As Promised

So, here are the things I've sewn, in chronological order. The color in the pictures is a little off. Some of the purples look more blueberry than a blue hued purple:
This shirt was made before December I think. Had bought the simple striped pattern. Cotton knit, not very stretchy.

This next one was sometime late winter but before I went home in April. Stretch knit, usually a cotton polyester blend (all following pieces are made of the same material):

Went a long time not doing anything. All of a sudden a sewing bug hit me over the head and knocked out these following 4 in the past 2 weeks. I did each during the evening. Some were fairly quick for me, about 4-5 hours. It probably would take a more experienced person no time at all. The last most recent top I struggled with trying a neckline that didn't work. Kept sewing and ripping out, ended up staying up way later than I wanted to:

(Particularly proud of the above dress. Can't see but it goes just past the knee.)

Cannot Believe How Long It's Been

So, I'm really sorry for not posting anything in months. Unfortunately I do not have pictures of everything I've been making, although some of the pictures I do have were taken by a co-worker for the school's website. Yeh, they finally put up a student gallery. Anywho, to begin!
School director Dee wanted me to make some Valentine's themed jewelry, in my opinion waaaaay too late, but whatever, do what the lady says. I came up with this little earrings set:

Based off of that another friend of mine made a bunch of pairs of earrings similar to this. Now, I don't have pictures, which sucks, but anyway I took this design and made a bunch of copper wire pendents some with little dangles hanging from the upper bow of the heart. Those were also fast and easy to make. Also made the copper chain that went with. This piece was a little more time consuming and I never made the chain to go with it:

This one is copper inlaid in silver inlaid in copper. Torched the copper to get my colors.

Next, Dee had me trying to come up with a line of jewelry, leaning more towards earrings. And something that could be pumped out fast. I got seriously inspired by the idea of labyrinths. I googled images. One of which was more of a celtic knot and really easy to make:

I made about 5 pairs of these in 4 hours.
Then I decided I really wanted to do the piercing work for the labyrinth earrings. Each pair took about 7-8 hours:

Decided to branch out to more than just earrings:

The pendent has a fire opal set into it. The ring for the moment doesn't have any stone set, but I could add later. I don't have a picture but I also made a set of earrings with the same pattern and style as the ring, layering the pierced metal over a base and then antiquing the base layer while polishing the top.
Next labyrinth pendent that was fun to make was this one:

For this one I had tried to cut out silver to inlay into the copper. It ended up failing so I just took the copper and soldered it on top of a layer of silver. I sent it through the press to flatten it out a bit. Torched the copper for those awesome colors, textured the silver and also made the copper chain.
In between some of this work I did some other things. Worked on this ring:

Once I got on the making of copper chain for the copper wire heart pendents, I ended up making chain for this guy which I made a while back. I also gave it a little bit of a makeover, polishing the top and coloring it:

The back turned out kind of awesome too. It looks like a profile:

Then I worked on this pendent. I had pierced the copper out waaaaay back last summer during the Cal State Fair. Finally decided to do something with it- inlay with silver, color, add copper chain:

I decided for myself, I wanted to continue with the labyrinth theme, really it kinda makes me happy:

Both pieces had the design pierced out and then soldered onto a piece of silver. The triangle I textured the inner silver, and the circle I antiqued it. Both are set with tiny little amethyst cabochons. I took them out of a pair of earrings I once owned but hardly ever wore. Recycling jewelry is awesome.
There has been other work I've done- a mother's day pendent, some birthday presents. Right now I'm working on my dragon wing necklace. The eye broke out. SOB and sigh. I just realized typing sob that way, I did actually mean wanting to cry (not actually) but son of a bitch definitely accurately portrayed my feeling upon breaking it and not being able to fix it. When trying to fix it this time, I took out the labradorite and carnelian stones from their settings so I could try to actually solder the piece back together since the laser welder is no longer at school. Failed. Instead, I took the wings part, cleaned it up, textured the back. Re-set the labradorite. I miss having the eye there, but it still looks quite awesome, dare I say a little classier with just the labradorite stone without the carnelian. For the eye piece, I soldered on a jump ring so it could slip on a chain. In my endeavor to do so, I frosted the czs that were set around the edge. One cz had fallen out as well. In replacing the one that fell out, the others looked ridiculous in their frostiness so I took them all out and am almost finished setting new sparkly czs. Then I'll polish and re-set the carnelian.

