Conquered platinum, but shortly thereafter melted into a puddle

Dearest readers.  I am hot.  But I love it.  I would rather be hot than cold any day.  At least in the heat your muscles can relax.  Cold just ties me into knots.

So, I finally finished my first project in platinum.  See below:

I don't know why I was so reluctant to start making things in platinum.  It just seemed intimidating for some reason.  I remember when I first opened up shop.  I had so little experience!  It is shocking when I look back on it.  I was so nervous about EVERYTHING.  Everything was a cause for worry.  There was just so much I didn't know (it's still that way, incidentally) and it made it hard to know what to expect.  I like to know what to expect.  I'm not a nervous person, not at all.  But I NEED to know what to expect, even if it what to expect is bad and hard and intimidating.  As long as I have a general idea of how it will go, I'm fine.   

Anyhoo, I shouldn't have been nervous.  It was bit harder to finish (i.e. polish), but the stone setting was very similar to palladium.  I really liked the color as well.  It was very white, and the weight!  I love the weight of platinum.  I'm toying with making this ring in platinum for my wedding band:

All right, I think I need to wrap things up here, Mr. Gunter is trying to give me a hint about his needs and desires:

(That is the door that he is leaning against.  Subtle, very subtle.)


p.s.  I had my first fitting for my wedding dress yesterday (I'm having it made by a Cambodian tailor).  It is going to turn out fantastic.  Almost exactly what I was picturing!  It's a bit excessively pretty, pretty princess, but I'm throwing caution to the wind (along with my radical feminism, apparently).

Jewelry maker finds it hard to return to work, decides to read a fantasy novel instead

Damn you George R.R. Martin.  I might be able to make a living if you didn't write such beguiling tales of epic/tragic heroism.

So, I am finally back into the swing of things, having just finished the newest Martin book.  Yes, I'm a huge and geeky fan.  Luckily, I'm also a quick reader, so when I fall into a fantasy induced stupor it doesn't last very long (I think bought it on Sunday, finished it last night.  I can't believe it!  So and so can't be dead!)  I think I might start from the beginning (again).  Or maybe I should save that for the month before the 6th book comes out. (Unrelated, but was anyone else terribly disappointed by the final Harry Potter?  What a let down.)

All right.  This is what I've been meaning share with you all:

In case you were wondering

I enjoyed my vacation.

I think I will schedule one for every two or three months.  I just feel so much more positive about my life and my job after having a bit of a break from both.

Pictures of Hands

pebble ring

palladium and moissanite hatshepsut

three stone ring stack

spring evening pink gold solitaire

I love it when people send me a photo of their rings! It's awesome to see what I've made on someone else's hand (instead of my own, which can get pretty boring).  I also have pictures of smiling couples, which is also super awesome.  But hands are more anonymous and most people probably don't want me to give their image to the internets for all eternity.  But I LOVE getting them all the same.

I promised

pug photos, and I have to deliver.

I took this epic series of photos of Dieter a couple of weekends ago at the coast. I love the Oregon coast more than any place on earth (except for the Oregon countryside and Oregon forests and rivers. I pretty much love all of Oregon. With a passion. And I have to admit that I am pretty happy that the dismal, gray, depression inducing weather keeps the population down.)

(This is what the sky looks like 3/4 of the year, so

just keep that in mind when you are thinking of

moving here. I've seen the Oregon winter break

people and send them scurrying back to drier climes.

Hehehehe.)

This is what Dieter looks like when he is trying to get up to full speed. He's adorable. And he has to be, since he is also incredibly evil.

Gunter has three great loves: eating (obviously), fetching (as he is getting ready to do here), and staring lovingly at me (at least I think that is what he is doing, maybe he is just thinking about how succulent I would be roasted with an apple in my mouth).

Why so many pictures of Dieter? Has he displaced Gunter as the Tiny Pug Dictator of your heart? No, he is just more photogenic, plus he is around to take photos of. Gunter is usually off in the distance, chasing down his Evil Cuz toy (see the 4th picture down, upper left hand corner).

Dieter likes to eat sand. Gunter likes to dig in the sand. It is a symbiotic relationship. Gunter digs and Dieter stands behind him eating the sand chunks that land nearby.

Okay, I realize this is a pug heavy blog post. But they are irresistible and if you only knew how many photos I didn't post. They make my day, every day. (Geez, lady, get a grip.)

This is ostensibly a jewelry blog, so here is the requisite photo of jewelry.

