Guess what I did for over 5 hours last night and will be doing again for several hours this afternoon?

Tumbling my new jewelry components!

My partner and I bought a new magnetic centrifugal tumbler, which is supposed to tumble more quickly and efficiently than the rotary tumblers.  My partner thought it might be possible that using the two tumblers consecutively might eliminate the need for wire-brushing freshly kiln-fired pieces – a tedious and sometimes hand-scraping painful necessity to creating silver clay jewelry.  She tried a combination of an hour in the rotary tumbler (half- hour for pieces with stones embedded), followed by an hour in the magnetic tumbler.  Her pieces came out with a mirror finish – no brushing!

So last night I brought the tumbler to my house and tried it, having prepared the night before by tumbling all my pieces in the rotary tumbler for an hour.  Considering that I had 125 grams worth of pieces that could not be tumbled all at once this took several hours.  I was very excited pulling the first group of pieces out of the magnetic tumbler (which I set for an hour).  Sure enough, the stoneware finish was eliminated.  However, my pieces were still fairly matte.  So they went in the rotary tumbler again for a third tumbling.  Then I tried another group of pieces, less this time, for 90 minutes.  Still matte, but better.  Next group – 14 pieces instead of 16 (about 20 the first group), for 90 minutes – still matte but better than the second group.  Lastly (although I still have more to do) I tried 10 pieces for 100 minutes and those came out fairly shiny, but I still wouldn’t call it a mirror finish.

This morning I put in 10 more pieces and set the timer for 120 minutes.  My husband is home sick for the day so I felt confident in leaving the tumbler going when I left for work.  I really hope that this time I get a mirror finish but I’ll have to wait until I get home this afternoon to see.

My partner used a particular type of dish soap in the tumbler that I am going to borrow to see if the soap I’m using is a factor in not getting a mirror finish.  All this tumbling is taking a ridiculous amount of time but it does eliminate the need for brushing, which I hate, so its worth it.  Right?

I’ve ordered new business cards which I’m very excited about.  I’m pretty much out of the old ones, which had an embarrassing old photo (from one of my first photography sessions).

Here’s my new one:

Front of card

Here’s the back:

back of card

I’m excited and I can’t wait to get them!  I can’t wait to hand out the first one!

Our booth design has been evolving over the last few years, here is an old booth shot (from an indoor show):

From 2007 Frosty's Fair

The silhouette is my partner in jewelry.  Last year, we decided to move to shelving for the most part and this is what we slapped together:

From 2009 Downtown DC Holiday Market

Better right?  Cleaner, easier to see, easier to navigate, but very busy, and the bamboo blinds as a backdrop didn’t work as well as we had envisioned.

For Arts On Foot we had a little more time to plan and decide how we wanted to present ourselves.  We had to change some things a little bit but overall how we planned it was how it looked:

From 2009 Downtown DC Holiday Market

The green is really fresh looking and the dark espresso brown is a nice accent and combination with it.  Our silver pops nicely against both colors, which is nice.  It’s really hard to find a color that works for silver jewelry.  We got rid of the large table in favor for a much smaller one just big enough for our mirror, business cards, mailing list book, and my humongous laptop, which we use to process credit card sales.  We incorporated two “pedestals” fashioned from stools with trays velcroed to the tops for our pendants.  Overall, the booth was much cleaner and easier on the eyes, and there was little of the dreaded “butt brush issue”.

So, after an afternoon and evening of escalating aggravation I finally was able to tumble one load.  Bleah.

That load was in the tumbler for over 2 hours and it wasn’t nearly as shiny as I would’ve expected.

Tonight I have two loads ready to go but I still have more that I have to brush – its going to be a looooooooong night…

Bummer.

Anyway, I got everything fired last night.  200 grams of clay (minus a few pieces – probably about 25 grams worth) in only 3 firings!  I was impressed that I was able to fit so much onto one fire brick at one time.

And I got my least favorite part of the process over with (the sanding and filing – which I dislike because it is tedious, but also for the reason stated above).

Tonight?  My second least favorite part – brushing.  Then?  Tumble-a-thon!  Yay!  I love tumbling my new pieces because when they come out of the tumbler they are so sparkly and beautiful.

