Friday, February 6, 2009

After Despair, Triumph

Man, I had a bad evening last night. After my two sales (!!!), the first to people who are not related to me, I pushed my luck and tried to make something new. Problem was, I hadn't really thought about what I was doing and ended up with this:


That, my friends, is a broken piece of quartz. It had been a beautiful checkerboard cut 10mm stone. Very nice and sparkly. I had meant to make it into a fun cocktail ring. But I ended up working all day on other things. And then when I finally started this particular project, I was already tired and distracted. My other key mistake was not to sit down and draw out the piece first. Never again! So I stressed and strained, trying to make something work that was ill-conceived and never going to work in the first place. And then crack! Game over.

And the worst part? I was so tired and hungry and cranky I couldn't enjoy my pho and avocado milkshake with Andreas later that night. (We had a deal that I would take him out for pho when I made my first sale.)

But I still thought that the concept was good. I had made a much smaller version while I was in school and I think I just over shot the mark by trying to use such a large stone (10mm is huge!).

So I went back to the drawing board and adjusted a few things. I cut the size of the stone down to 5mm and changed the gauge of the wire I was using. This afternoon I finally was successful!



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