Roses are blooming!

The most exciting thing ever! A stunning lot of almost 3.5cts of natural fancy color rose cut diamonds! Oooh! Oooh! Soon to be in my possession! Even at this moment, winging their way towards me. I can't wait to get them. I have been wanting to use this sort of stone for ages now, ever since I first saw them. And I finally found a Kimberly Process compliant supplier. Exciting! I have a ring carved in wax now, just waiting to be cast in 18kt yellow, one rose cut center stone, 8-10 white brilliant cut diamonds surrounding it. Can't wait until it is finished.

Question: What color of center stone should I use in the first ring of this style?

Big Move!

Yesterday I went to pick up the keys to the new studio. I can't move into it until Saturday (The Shop Monkey has been busy packing boxes and nagging me to make a u-haul reservation (which I did this morning!) An awesome brother of the Shop Monkey has volunteered (or rather, the Shop Monkey sort of voluntold him, but he was really super willing. I love the Shop Monkey and his family!) to help, which is going to make it all so much easier.)

The space was even better than I remembered. It's going to be great! I'm very excited to get in there and get everything reorganized. It's just a better space overall. More electrical outlets, more space, Pug friendly! I hope to stay here there for a couple of years until I buy a house and move my shop home.

Random picture of the day:

New Stuff:

Right now I'm in the process of designing a new ring that will incorporate rose cut natural color diamonds! So excited. I'm thinking a pink-red center rose cut, with 10 smaller white diamonds set around it. I can't wait until it is finished. I'm going to order rose cut diamonds today, I finally found a guy that sells Kimberly Process certified diamonds, so I'm excited to get them. I've been behind on my new designs, but I think I will be able to get some out really soon!

Working on the Weekend

is a really bad habit to get into. But this whole thing with the vacuum pump has made it necessary.



Because this stuff will try to kill me if it gets the chance:
I get to wear this nifty mask. The Shop Monkey thinks it's the coolest piece of equipment I own. I disagree because I am in love with my engravers block. (I don't do any engraving, I set stones using it.)
But check out this sweet mask! I sound like Darth Vader when I am wearing it.



T-minus 6 days until the big move. I'm reeeeaaaaallllllyyyyy not looking forward to packing up all this stuff:





You might be wondering, after seeing the massive horrible mess that my workbench is, how I get things to turn out looking like this:


And the answer is, I don't really know. I'm surprised myself most of the time. Since jewelery is so pristine and beautiful, I'm always shocked at how horrible it looks until the very last moment when it is cleaned and ready to be boxed. When I first started out, I despaired over every piece ever looking good until it had been cleaned in the end, and then I was always thinking "wow, I didn't think this would turn out at all". Now I know better, but I still find the level of dirtiness all the way up until the last moment surprising.

Okay folks, that's it for now. I want to get these two last pieces invested so I can go out on a date with the Shop Monkey. We are going to this thing called Eat Mobile, which is big food cart festival! I love me some street food, so this is going to be very exciting!

What does this:

Have to do with this?:

I can't really keep a secret. I'm terrible at it. Seriously, all you have to do is ask me and I will tell. (For personal secrets, I'm an unbreakable vault, but things like surprises and presents....it's like taking candy from a baby to get the secret out of me. But not like taking candy from me, since I will cut you if you try to take my candy and/or cake. If you think I'm joking, just try to get between me and a piece of pie.)

So here it is! The ring set from above is going to be in the Fall issue of Oregon Bride magazine! In a piece they called "Unveiled"! Awesome, right?!? I was pretty shocked when I got the email about it. They wanted to borrow the pieces for a photoshoot (a photoshoot!) and so I had to make a set up since I don't keep any on hand. But luckily enough, someone bought the exact set I needed to make and so I didn't have to waste any material making a set for the shoot (the shoot! it sounds so pretentious! I love it!).

So look for the issue in July (the fall issue comes out in July). I'll be in there somewhere, and when I say "I" I mean my jewelry. Fun fun!

Next post: Back to whinging about my casting woes. The vacuum machine hasn't been returned to me yet. (I had to send the whole machine to Oklahoma!), but I'm hoping it will get here on Wednesday. Gold stars for effort all around, especially to the Shop Monkey for being so helpful.

