I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Earrings...

Here they are hanging in a row. After being away from the internet (by virtue of being busy) I've come to the conclusion that this jewelry thing may not be as easy as I initally hoped. Specifically I am supposed to develop a production line of jewelry and keep coming up with tangental things instead.

Like these spirally earrings that take a whopping foot of wire to do. More earrings is fine and good and all, but I really need more pins and pendants that aren't like this:

I hardly ever actually do pendants or necklaces thus everything is turning into an exercise in fustration, and fustration leads to wierder earrings apparently, like this purposefully backwards one.

Dunno if having the ear wire coming out of the front is too wierd for people to handle. In other news I made a rather meh looking rubber mold (finally), and am now something of an expert in cutting recording media apart.

As for the mentioned cutting recording media apart I have learned the following:

         - Records cut way too easily.
         - Laser discs are twice as thick as records due to their double sidedness.
         - Compact Disc labels gum up the saw blade quickly, and won't stay on once the disc
            is cut.
        - Center punches do a good job of cracking both Laser Discs and CDs.
        - Laser Discs and CDs are smelly. As in they smell more like acrylic than acrylic itself.

I have yet to find a double sided DVD to cut up and see if that alleviates the problem of the label and foil flaking off of regular CDs. I was so hoping I could have more colorful earrings like the ones at the top of the post too by using labeled CDs but I guess it's not to be.

So it's back to the sketchbook to try and come up with sets of necklaces, pins, and earrings. I'd like to focus on getting something to go along with my heart shaperd pin/pendant from a week or so ago. Also on the horizon, experimenting with some silver on copper dishes I found. We shall see exactly how many possible ways there is to destroy plating...

Earrings, Ear...rains?

It turns out that I may like shiny and round laserdiscs too much to cut them up, just look at it up on my bulletin board there. Real life did get in the way of making earring prototypes which is why I could only make four and two half pairs. That will make more sense as we dive into the pictures of what I did make and did not have time to make!

Yep those clicky clacky record and metal earrings from last week are back along with

earrings that I rather like and have been told look like gladiator style or "something from Portal,"

this pair of sterling and vinyl ones that are kinda Sonic the Hedgehog looking,

another random acrylic and brass pair plus,

two single earring jackets made from Pente pieces, hence the "two half pairs" bit.

Onward to things that could have been, starting with this revamp of last week's leaf earring jacket into a full earring.

A combination tuxedo/five inch floppy disk earring! Actually this one was supposed to have the black acrylic bit swivel out from the silver triangle part, but alas time ate that one, too.

For giggles the original design of the blue pente piece earring jackets,

some sort of random seesaw earrings,

still messing around with an old oscilloscope based design,

treble clef earring with chimes hanging from them,

and, finally, the corresponding bass clef pair. This is the point where I ran out of ideas in the sketchbook, you see. From here I get to go on to make five pin prototypes/samples, which real life threatens to loom over as well. As a teaser, here are the two simplistic pins I was able to make beforehand: a 3D/not 3D cube pin, and a blobby X thing. Consider them a preview for next week.



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.