I promise to update more. And I totally have to do an entry devoted to all the tops I've been making. Something about the spring has gotten me into a sewing frenzy.

The End and Some Fun

This is my last official project for schooling. I made it to go with the dragon wing necklace. This was a casting.

I then had some fun playing around. With the holiday coming up things have been very casual at school, more so than usual. So, I actually had these pieces as waxes sitting on my desk for over a month before I finally cast them about two weeks ago. A little background to explain. When you have molds for making multiples of a design, you need a machine called the wax injector. Ours looks a little different, but you get the idea. Anyway, because of the pressure of the wax shooting out, it tends to overflow and drip. I went through the drippings and found two that I thought would look fun cast.

I called this one Davey Jones.

The wax dripping conveniently had a hole that I could put a jump ring through.

I chose this one 1. because it looks awesome, and 2. where the sapphire is, there was a perfect spot to set a stone. I didn't have to do anything, it just worked with the wax. And we're pretty sure it's a real sapphire. See, the desk I moved to when I started module 3- the guy who sat there before used real stones and dropped crap all the time and wouldn't bother to really search too hard if the stone wasn't uber-expensive. So, anything I found under his desk was up for grabs.  I also like how it looks like the metal is melting over the sapphire.

This is the same design from the mezuza, only a lot smaller. It might be an inch long, maybe a little bit larger. I'm going to pierce out the design again in this size and in a couple of other sizes in thicker metal. Making molds out of them would be a really good idea so I could mass produce this design.

This is another piece of lapis that I cut myself from the giant chunk I bought months ago. Decided to finally do something with it. Yesterday just fairly quickly pumped this one out- pierced out the design, soldered on the bezel wire (which came like that. I did not file out the rippled edge). Decided to make an interesting bale rather than a plain simple one.

A 3rd Post So Soon?!

In honor of Hanukkah, I decided to make myself a hanukkia. Besides, my other one is at home in NY. It's made out of copper.

Way back in August I pierced out the hamsa design, unsure of what to do with it. It was sitting in a drawer at my desk in school ever since. Light bulb went off when I was making the main body of the hanukkia, and wanted to have a pretty backdrop to it. Added some copper wire curly cues.

Also, corkscrewed some copper wire to make these cute feet.

This is the back, and the underside.
Happy Hanukkah everyone!!

It's FINISHED!!!!

The goal of this piece was to take a piece of jewelry from a magazine or photo and get inspired by it- copy it to a certain extent. This was what I found-

 

I opened the wings, splaying them out more. I also added on an entirely original section to the necklace. The marquis (almond) shaped stone is a labradorite which I received from our program director as a raffle prize from random stuff they brought back with them from the Tuscon, AZ gigantic gem show. Last February. I knew I saved the stone for a reason. The little round stone is a carnelian. I actually had it as a tiny free-form that had been tumbled (made smooth and shiny). Took it to the lapidary wheel and cut it into a cabochon. Anyway, follows the sob story. If you don't feel like reading the long mess, scroll down for some more pictures of the piece. Also, click on the photos if you want to see in better detail.

Rather than carve the piece out of wax (since we didn't have cylinders big enough to make a plaster cast from) I had to fabricate this entire thing. The necklace is made of 3 sections. The center "eye", the almond shape, and then the wings with side "arms". I had worked out the wings just fine (cutting them out, detailing them). The almond shaped piece originally had a bezel. That soldered just fine as well.

Then, I think my first mistake came next. In order to be able to pave the wings I'd need to have thicker metal to work with, so I had to solder on another layer of silver sheet to part of the wings. Rather than doing this first, I assembled the wings together with the almond bezel piece. The "elbow" joint above the almond shape also was soldered together. Then came soldering onto the wings the extra sheet. This will come into play later.

I put the wings aside for the moment to work on the center "eye". I created a domed base thick enough to handle a ring of czs to be set with a bead and bright cut. This piece also originally had a bezel setting meant for the carnelian. I pre-cut all the seats for the stones, but setting wouldn't happen until soldering the "eye" to the main piece.

This is when I believe mistake number two happened. I soldered the eye piece to the wings. The bond held on well enough at the time. But again, having done this became a problem later on.

I then paved the wings successfully, no issues. I went to set the czs into the eye piece. One joint broke, so I decided to just remove it entirely and work on it separately. To attach it back to the main piece, I decided to use the laser welder rather than solder with a regular torch flame. It's best to do so anyway because the czs can only take so much torch heat before they start to look frosty. I tried and failed, so I got my teacher to do it for me. The problem with the laser welder is sometimes the beam gets reflected and bounced around, which if it hits just right can explode or melt a cz. A cz did in fact get melted so I had to replace it.

While inspecting the piece I noticed that the bezel wire for the almond piece no longer appeared to be fully soldered to its base along one side. So, I tried to use the laser welder with some soldering wire to close the crack up. I ended up blowing a hole through the metal, which wasn't so bad because I could still salvage it and do something like a half bezel. I fixed the issue and then went to set the labradorite. I started to fold the bezel over and it separated from the base on the side I thought was fine, but clearly was not. I think what happened is when I had to solder on the extra sheet of metal for the wings, everything else got so heated up that the solder holding the bezel wire to the base "fused" into the metal of the base. That seam was no longer fully soldered.

I got pissed off so I just ripped the bezel wire off entirely. I started creating a new one when my teacher gave me an alternative method. He had me drill holes into the base to insert wire through. While hole drilling, I broke a seam holding the eye to the wing, so once again I removed it entirely. Unfortunately from the pressure of drilling not only did that happen, but the "elbow" joint above the almond shape broke as well. And, I could see that the almond shaped base had started to crack at the seam holding it to the main piece. Back to the laser welder to fix those issues. Next I inserted wire into the holes. The wire coming out the back side was balled up and then I pulled the wire from the front as tightly as possible. Used a ton of easy solder to fix the wire in place. I then had prongs. Hooray. I filed the prongs into little claws and set the labradorite successfully.

I then had to reattach the eye to the main body of the piece, using the laser welder once again. I believe I blew up another cz, which then had to be replaced. I went to go set the carnelian, and lo and behold, the bezel wire cracked at its seam and also started separating from its base. I believe this was a result from mistake number two. I should never have tried soldering the eye to the main piece with the torch. Ever. That extra heat, again, I think fused the solder into the base and no longer really held the bezel. I tore off the bezel and decided to go a similar route as the almond shape. Drill holes and insert wire for prongs. In two places where I drilled holes the czs popped out so I reset them. Then came the same process as before in fixing the wire into the holes. The third hole that didn't need a resetting of a cz did need it after soldering the wire into place. I know this part just happened today, but I think I remember that those two places I had needed to reset just from drilling the hole, again needed resetting after soldering the wire in. Filed the wires into claws.

Next was tackling the laser welder once again to attach the eye to the main body. I did so, and blew up another cz. AWESOME. Reset the cz. FINALLY set the carnelian. Attached the chain with some jump-rings to the wingtips. Jump-rings were also laser welded. Good God it's done.

I absolutely hated how long this took, how many fuckups I made. It's gotten to the point that there are scratches in the metal in certain places and things aren't perfectly polished, and I don't fucking care. I refuse to work on this thing for at least another year. Again, I'm going to see the flaws no matter what. BUT I tried it on, and it looks fucking awesome! Seeing it in the mirror and staring at it on myself for a minute already started to lift the weight of how hard this project was, and how I felt it shouldn't have been. I do like my little claw prongs in the end better than the original bezel set idea. I just wish it didn't have to come around in such an aggravating fashion. Meh.

Here are some more views of the piece:

Close-up of the wing. I used a diamond bur (like the one on the right) to texture the webbing in the wings. I ran the bur half the web in one direction and half the web in the other. When the light hits it, you get that split effect.

The carnelian "eye". Forgot to mention that I had cut out a small circle in the base. It's a little hard to tell here, but when placed on something dark, it looks like a pupil within the stone.

The labradorite. Check out the little claw prongs.

A close-up of the texture in the "arms". Used a ball bur for the effect.