Moving Studio (again)

It seems like I just moved into my current studio (8 months ago), but I'm moving again at the end of the month. One of my current studiomates, Alisha Alderman of Alisha Louise Designs, just bought a house with her husband (Congrats!) and she is moving her studio to a home space. My other studio mate, Cheyenne Weil of Gin and Butterflies, is going to move with me to a new and larger space in a cool old industrial building nearby. She might eventually move to a home studio as well, but for now I'm lucky to have her around. The new space is pretty cool. I'm excited to see it when it isn't full of the icky and slightly creepy grubbiness of its current hipster occupier. I'm pretty sure we can make it look really nice, and their are several bonuses!

1) I can now bring the pugs to work. Yay!

2) There is garbage and recycling! Yay!

3) USPS delivers and picks up from the site. Sweet!

4) Fedex and UPS make regular deliveries there. Yay!

Soon this:

Will be combined with this:

To everyones great satisfaction.

p.s. ... ..... .....

I have some very exciting news! It will be revealed to the public in July, but I might be convinced to share here on the blog earlier! It's so exciting!

No Dice

It is 8 p.m.

I'm so frustrated, I can't even speak.

Unfortunately for me, the returned pump, which came late last week didn't solve the problem. It now pumps, but I can't get the proper vacuum level (which is 29.5 inches), I can only get 25-6. Which doesn't seem to be enough to make the investment boil. I'm going to have to try to invest and cast a few things (that are very late!) and see how that goes :-(. I'm not sure what will happen. At best I think there will be small air bubbles on the cast pieces which can then be removed physically. Nothing is really lacy or intricate, so that helps. At worst the molds will be weak and molten metal will burst through (!!!). I bought this machine brand new in October, so I'm pretty irritated that I'm having these issues with it already. The Shop Monkey is taking point on this and has been talking to Pepetools and Otto Frei. I'm hoping they will just send me a new machine. Anyhow, here are pictures of the molds I just invested, cross your fingers for me tomorrow, I'm hoping everything just turns out okay. As always, I'm not sure what I would do without my trusty Shop Monkey.

STUPID MACHINE.

Thank Goodness!

My vacuum pump has been repaired. I expressed payment for return shipping today and I'm hoping to have it back by Wednesday of next week. What a relief! Now things can proceed.

Some recent wedding orders:

Design Monday

You have to put it on paper when it comes to you. If you don't, you will most likely lose it. I don't know how many ideas I've had and lost because I was too lazy to find a pen and paper. Creativity is persistence, pure and simple.

When Things Don't Work Out

exactly as you plan them to.

Behold, readers! My busted, broke down vacuum table! Behold the gory insides of a normally smooth and blue machine of goodness. Oh, woe!

Thursday afternoon, I was preparing to invest some molds...

...when I flipped on the investment table and it made a funny noise and didn't work. Normally it is loud and noisy and you can hear the pumping action. But this time it just made a quite humming noise. I opened the hatch, to see if there was anything I could do, which of course, there wasn't. I cried a few tears and then called my Shop Monkey who assured me we could figure it out. So, I left for the evening. Molds uninvested, shop work at a standstill.

The next day, I called Pepetools and talked to Ed, their all around machine fixer superstar. Actually, I called him and heard a little of the instructions and promptly asked if my Shop Monkey (aka, my boyfriend) could call and get the instructions instead. Now, I am capable of fixing things, but I was also making chicken mole for a dinner party that night and I didn't have the time to dedicate to machine instructions. Plus I can't really tell my right from my left, and when I called the motor an engine, I think Ed lost a little bit of confidence in my abilities anyway.

So that afternoon, before the tostada dinner party at my house, we opened up the machine and followed Ed's instructions. And when I say we, I mean the Shop Monkey. He's an engineer after all.

We had to run to the hardware store 3 times (turns out that though I have a million and a half tools, none are suitable for taking machinery apart. Apparently you need a screwdriver, a crescent wrench, and hex things). We had to give up for the evening, since we had guests arriving and dinner wasn't fully prepared (I love crockpots, but they won't make salad and guacamole for you as well as chicken mole). But the next day we found out what the problem was:

The engine, oh sorry, I mean the motor, works just fine. But the pump is frozen (whatever that means).