I finished that pink gold solitaire yesterday and I absolutely love the combination of the pink gold and the diamond, which is K color. I've decided that K color diamonds are my favorite. So colorful. (I also love stacking jewelry together, it makes me feel as though I've accomplished something).

I've been debating whether or not I should get back into the eternity ring business. I put it on hiatus because I was finding them to be a huge pain in the tuchus, but I think I've perfected them now and I might be ready to sell them again.

Shows over folks, move along

No, not really. But that is sort of how I felt when I finished my engagement ring the other day. I don't know why. I seriously wondered if I would now completely lose my urge to make jewelry after I had made my own ring. Luckily that wasn't the case. :-)

I can't explain how nervous I was making this ring, especially setting the stone. It was crazy. I'm not a nervous person, so the feeling was a novel one. I hope it doesn't stick around.

I went this route because I wanted to wear a single ring and because I have gigantic ogre hands and wanted something substantial. Plus, it just sort of appeared in my head like this, and it felt like something I would be happy with in the long term. I'm easily bored with jewelry, so I needed to make a piece that would withstand my fickleness. I have one pair of earrings that I've never gotten tired of, I made them a thousand years ago and they are still my favorite. White faceted agate drops with two disks of turquoise stacked above. Super simple, but I looooooove them. And I needed to looooooove this. And I do. It feels like a piece of German engineered machinery. It feels like sunken treasure.

I totally crack myself up. While I want to share my ring with people, I also feel incredibly uncomfortable at the same time. I feel like it is bragging, I feel like I'm showing off. It seems a little gauche (man, I love that word). I just can't get too serious about the whole thing. It all seems sort of silly (I also feel this way about wedding dresses. But I'm going to be wearing a ruffled, pretty pretty princess dress, so I am a total mental hypocrite!). But then again, this is what I do for a living so I guess I get a pass? Plus, wedding rings are pretty, and I find them all interesting to tell the truth. I always find myself looking at hands when I am out and about.

(Mental process going on in the photo: okay, how do I get my hand in the shot without looking awkward. Just sort drape it across your chest. Like this. No. Like this. Just Look Natural. Okay. Too obvious. Relax your fingers. This looks dumb. Go with it.)

All right! Have a wonderful weekend. I plan on posting pug photos next week. We had an epically good trip to the coast the other weekend and I have to share a few of the best shots. Pugs are awesome. And so are giant gold rings. :-D

What to do when you are flagging..

What do you do when you are flagging? Because I have been flagging left, right, and center over here at the studio. Here I am, living the dream, and I'm still struggling to appreciate it. What is my deal? I ask you, what is my deal?!? It has even been sunny outside!

I'm think I'm suffering from a lack of motivation. A stifling malaise. I love my job, but I'm feeling lackluster right now and I need to figure this problem out in order to make my job sustainable mentally. The only way is to keep on keeping on! Coming up with new stuff. New stuff is the exciting stuff! To be honest, I really just want to make more earrings...I loooove earrings. But people don't seem to want to buy earrings (why is that? or am I wrong?). And often the earrings I want to make take too long to be economically feasible. Maybe I'm reading this wrong, or maybe I haven't made the right earrings, but they don't seem to be good sellers. But I want to be trying new things, in different ways and earrings have been calling to me. I have been very focused on trying to get myself to a certain level of quality for what I make, but I have lost sight of making new things, maybe imperfect things. I really like perfection, almost to the point of folly. I need to let that obsession go in order to move forward.

I don't really make earrings to sell in my shop, for various reasons. I generally make earrings as gifts, usually the day the gift is to be gifted. And I'm always in a rush, so I never take photos of these experiments. So I have no record of my random creations, and I think I like it that way. Maybe. My obsessive side wishes I had multiple photographs from every angle of everything I've ever made. But sometimes a candid mobile phone shot is even better:

BFF in B-day earrings

On an unrelated note, my engagement ring is almost finished. The casting turned out gorgeous! So yellow! So chunky....solid. That's all I'm going to say for now. It's super solid.

Side Views

I've got it! I've got it!

Finally! I've decided what to do for my engagement ring! There was this super spectacular recycled diamond available a few weeks ago, and I snapped it up. It's freaking gorgeous! It arrived last week, and I've been taking it out and admiring it every day. .87ct, VVS2, K color! Lovely, lovely! I wasn't sure what to expect in terms of the color, since it is "lower" down on the color spectrum, but I think I'm in love. There is nothing super yellow about, it is just darkly sparkly. I'm not sure how else to explain it. I plan on setting it in 18kt yellow (what else?).

