Hard at it.

What a week!  Churning out the jewellery like never before!  Phew!  The Folk Festival is coming up, and we're fitting in a wee camping jaunt before that, so the pressure is on!  I've made some exciting new pieces in the Crystalline Cabachon series, and I've got another series that I think I'll call Investment Properties (oooo...the mystery....). Both will make their public debut at my booth at the Folk Festival.  I also managed to finish up a commission that I've been working at for some time.  Sense of accomplishment is running high right now, and yet I still see miles to go before I sleep!  I will be filing and polishing silver at the campsite I do believe!  One thing that's made life easier is the arrival of my new mini drill press.  A gorgeous little machine that makes the delicate operation that is drilling 20 or 22 gauge holes much less back-breaking. (See first image: back-breaking, second image: aah, not back-breaking!) She is Chinese, so the language barrier upon our introduction was amusing.  Some snippets:
"It is of novel design, small and exquisite bulk, handy carry.  The cent of product has no class to adjust soon with single soon two kinds."
"It for bids to wear gloves, do not bare the body not knot tie while operating."
"The operation please read the manual before."

And the garden is once again holding her own.  It took years, but finally I can let it do its thing, while I do mine.  Still some gaps to fill in, but for the most part, at most times of the summer, there's a blooming jungle out there.

Crystalline Collaboration

Friday and Saturday at Alexis Templeton's studio were great fun.  She had made a selection of porcelain cabochons and glazed them in crystalline glazes.  What precious little gems!  The jewellery process is slow going and challenging when I was working from a portable kit of tools, so I didn't create masses of new pieces in the two days we spent together, but the exchanging of ideas was very fruitful, and was aided no doubt by the decadent chocolates she sells - oh divine!  I am excited about the continued development of this collaboration, with new shapes of cabochons depicting the night sky over mountains, and the perfecting of the frosted look of the glaze on the wee pieces of clay.  Now that I'm back in my own studio, the jewellery designs to compliment the clay pieces can be more substantial, and incorporate more silver.  My wee torch just couldn't tackle all the grand ideas I had in my head at Alexis'!  So we'll see where this all leads, but it sure is exciting to have put two heads together and come up with a focus for a new line of jewellery that incorporates such beautiful pieces of glazed clay.  There is nothing quite like crystalline!  Thank you to Alexis for inviting me to share in this project, and to everyone who stopped by the open studio to see what we were up to!  Stay tuned for more!

See How it's Made

Well the weeks do fly by!  The Annual Member's Exhibit is up and looks fabulous, as does the exhibit in the Annex Gallery: Flourish, an exhibition of Aboriginal Craft.  Be sure to drop in to Devon House and have a peek.
This week I've been absorbed with finishing a commission.  A bit of sculpture, not jewellery, though I did use sterling silver.  It is interesting how the challenges of working on a small scale morph into different challenges when working on a larger scale.  Some things are easier, but other things are a whole lot harder!  Like soldering larger sheets of silver!  It was all my torch could manage to get the heat high enough for the solder to flow.  I'm pleased with the end result and once my customer has seen the finished product, I will post a photo.

 

So now what's this image at the very top of this post about, you say?  Well, that's my next endeavor!  I'm collaborating with Alexis Templeton (that's her gorgeous plate, above) on a crystalline cabochon jewellery project on July 8th and 9th at her studio.  The link to the event is here: http://www.seehowitsmade.ca/avalon.html  Alexis makes the most exquisite crystalline glazes and she's invited me to her studio for this collaboration.  She will make porcelain clay cabochons, glaze them in the crystalline glaze, and I will set them in jewellery.  Neat eh?  I'm so excited about the possibilities of crystalline glazes alongside silver, copper, and brass!  I'm imagining brooches and pendants mostly but it's all a grand experiment, so we'll see what evolves.  Alexis' studio is located at 75 Quidi Vidi Road and we'll be there all day Friday and Saturday, so please drop by and say hello!  http://www.alexistempleton.com/