So, tomorrow morning, bright and early, I will be shipping that square pump piece to Oklahoma for repairs. My casting equipment will be out of action for at least a week or two and I now have to write everyone who ordered things that need to be cast and let them know about the delay. This I dread. But it has to be done. But at least I will have time to carve all the waxes and casting will go quickly once the pump returns. Fingers crossed!

Doo Doot Doo Doo, Doo Doot Doo Doo....

If you couldn't tell by the headline, this post is about weddings (that's my version of the bridal march on a kazoo). Wedding season seems to be upon me, even before I recovered from the holidays properly. I've been desperately trying to get waxes carved for new designs, but I seem to be so caught up in making things that have already been ordered that I have no time for new things. I've made a resolution though, and that is that I will carve one wax (in order to cast it and then have a mold made of that design by people who know how to make molds....as I can't seem to cut a mold properly to save my life) each morning. This wax will be one of my current designs (i.e. the three stone, pebble rings, pebble ring squared) in several different sizes, until I have carved all of the current designs. Each week I will also carve one new design (from the many I have floating around in my head). I also got some cool new material that I think will figure greatly into my spring collection! I think I will have two "collections", just a regular spring 2010 collection, and also a weddings collection. I think I've mentioned it before, but I love wedding jewelry more than just about anything else (besides my pugs, that is).

Before I went on vacation I had a small tidal wave of wedding orders and I took some pictures of them some of them together.



I really liked this grouping since it represents the three types of stones I use most in my jewelry. Left to right: moissanite, diamond, white sapphire. The ring on the far right is the first one of that style that I've made in gold instead of silver, and I really liked how it turned out. I can't wait to see it in 18kt yellow (my personal favorite, and the ring on the far left is made of it).

I also experimented with ways to take photos of the ring on my hand, in order to show scale. This is how I normally do it:



But that morning I was feeling sassy, and decided to do a little photo shoot:




If you can ignore the crazy hair, I think it actually gives a better idea of size and what the ring will actually look like on, than the hand shot. What do you guys think? Since Etsy only lets you post 5 pictures, I'm not sure if want to use two of them to show the ring on the hand. I think people like photos of the item itself more, and I don't want to intrude onto their wedding ideation with a big picture of my face. You know what I mean?

Ok, enough of that. I'm hoping to be able to post about the new designs this week or next. But until then, here is a picture of me and the shop monkey on vacation!

When Bad Things Happen to Good Calipers

A Year Ago

A year ago this month, I screwed up my courage and put a few pieces of my work up for sale on Etsy. I had never really sold anything that I had made before, and for some reason I was terrified of what the faceless public would think. (This is also why I have never shown any of my other artwork.)

The first few months of business were gratifying. When I made my first sale (not including the first one from my sister!) I celebrated by taking my boyfriend (at the time) out for pho. But I am a perfectionist, and for these first few months I agonized over every piece and the wording of every email exchange. It quickly became overwhelming. I was so afraid that someone would receive a piece of jewelry and hate it (and by extension, hate me)! But as the wedding season approached I found that I had to let go of my perfectionism (to a certain extent...perfectionism can never really be cured) in order to deal with the volume of wedding jewelry I needed to make, and just trust that things would turn out all right (and if someone didn't like their jewelry, that was okay too...it didn't mean I was no talent hack who shouldn't be making rings...).

I still struggle with that. But for the most part I have learned to trust my skills and to believe in the quality of my jewelry. I've been helped in this by the incredibly kind support and enthusiasm of my customers. While dealing with people can sometimes be (extremely) frustrating, that is more than counterbalanced by how kind and supportive total strangers can be. Maybe I was jaded, but I didn't expect to find such a great crowd of people. They really just want you to see you succeed. It's crazy and awesome.

And now I just need to conquer my lack of organization. I have plans for this year that include a bunch of new designs and maybe placing some of my work in galleries or shops. But for now, as I sit at my desk in Portland, watching the pugs bask in front of the "fireplace" (i.e. this old school heater in the shape of a brick fireplace...yes, it is as awesome as it sounds), I can't help but feel grateful that this little venture of mine worked out so well. I truly am so thankful (and surprised) that people actually like the things that I make! (And now I just hope that they will keep liking it...will they like the new stuff just as much?!? What if I ruin things!? What if people stop liking what I make!?!?.....Onward 2010!)