Tomorrow?  Actually making jewelry out of these new pieces!  Whoo hoo!

birds and butterfly necklace components

I’ve been going through a bird phase ever since last fall – I can’t help myself, I love them!

necklace components and one bracelet set

My new favorite though are these peacock feathers! I may have to keep one of them… There’s a nice deep blue sapphire in the eye of the feather on the right.  I’ve also really been excited about geometric shapes lately and I did a whole series of them for necklaces and earrings.  The three oval bracelet components in the lower right corner of the above photo are textured with my piped silver design as shown but on the back they are textured with the spiral texture that you see in the rectangle components to the left of them.

butterflies and flowers

geometric shapes

modern Etruscan shapes for necklace

modern embellished Etruscan shapes for necklace

These elements are finished on the other side with my piped silverwork (like the oval bracelet components).

square elements for necklace (with tanzanite)

These elements are textured with a paisley pattern on the reverse side.

I’ve also made 65 new pairs of earrings in similar motifs and I have sanded and filed over half of them (43 pairs). Tonight I hope to fire at least two loads and finish firing tomorrow. Then I will tumble everything during the rest of the week and begin making actual jewelry out of these components over the weekend.

mehndi teardrop amulet necklace

This is one of my amulet necklaces – I choose a selection of items in a motif that tell a little “story”… maybe it’s a color story or a story about geometry… this particular necklace is an exotic story!  I set a marquis faceted blue sapphire into the fine silver clay and fired it in place and wrapped a sky blue zircon at the top.  I accented both little silver drops with a deep blue kyanite briolette.  I love the royal colors of the blue with the exotic design.

Oval Lily Cluster Necklace

This necklace has my favorite little “flip flop” mini cornflake keishi pearls in an unusual shade of baby blue.  Mixingcolors with these pearls was challenging as the shade of blue has a subtle cast of green in it but it didn’t go with my usual blue/green stones that I tend to favor when I make things for myself.  I used chalcedony and iolite in the necklace and in the cascade I used additionally some gray sapphire and mystic blue quartz.

Granulated Disc Necklace

Do you ever make something and think “I hope this doesn’t sell because I want it”? That’s the case with this necklace I made two years ago.

spiral textured oval earrings with quartz briolette

I made a series of these, from which I was going to make a bracelet, but then the show I was at, which was multiple days, I was selling out of earrings and I didn’t have any more fired pieces that I could make earrings for so I scratched my bracelet idea and decided to make multiple pairs of earrings instead – so now I have 4 pairs of earrings made from these little spiral textured ovals. I do think that they are pretty cute!

Take a gander at these and tell me what you think! Can you guess what I used as a background?

Alexandrite Star Earrings

The photo does not do justice to the amazing color of these alexandrite stones (lab grown) – a vibrant purple with shots of teal blue!

Sapphire Star V-Wire Earrings

These limpid blue sapphires are amazing and I never get tired of using them when I can get my hands on them. Its a pain to set the v-wires, especially when I’m also setting a stone, but I think that the overall effect is worth it for these earrings.

Peridot Sheild V-Wire Earrings

Don’t you love trillions? The shape is a little challenging to work with but they sparkle so beautifully!

Green Amethyst Lily Cluster Earrings

I accented this Asian-inspired lily cluster with full round-cut pale sage green amethyst (prassiolite) briolettes.

Victorian Double Peridot Earrings

I cast these earrings from a fragment of a mold that I made of a Victorian-era stick pin. I found these large, clear, sparkly peridots at a recent gem show and thought that this shape, along with the smaller peridots set them off nicely.

Victorian Peridot Button Earrings

I cast these earrings from one of my favorite molds that I made of a Victorian-era button. I love the rough edges – they give sort of an artifact-y feel to the earrings.

Dainty Flower Earrings

Sweet little flowers for dainty ears!

Aqua Chalcedony Briolette Earrings

I call this spectacular cut of briolette “pyramid” because I can’t figure out what else to call them. Shades of blue-green (or green-blue) are my favorite and this shade of chalcedony has a wonderful “glow from within” effect. I felt that these needed no further adornment.

Rose Quartz Pointer Briolette Earrings

Another pair of briolettes with no need for further adornment from my stash of uniquely cut beads. These rose quartz briolettes are so beautifully faceted and they also have that “glow from within” quality that the chalcedony does. I have a matching pendant necklace (slightly larger) so perfectly cut that it could be used as a pendulum.

This is just a small portion of the photos that I’ve taken recently. I will post more later.

http://www.nctimes.com/news/national/article_c81ea644-6c23-5ed9-b51d-4655bbd0ddd4.html

In addition to our pure silver jewelry we will be introducing our new work in bronze and copper and showing a selection of our Christmas ornaments in the new materials.