Stones and Sketches

I hit up the Rochester Gem Show last week and got some nice stones from it. Though it seemed like this year the dealers had more specimen samples than cut stones I still feel like I found a ton of good examples, and I made smarter decisions about which ones to buy. I have plans for most of them at least; like the denim lapis on the tape strip and similar sized stones will be put into some more copies of the Jupiter Pendant, the snowflake obsidian piece will go into earrings, the sugilite I want to make into a pin, the unakite into a pendant, the list goes on.

I haven't been in the studio as much as I want to be, therefore I only have sketches of future plans for the production projects and a couple of designs for CAD.

I have been slowly working on the large rainmaker necklace (as I have dubbed it) at the top of this page and you can see some of the plans for my new stones and senior show here.

Laser cutting! All my laser cutting ideas for my Digital Methods class and another varation on my tube setting earrings for production. I am a bit excited to laser cut some earrings for sale and just ordered some sterling tubing for more production. If anyone wants to save the date for the student sale this year it will be December 5th and 6th opening at 10 AM or so each day.

I also want to have these drawings laser cut as a pair of earrings, perhaps they would do well in the sale?

Still haven't forgotten the earring jacket idea either even though I need to work on it some.

Also begining to run out of concluding noises and sounds to end my posts with this semester, but continuing with my subtheme of creepy radio transmissions from last week have the Russian Woodpecker.

This one is radio interference caused by the Duga-3 over the horizon radar system in Chernobyl meant to give early warning of missles coming from America to Russia. It was operational between 1976 and 1989 and interfered with shortwave radio to the point that devices and radios began to be made to eliminate the annoying noise caused by the system. Welp hopefully next week will have cheerier material and some jewelry being worked on to show the world.

Fairly Pretty Pictures

Alright let's do this! I don't have the right backdrop for it, but on with the pictures!

Astro Ring, Sterling and Rutilated Quartz Cabochon

Wing Earrings, Sterling and Black Chatoyant Cabochons

Jupiter Pendant, Sterling, Turquoise, and White Cubic Zirconia

Three Tier Tube Earrings, Sterling and White Cubic Zirconia

Tube Chain Necklace, Sterling and White Cubic Zirconia

"Gladiator" Earrings,  Sterling and Red Acrylic

A Cat in Bamboo? Okay Then...

Reverse Earrings, Sterling with Acrylic

 

Curly Earrings and Pendant, Sterling

Click Clack Earrings, Sterling, Brass, Laserdisc, Record, and Compact Disc

What the? A...crane?

How did these pictures get in here?

Oh I get it! They're building a bridge,

Ha ha he's smoking a pipe while working! Ah hrm anyways,

Triangle Earrings, Copper, Sterling

Brass Capped Earrings, Brass, Black Acrylic, Sterling

Protype Tube Earrings, Sterling, White Cubic Zirconia

Gear Pin, Brass, Copper, Nickel

Sonic Spike Earrings, Sterling, Record Vinyl

Lion's Eye Pin, Acrylic, Brass, Nickel

Cube Pin, Brass, Nickel

Spiral Green Earrings, Acrylic, Sterling

Heart Pendant Protoype, Brass, Copper


There you have it! an entire Summer's worth of jewelry work and distractions. Some of these pieces will even be up for sale fairly soon and if anyone's really interested drop me a line through the blog. Watch for a bit more to come in terms of the tubing based jewelry and the reverse earrings too! In two weeks the Fall Semester begins and so will the unveiling of the new theme. Until then don't forget to double stack your trailers.

Error! Recalculating... Error! Recalculating...

A lot changes in a week, for example my fancy Jupiter pendant from last week has turned into this:

Which then abuptly turned into this, ready for casting:

and it will be casted in brass this Thursday! I was also going to set these turquoise stones (plus a CZ in the little end loop) in it much like the lower right sketch, but I dropped one and broke it.

Oh well, it wasn't a particuarly great stone to begin with as I now realize. It's off to riogrande.com for a new, kind of expensive one.

Now because I wound up doing last minute cleanup and investing for casting my Jupiter pendant for mold making, I haven't gotten as far as I had hoped on my hydraulic experments for the production side of things.

First I tested what little I was able to round up and send through a rolling mill to "print" the texture on the metal. Above is what was left of the strings I used and wound up with shallow rope like lines on the sheet metal. I also tried some cheap old lace stuff which survived the mill, but also gave me a shallow kind of stippled pattern. Oddly the novelty paperclips worked perfectly well, observe:

And despite being probably made of steel neither the paperclips, copper, or rolling mill was ruined (well further ruined in the case of our old rolling mill, no wonder its being replaced).

In terms of what to actually do with said hydraulic forms and textures has been all thrown out the window at this point due to a debate between high end and low end jewelry. I had a inital idea to combine paper origami with metal in earrings etc. in order to have something within the twenty dollar or lower range for the student sale. Most of this short sightedness is due to the shawl pins from the last sale being too esoteric and too overpriced an item to sell and needing money to finance long term tools.

But since the mixed media with paper thing is border line junk that could be cranked out at a later date, I've re-thought a little for the long term and am thinking earring jackets are the way to go.

They're out there but not too out there, if you know what I mean. This way I can offer a cheaper alternative to the gold and white gold examples above and still have the mix and match modularity with the customer's own earrings I orginally was thinking about last week. This way the rubber mold making stuff can be higher end, and the bottom end can be the d-pad pins, a trefoil flower pin with a shape that accidentally looks like the Mitsubishi logo, and the hydraulic triangle earrings with roll printed designs I made for myself. Also stone settings and studs with white cz's would be relatively easy to make in order to pair with them.

Naturally now that I have some semblance of a plan I feel like I wasted a bunch of time on mostly unusuable hydraulic dies and other materials, but at least gained the advice that I should approach making jewelry to sell the same way I approach getting an art style which is to not force it and just let it develop on its own, meaning that I shouldn't try to predict what will sell to a market while trying to tailor to it and just make some cool designs I like.