Stumbling Down Memory Lane

As of late I have been helping to clear out the house in preparation for some improvements, which leads to finding all sorts of old crap like my old Tamagotchi with, oddly, it's instuction manual too. Turns out you could actually pause those things. But, I also found a whole trove of my old jewelry stuff from high school and since I haven't posted recently, you guys get an extra long post with more images then my internet can handle!

The class began with practicing bending wire, the first two follow patterns the teacher had laid out and the third one was me messing around.

This was the actual project to build off the wire practice. I remember choosing the treble clef pattern just because I needed a larger curving and swooping element to be visually larger and contrast with the chain. I put in the jade bead just because I found it in the classroom and liked it, and I also remember coiling wire on round pliers and flattening them to make my chain links.

We then learned how to saw and thus I made this cuff bracelet, everyone thought I was nuts back then; I was only dissapointed that I had to scale it down from interlocking octagons to interlocking squares. Thankfully I'm much more accurate with a saw blade now.

In between projects I discovered classic Doctor Who (before it was called classic) and plowed through most of the Fourth Doctor episodes. Here's the tardis key from that era and I assure you I made it completely accurate front and back with three layers of sweat soldered sheet metal.

Now here's where things get confused, since I've forgotten which order the projects were outside of them being done in the last half of my senior year. The center ring I do know I made ealier that school year, and have always wanted to remake it in sterling silver.

Aaah! its a flock of old dudes attacking. I blame anime (in some obtuse way) for making my old man winter here. The left one was some sort of texture sample; don't bother looking at it larger there's hardly any on it. The right image is more old men heads this time thickly cast in pewter via a plaster mold.

On the bright side I cast this letter opener handle in pewter as a present for my Mom, and it turned out suprisingly ergonomic as a bonus.

These are little frog charms if you ask me and they are tribal women if you ask my old jewelry teacher. But I still cast them using the cuttlefish method, resulting in the funky layered texture.

My first encounter with acid etching ended in a double sided pendant partially eaten away. Never futz with the stength of the acid while your piece is still in it.

Enameling was rougher, my sample piece attests to it. Like most of my other enamel attempts it got overbaked in the kiln but my actual project worked out fine.



Hence, a parroty bird thing and a Buddha I never finished and never could quite figure out what to do with.

The title is Cat Book. Why? Because a bird has landed on an open book about cats and it snapped shut, catching the bird.

I know for sure this is the last jewelry project of high school because it was the bubble wand project! This actually worked fairly well when I tested it on the last day of class and always a fun way to end a class.



I hope you enjoyed this trapse through my high school jewelry class and all the bizzare things I was apparently thinking about back then; going from music to Doctor Who to old men to frogs, parrots, and cats. Digging up this stuff was fairly informative for me: it confirmed my suspicions that I have gotten worse at soldering and better at sawing since then. It also rubbed it in how I was able to crank out more pieces a year than I currently can. Ah well live and learn I suppose? Toodles!

Summer Wrap Up

So as this first semester of junior studio closes there some final remarks to say. Firstly, as far as I know both of my pins in the charity sale sold and the entire event raised around $7,000 for Japan according to here! Yay! I'm hoping to make more Link-a-Dink pins for the December sale over the summer since that one was gone before I got to the sale. Gone at opening bell = popular, right?

Since I'll be home for the summer, my blog activity might taper off a bit with an internship in the wings, but there will be more other artistic and design things posted; like sketches, paper crafts, and what little jewelry things I can do at home, such as my nefarious plans for this brass tree trunk that once had asteroid leaves:

Muh, ha, ha, ha, ha, my plans for it are a secret, but it's too cool to waste an object like this. If I'm not careful it might turn into next semester's theme despite my plans to make more wearable objects. The only guarantee is that it's bound to be a long crazy summer, and I'll need a vacation from the vacation by the end of it!

Artifacts From The Future!

So I recently noticed a running sub theme to all my projects this semester in jewelry, namely that they are all things from the future, in addition to being science fictiony. First there's the tiara who's basic story hasn't changed,

But now we have the trophy wifes golden nugget "Asteroid Fields Forever" necklace, you know the one she wore to her tycoon husband's party in 2093 celebrating the new asteroid he found to mine for unobtainium,

(Yes I am slightly disappointed in how it came out too but que sera, the lesson is learned but the damage is irreversible?)

And to top it off we have the vintage from the year 3063 finger piano made by "Starburst Instruments, Neptune"

It actually sounds quite melodic; a lot better than the tinny video I have of me wailing on it it here,

So until later enjoy these aritfacts from the world of tommorow... today?

Cram Crammity Cram Cram

The semester's winding down so its one final push to get all the pieces done for Monday's critique at the unholiest of exam times, 7:40 in the morning. Here's some pictures of the current state of things:

The kalimba looked like this when I went to go work in the studio at 3:00 and after some funky soldering setups later...

I had these at 9:00 when I decided I couldn't take it anymore and left:

Now Veronica, you may be asking, what's with this boring picture of mostly wire? there's nothing going on in it! To which I say oh ho! you are wrong for there is a metric ton of stuff going in in this picture! Let me articulate you for my master plan! Tomorrow I will:

• Get up at 8:00 (optimistically).
• Actually get up at 9:00, maybe.
• Get breakfast and got to the store for hydrogen peroxide.
• go to the studio and begin stringing the asteroids on to the necklace, bending the now hardened wires, cleaning, and correcting drill holes as I go.
• soldering the end cap asteroids on to the wires, then preparing a solution of hydrogen peroxide and pickle to take off the copper plating our regular pickle always leaves behind. (Remember no steel in the pickle, kids!)
• Then I will keep hammering my piece of steel music wire flat and eventually cut it to make keys for the kalimba.
• The kalimba itself needs a lot of clean up still to make it nice, shiny, and excess solder free.
• Attach the keys and adjust them so they are sort of in tune.
• Go home.

So there's a lot to get done tomorrow not to mention yet another final paper to worry about, so I shall now leave you with this thought: kalimbas are also called finger pianos and I've unintentionally made mine in the shape of a grand piano. Irony.

Student Charity Sale

On this Friday, May 6th Buffalo State College is having an Art Sale to raise money to benefit the victims of the Japanese earthquake. I took some time off of building asteroids and musical instuments to make some pins specially for the sale!

Facebook Event Page here.

Here are the two pins I've donated to the sale:

This one is titled Link-a-Dink, is made of brass, and is $24.

This pin is called Melty, and is in brass and copper, priced at $18. As you can tell, it looks good in any orientation as does Link-a-Dink.

Besides my work, everyone should come out if they can to support Japan and our great student artists, I know that Pei-Chen Wu has donated earrings (and possibly some of her famous lacquer-ware) for the sale as well as John Harris who has many delightful steam punk pendants in as well!