Work in progress

As you know by now, I am in love with copper, glass, and stones (precious or semi- or simply stones). I found myself working more and more just in these 3 mediums, and while I don't spend too much time designing or making a lot these days, I try to do something every week. Of course, that means not much gets finished; no matter how much I try to hammer, solder, tumble, and put the finishes touches in less than 2 hours, it never works.

Thus, some work in progress ~ and hopefully you'll see the finished items some time this century as well!

Besides the 4 elements above, one thing I truly love in life is circles. Maybe because they are such a perfect shape, no angles, no start, no finish, Extremely versatile shape. The pendant above gave me some troubles (the washers did not want to stay soldered to each other), but I still love it. I am not sure if it's finished or not, I think I will add some heat patina and evaluate the status again. I love the rough look on some of the washers and I think once it has patina and a neckpiece it'll be done. Right now, at least, I don't feel like adding anything else (but I am known to change my mind a lot).

Aah - this piece... THE ring. I can't start telling you how much I love it and for how long I dreamed about making it. And guess what, apparently I need to dream about something long enough, 'cause this time the soldering went really, really quickly and well. I have tried this new copper paste solder (from Tucson ;) ) and I am purely in love!

The ring is not fully finished, it had been in the tumbler for a while, but I think I'll use the dremel on it first, heat patina as well, then give it one more tumble.

When I tumbled the 2 pieces above I found this ring waiting patiently, God knows for how long... rustic and very simple. I like it :)

Now onto the perfect combination of the 2 'loves' (metal and glass): enameled copper. Last week I made the links and today I enameled them. I wasn't very sure why the colour won't show better... until I arrived home and discovered my mistake: for some unknown reasons I thought 1000s are the transparent codes and I happily used 2000s, which I was sure are the opaques. You guessed it, it's the other way around.

Oh, well - I still like the end result, a lot. But I think I'll give it a try next week with the opaques :)

Crazy Lace agate in a cute trapezoidal shape.

Crazy lace agate (again)

And, of course, one more crazy lace agate (someone went to the store last week and found herself loose in the gemstone area)

This one - I cannot capture the frame well in the picture. If you wonder, yes, I wanted the 'rough', ragged look of the half-fired enamel. Why? because I love the feel and look of it. The stone is a Rhyolite. The pendant is quite big now - all stones are about 2 in in height, so you can imagine... (mental note: add a ruler or quarter to the pictures, for easy visual reference).

That was my WIP report for the week... now that I figured out the transparent / opaque mystery, I itch to get back and re-do the links / frames. Patience is the name of the game, I guess.

Thank you for stopping by!