vacuumed and vacuumed, and finally felt like I had gotten most of them (although I confess that I have not yet pulled out the furniture and gone along the baseboards.)

And then I went upstairs, and found my first evidence of the upstairs 'pedes. 'Cause I had never seen them upstairs before the great bombing.

This is the (upstairs) guest bathroom floor - all those tiny brown specks are dead millipedes.

And there were several hundred curled up in the various bedrooms upstairs - but nowhere near the numbers I had seen downstairs.

But I vacuumed, and went to bed feeling like: Mission Accomplished.

And then Bailey and I got up the next morning, and went downstairs, and there were 3 more of the damn things crawling on the kitchen floor.

And more when I got home.

So I knew now what I had really known a week earlier - these things were coming from somewhere, and I officially had an infestation.

The next day I called several pest control companies, and discussed my situation, which I had already researched on the internet. Various websites had told me that millipedes are often driven indoors by heavy spring rains - but that really wasn't the weather situation here, and didn't explain why the bombs failed to take care of it. All the pest control companies I talked to told me "it just happens," but that they could take care of it with quarterly servicing. I didn't want quarterly servicing - I insisted that this was something new, and there was clearly a source, and I wanted it treated and fixed, and that would be that. So one company finally agreed to come do a one-time treatment (for twice the price), and we set up the date.

On the appointed day, the technician arrived, and I invited him in, and he explained everything he would be doing that day. And I started asking him questions - like where they were coming from. And he stuck with that story about "sometimes it just happens." And I asked him whether the millipedes were using the stairs to get upstairs, or going up through the walls (because inquiring minds wanted to know), and he said probably both. I envisioned waves of millipedes swarming up my staircases.

*Cringe*

And then he asked to see some of the millipedes - and naturally I was able to show him a little pile of dead 'pedes I had shoveled into the corner of the kitchen for just this occasion. I told him I hadn't seen a live one for a couple of days.

And he started treating and inspecting.

And almost immediately he found some live ones, crawling along the baseboard in the downstairs bathroom.

After about 30 minutes, he finished inside, and headed for the crawlspace.

About an hour later, he rang the doorbell, and told me he needed to show me something in the crawlspace.

*Cringe*. I avoid the crawlspace at all costs - it has a dirt floor, and is only 3 feet high, and has spiderwebs!

So I went no further than the door of the crawlspace, bravely sticking my head in as far as my shoulders would allow. The technician went about 15 feet in, and pointed to the 2 hoses which go from my A/C units across the floor of the crawlspace for about 35 feet, to where they enter the wall of the house. One of these hoses was sitting in a virtual river of water, which was actually pooled condensate, while the other one, which was only 4 inches away, was perfectly dry.

Although I couldn't see it from my spider-safe vantage in the doorway, the technician told me that the wet hose was covered in billions and billions of crawling millipedes - apparently attracted by the accumulated moisture. He said that while he had treated this area, and these millipedes would soon be dead, others would soon take their place unless the moisture was ultimately dealt with.

So I called the A/C folks, and they immediately came to the house (wow!) and diagnosed the problem as a failure of the hose's insulation, and replaced said insulation. And they also kept telling me over and over again that neither of them had ever, in all their years in this business, seen a situation where the insulation on the "line set" failed, condensation accumulated, and millipedes moved in.

When the pest control technician was finished, he came back into the house to explain all the chemicals he had used, and have me sign the paperwork, and while we stood in the hallway discussing it, we looked down and saw live millipedes crawling up the side of the couch, presumably to get away from the chemicals he had put down. So now I'm envisioning swarms of millipedes crawling up all my furniture.

But it has now been a week, and no sign of live millipedes.

When I came home from work on Friday I saw this dead roach on the carpet in the breakfast nook - but no more live bugs, and no further dead millipedes.

And we have a saying in the South: the only good roach is a dead roach.

So I have a good bit of housework to do - pulling out all the furniture, and vacuuming behind it, and in all the cushions - but I really believe the problem is solved. Yay!