Plastics Really are the Future!

Despite being slammed to the wall with daily life, I was able to crank out these single earrings as samples for production.

Since I foolishly said I banged these out over the weekend I now have been set to making ten more earring samples and five pins which will be interesting as real life theatens to take over this week as well.

On the upside in the pre-critique for these pieces they were greeted favorably which naturally means I hated them. Still I wanted to further explore combining acrylic with metal and of course started coming up with a boat load of interesting designs after the critique. Side note: everyone liked the leaf earring even though I think its the most boring thing ever but, I have redesigned the earwire for it so stay tuned I guess?

Somehow in all this I remembered records are made of vinyl which is a plastic and that there are tons of them to be had for dirt cheap at thrift stores so new material ahoy!

I'm pleased to announce cutting a record is easier than acrylic, even factoring in how thin it is, and quite fun actually! Im also glad it didn't shatter even when drilling it to start making these earrings:

I wussed out and didn't use silver sheet for the overlaying tear drop pieces because the sheet I do have of sterling is a lot smaller than I thought which is why these look a little like roads, but oh well. The next step is to ball up some silver wire for ear wires on my fancy home soldering system:

Also work mates are awesome and everyone should have at least one, go to Sears now and buy one, I command it!

For the other earrings I'm going to attempt to make an image dump post with the finished projects as the sketches aren't much to look at and make little sense to anyone but me. And as for other alternative materials to explore there's always laser discs.

Quantify It!

For some reason I am apparently not allowed to see Albert Paley or an exhibition of his, since this is the second time in a row an illness has prevented me from going to see him. Le sigh. In other news my summer independent studies have started and that requires a blog post mandated from on high!

First a note about the weather. I expected it to be hot in the studio, but good lord it was probably almost literally 100 degrees the first day and no one was doing any torch work, the lights were off, and a Bunsen burner was used only twice. The first thing I had to do naturally was go and get a thermometer, stick it to my bench and write a sign underneath it saying "quantify it!" The idea being that it is much more fun to complain about the heat when you know exactly how hot it is even though it changes nothing about how miserable it is.

I made these earrings as part of a hydraulic die forming work shop (that Chris Irick lovingly came to present) and thought I would try to do something along these lines for my study in production. My professor said it was too simple and to come up with a variety of simple shapes to hydraulic die form and then combine into a piece that looks complex. This got me thinking about modularity, and particularly about this Avon pin:

It's a partridge in a pear tree I believe, and you can wear the pin with the bird in the tree or take off the tree and wear just a cute little bird. Currently, I am wondering if its possible to apply the idea of the pin to earrings and have made a few sketches to that effect.

A part of this project will probably involve me finally making embossing plates, and I have a few objects lined up to take patterns from with photographs, put in black and white, up the contrast, then tile or other wise manipulate in Photoshop. Perhaps I will even have an excuse to bust out my tablet!

On the other independent study hand (does that mean the left doesn't know what the right is doing?) rubber mold making has gotten off to a good start, I've seen the demos so I just need to carve or fabricate something over the weekend starting with a pendant and including stone setting in all the planned projects.

Here are the stones I picked from my stash for all of the pieces. The mookaite on the left will be for the pendant, the rutilated quartz in the middle for the ring and the black chatoyant somethings on the right will be for earrings. The malachite is hanging around in case I get motivated or inspired to use it instead. Now because the mookaite looks like this,

I have been making pendant sketches based on Jupiter's atmosphere.

It's given me a great excuse to dig out all my old astronomy books and to raid JPL's image site, which used to be a great source for computer background images. Fun fact: I did consider going to college for astronomy, but I realized I mostly just liked looking at the pretty pictures. There's still time to become an amateur though I'll probably just visit the Astronomy Picture of the Day site more often. (they have bigger images for backgrounds hint, hint.)

A Few Good Midnights

A week of all nighters and a good week (or two) to recover from them makes Veronica a late posting girl. I narrowly finished this semester in time but I did it, dual wielding torches all the way! Hence why I completely forgot to take any pictures of my metalsmithing stuff. Between that class and ceramics, I'm fairly certain vessels and I don't get along very well, but boy do I like purchasing them from shows and thrift stores.

I digress, mostly because there isn't anything happening immediately right now, and for that I'm grateful to have a break between projects. To start, the end of year round up for jewelry looks like this:

One Pac-man necklace,

One pair of VR glasses, (what made them super secret is the arms of the glasses have little yellow LEDs in them, powered by a battery in the fake plug)

And finally one sword like spoon for a gentleman's eating contest. (Which no one seemed to understand)

Briefly here is the final portfolio for CAD which I was mostly proud of:

 Castle Exercise,

 Flashlight Exercise,

 Rubber Duck Exercise,

 Lollypop Exercise,

Toy Robot,

 Perfume Bottle,

 Ring,

Table and Chair Set.

 Can you tell I enjoyed CAD? Next fall I get another crack at it and probably will focus on lighting objects in the program. Before then though, I'd like to take a moment to talk about the upcoming summer projects.

Though not quite exactly what I'm doing, this experimental pendant is a good place holder picture when talking about production! Yes this summer it will finally happen, I will be designing and making jewelry to sell in the fall and winter student sale. This also means an Etsy shop will be in the near future, so stay tuned for details! This venture officially launches next week, with my summer independent studies in jewelry. While I prepare for the business world looking into cards, photographs, and taxation I'll have just enough time to see Albert Paley's Lecture at the Nan Miller Gallery here in Rochester. I'm particularly excited to make it to one of his exhibitions this time, since I had to miss his last one at the Memorial Art Gallery.

Its going to be an exciting, if busy, summer and I can't wait to get cracking and see what I come up with!