Thursday, July 30, 2009

New Designs! Coming soon!

Man! I am so excited! I have time today to do some work on my own projects...things I've been thinking about making forever. And the best part is that I'm going to make them in my size! Yay! I will finally have some of my own jewelry to wear. If it doesn't sell right away my sister generally makes off with it whenever she comes to visit. But who can say no to someone to who brings you this to squeeze:


The answer is that you can't. She takes anything she wants while I'm occupied snugging my niecette.

Ok, look for pictures and design sketches in the next few days!

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Burn Notice

So this post title is actually a double entendre. It seems like I moved to Portland just in time to die of heat stroke. It's is 104 degrees outside right now, and I have no AC. And I work with torch. It's fantastic!

And this, loyal readers, is photographic evidence of the first burn I have ever received in the course of my work (well, there was this one time that I dripped molten dop wax on my finger, but that doesn't count). This comes from pure foolishness on my part: I had used this thing called a third hand, which is basically a set of tweezers attached to an adjustable weighted base, to prop a ring up for soldering. Instead of picking up the third hand from the cool base part, I used another pair of tweezers (which I will talk about more later) to quench the piece of metal I was working. Then, moments later, I was clearing my workspace for another project when I grabbed the third hand to move it out of the way. With my bare hand. And since it hadn't cooled at all, it burnt the bejesus out of my grasping fingers. This is just the most visible evidence:

Not bad as burns go, but I won't be modeling rings on that hand any time soon.


A pictorial day in the life:

let the pugs out in the morning before the back yard becomes a blazing pit of heat

coffee!

emails, quotes, general questions

figure out what is on the agenda for the day

survey the wreckage of my kitchen table. the larger the horizontal surface the messier it gets.

The supplies cabinet. Which right now is making all of my supplies smell like an 80 year old woman with an addiction to avon perfume and nicotine. hence the can of kilz primer and odor blocker sitting in front of the printer. I love this cabinet, I bought it on craigslist, but the smell was driving me cra----zeee.

Now a little game I like to call find the tweezers, preferably played while you have a live torch in your hand. There are two pairs in there, can you find them?

Recent variations:

gold on gold, citrine and 14kt

ruby, sapphire, silver


My lovely friend Kellie, modeling the new bangles. Of course she got to take that set home for her troubles.

An oldy but a goody.

Multistone rings.

New eternity band shape.


Since the move, I've lost my white windowsill that I used to photograph on, so I got this little decorative piece of ceramics. But I wonder if it is too distracting?


Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Moving Accomplished!

Ok, I have finally unpacked and organized enough to have the time to post here. The move went really well. Thanks to all who wished me luck! I'm certain it helped!

I was thinking this morning about how much I love my job. I love it. And what I am loving most right now is my customers. They have been so awesome lately. So nice and supportive and just cool in general. It's amazing how kind strangers can be, I never thought that making jewelery would increase my belief in the goodness of humankind, but it really has. Maybe it is just the community on Etsy, but the vast majority of the people I interact with everyday are super positive. It great to be around that sort of energy, positive and excited. I think it might also be that I do a lot of wedding jewelry. It's been my experience that people who are getting their wedding jewelry are at a happy stage in their life and it's a blessing to me to be able to share in that excitement. Really. It's been so great. I just want to put a thank you out to all those couples that chose singleB for their wedding jewelry! I'm honored.