Hammer textures

Hammer-cut and Driftwood with a high polish

 Driftwood with satin matte

Driftwood with satin matte

 

Driftwood with a high polish

Driftwood with a high polish

Water texture with satin matte

Water texture with satin matte

Hammer Cut with satin matte

Hammer cut with a high polish

Hello,

I am Mr Albert from UK i will love to purchase your item for my daughter as a new year present and i will love to purchase 1 unit and i will be paying via pay pal so send me your pay pal email address so i can send the payment to you immediately .also you can email me direct to my email : okoloalbert23 [!at] yahoo.co.uk .Thanks i await your mail

Hello There Seller

I got like 5 of these this morning:

Hello
There seller i was suffering before i came ac cross this classified site and i really have big interesting in ur item and immediately purchase of the item i will like to asked some question before i tell my client to go ahead for the payment .
But i want to ask this question,Are you the owner ?is it in good
condition?,can you tell me more about it ?and above all how much do you want to
sell and the last price you will be willing to sell it for me?
Am going to pay you with cashier check.
Try and send the information below
(1)full name.......
(2)contact address........
(3)phone number...
for further discussion .
Awaits your urgent response as soon as possible
for us to talk more extensively about this transaction
and u can reach me through this email address janet0111114 [!at] yahoo.com

It's terribly annoying and it makes me incandescent with anger that someone is out there fishing, trying to steal from from people. Seriously.

On the whole

I like my job pretty well. It gets kind of lonely working by myself, but I listen to a lot of NPR and books on tape and that seems to help. I also get a little stressed trying to answer everyone's emails and struggling to keep everyone's questions/requests/deadlines straight. (My new desk at home is really helping with that. I love this desk, I found it the other day on craigslist for 50 bones! Cheap! I love it so much I called my sister as I was driving away from the lady's house that I bought it from, giddy with excitement. I felt like a thief. I was so stoked that the conversation went something like this: "DESK!!!...Solid wood!....50!...Craigslist!!!! And now I'm doing it again on my blog...DESK!!!...Solid wood!....50!...Craigslist!!!!)

Okay, where was I?.....Besides being able to create things with my hands, and work for myself, the biggest benefit of my job is the opportunity to make things that other people use as symbols of their love for each other. I love making jewelry, but I LOOOOOVE making wedding jewelry. I can't wait until my friends start getting married! I hope some of them want me to make their rings.

I do a lot of womens rings, but I feel really super lucky when I get to make the male bands as well. And maybe something pretty for the lady to wear at the ceremony, like I got to do last month. A couple had ordered this ring months ago:

And then last month the future groom contacted me again about making his ring and a pendant for the bride:


It was so sweet. And I loved doing it. I really feel like I lucked into a job that lets me deal with people at one of the happiest points of their lives. I especially like it when people send me photos of their actual engagement! The huge smiles and obvious happiness is so touching, and that they thought to share it with me makes me grateful. I just have to think about that when the thought of sitting alone in my studio hammering away at something makes me not want to go to work. :-)

Slack-tastic

I'm sure you've heard of wicked stepmothers....but have you even heard of wicked stepdaughters? Because that is exactly what I am.


No, this is not one of mine. This is my stepmom's wedding ring. I've had this thing held hostage here in my studio for at least half a year. Leaving my poor mother wedding ring-less (or as she likes to call it "without her shackle"). Terrible. I've been wanting to size it up and put a new half shank on it. But when I got it sawed in two and prepared to solder on the new shank, it wouldn't solder, no matter what I tried. I think I am being too conservative with the heat because I am afraid of ruining something that has a lot of sentimental value. The ruby, in particular, worries me because it has inclusions. Which I think add to its loveliness, but they do make it more likely to crack when heat is applied. I think the stone will need to be removed. But I'm going to take it to someone who specializes in repairs, because I'm just too close to this thing. It's like a surgeon who can't operate on family (or something like that....).

Meanwhile, I couldn't leave my mom shackle-less, could I? And exposed to the advances of strange men at the grocery store? Not I! So I made her something pretty to wear while I get the ring repaired: