In September 2011 I was experimenting with ways to make jewelry from buttons without destroying the button. One of Grandma’s pet peeves was when buttons had been glued or cut to “upcycle” them (she was a button collector).
I came up with a wire wrap that utilized a four hole button, making it into a link component.
I actually took production photos for this necklace, for which I am now very thankful.
In March of 2011 I was experimenting with copper clay, which is fine particles of copper suspended in a fireable media that shapes like clay. When heated in a kiln, the organics burn away and the copper remains. I made this squirrel for my Dad, and after firing it measures about a half inch tall.
What I liked about this sculpture is the way I treated the tail. From the side it looks like a full fluffy tail, but the back shows that it is spoon shaped, which reduces the bulk and I feel was a nice design choice.
In January 2011 my husband and I designed a terrarium in a 25 gallon tank. I painted a faux stained glass mural with special plastic lead and translucent glass paint on the outside of the tank. We built a clear acrylic planter with a pass through for water circulation and covered the pump with a hand sculpted and water safe painted rock formation made of styrofoam. The bottom section was for fish and two red bellied newts, who would presumably also venture onto the land. The newts had the best story, because they would somehow escape the enclosure and roam the house. We are pretty sure a cat found one, but the other crawled onto my husband’s foot one morning startling him and sending the newt flying. Newt-imer survived the flight and my husband returned him to his enclosure where he lived until 2015. We had to re-home him after a house fire when we all had to find new accommodations for a while.
While the designing process was interesting, and there were lessons learned, the cleaning and maintaining of a fish tank is not something either of us want to bother with again.
This is another favorite jewelry project I made back in January 2010. I used silver clay, some with cubic zirconia inclusions, to make unique beads, created custom wire elements, small chain link florets, and built links with end caps and beads.
This necklace did not do as well in the Fire Mountain Gems contest, which disappointed me because I thought this one displayed more technical skill. In hindsight, that is probably why it didn’t do well, it isn’t something easily duplicated, so wouldn’t advertise their products to the best advantage.
Live and learn.
In April of 2009 I made one of my favorite metal clay jewelry sets. Metal clay is fine particles of silver suspended in a medium to make it workable like clay. It is then fired in a kiln to burn off the organics leaving nearly pure silver in the slightly smaller shaped form, all without forging or soldering.
The metal clay does give options for designs that are difficult to achieve with traditional gold smithing tools, but requires its own set of specialty tools like the kiln.
Critters and Craft 