I've also decided on a design for the actual ring. But I will save that for another post!

Tax Day

Let me just give all of you reading out there a little bit of friendly advice:

MAKE SURE YOU PAY THE CORRECT AMOUNT OF ESTIMATED TAXES EVERY QUARTER.

If you just do that you will have a relatively painless tax day. If you do not, you might find yourself wandering around the natural foods grocery store with a dazed expression, trying and failing to soothe the sting caused by writing ginormous checks to the IRS with a cup of coffee and a chocolate cookie, at a loss as to whether new burt's bees lip balm will make you feel better (hint: it won't). Oh well.

So this morning, when my car didn't start (yay!!) and I was waiting around for my future father in law to come and rescue me, I was reading this (another only semi-successful retail therapy purchase):

Toward an Art History of Medieval Rings

Tell you what, I love that title, that's fo'sho. My jewelry and design related book collection is gradually growing. There is little that I like more than a glossy book filled with photographs of things made with gold and accompanied by much small print. Seriously. And this book is especially nice. There are photographs from many different angles! Even from the bottom and back! (Not on everything, but enough to make it very exciting.) Most of the time jewelry books don't provide multiple angles, with the result that it is hard to tell how something is put together. What use is one gorgeous photograph from the most artistic possible angle, if it hides how the thing is constructed? No use, that's what. I want the nitty gritty. I want to see how the bezel is attached to the shank, I want to know what these medieval goldsmiths did and how they did it.

And this (!!!!!):

ZOMFG!

That is a sword hilt made of diamonds. Holy sh*t. The skill! The skill!! The size of those rocks. But mostly the skill! The beauty of the design! I love the three curves that arc over the largest cushion/round shaped diamond in the hand guard section. Maximizing a simple design with tons of bling. Gorgeous. (This isn't from the medieval ring book, btw, this is from something else, snapped a quick picture at Powell's Books.)

oh, oh, oh!

Will I ever be this skilled? No. Probably not. I'm sure this guy spent his entire life from the age of 8 on as an apprentice. And this was probably made by a whole shop of people anyway, each doing a certain part of the process that they specialized in. But I can dream. I can dream.

9:00 in the A.M.

Ladies and gents, I accomplished the impossible today. I arrived in the studio at 9:05am. I don't know why it is such a struggle for me to get out of bed (it's really not even the getting out of bed, it is the getting around and dressing and eating and getting out of the door that is the hard part for some reason). But I did it!! I made it! And I think I can keep it up. Now that I'm no longer living in a Shadowland (i.e. the NW during the winter) I have much more motivation for full days and lots of work (and working out! I have to tackle the results of all that winter cake eating!).

And why would I be compelled to attempt this feat of early morning (I realize 9am isn't early, I used to have to get up at 3am to get to work when I was in the Navy) bravery?! To finish these:

It really took me forever to get this finished. I think I had the wax kicking around forever, and then the cast pieces kicking around for another forever. But they are finally done. I think I will do some adjusting to the design and maybe some other variations. I just wish I had made them in my size!

I really like how they can be worn more ways than one. These photos aren't ideal, the light right now isn't the best. And I don't have a solitaire on hand to photograph them with. They look really nice facing out from either side of a simple solitaire, very lacy.

All right! I'm forcing myself to pack up and head home early today. Cheers!

A possible?

I'm still struggling with my own wedding ring, but I finished this set the other day for someone else (it is actually a complete set, solitaire, woman's wedding band, man's wedding band) and I liked them all together. I love the chunkiness. Of course, I will probably go with yellow gold, but it sure looks nice in the palladium.

I also like the idea of wearing just a super wide plain band for some reason. A bit ironic for someone who uses stones in almost everything she makes?

But I love shiny things (almost) as much as I love cake with cream cheese frosting, so I'm not absolutely sure I would be happy with just a big fat band. But maybe I would be? And then maybe I could make myself an outrageous pair of diamond earrings? I'm excited to make something for myself, I think I have 4 things total. A couple of pairs of earrings (one set an experiment), a necklace made of scrap metal, and my current engagement ring(s). Oh, and some bangles (a return from a customer who wanted a larger size). Sad? But I actually don't wear that much jewelry (more irony?), so I'm not complaining (too much).

All right, I'm starting to ramble and I should probably get back to work now. That way I can go home early. Tonight is burrito night!