New Pics of Silver Cuffs

Just a quick few pictures to share of some of our latest Silver Reticulated Cuff Bracelets. I hope to post more soon as well as some photos of what we have currently been working on. The Holidays are here so we are working hard to design and create.. and keep up with the rush! We just finished some beautiful Hoop earrings using wire that we hand textured with a little hammering. As soon as I get some great pics I will share!

Metals projects- Rings and Pendants

We finally had some beauiful sunshine here in Dallas! Perfect opportunity to take some photos of our most recent completed projects in our Metals Class. These projects allowed us to utilize alot of soldering techniques and getting comfortable with using a saw. The bottom pictures feature our layered textured silver pendants. We milled a texture into the bottom layer of silver using a fabric similar to a linen. The texture is amazing! I love it! The middle picture features Bezel set Cabochon Pendants. These were tedious but fun. There were many steps involved in learning to bezel set a stone. Each piece starts with a thin strip of fine silver which is soldered to fit the stone. A piece of silver is then cut to encase the stone in the back with a saw. This can take a little bit of time and patience and a few sawblades! These pieces are then soldered together and then the filing and sanding begins... We then set the stone and bezel it in place and finish with some polishing on the tripoli buffer. A similar process was used in the above rings with the addition of soldering a sized band. I chose to mill a strip of silver with rice paper as a band featured in the top left. Matt chose to use wire and go for the double band. I think they both turned out amazing... This week we will be working on finishing up several reticulated silver cuff bracelets. I hope to be posting a couple for purchase in the future. Today my steel bench block arrived!  I have had the hammer ready to go and now I am so excited to start incorporating some hammered textures into my jewelry. I never thought that I would be so excited about tools :)

 

 Hammered 14kt filled gold hammered hoops with Labradorite faceted drops

The Latest...

Class today was really fun and I am really starting to feel comfortable with all the tools and equipment .. most of all the flame! Today Matt and I wanted to anneal a sheet of sterling silver that will be used to make bracelets. This is a process that brings the fine silver to the surface. We do this by heating the silver to a certain point 10 times and quenching the metal in between each process. To speed up the process a little we used "Big Bertha" as she is known in class, A large torch powered by air compressor. This torch has about 5 times bigger flame then what we normally use. It was a little intimidating at first.. but in no time we could light and use the torch much more comfortably. We took a few pictures of the process to post!

Last week we finally finished up our rings! This was probably the most challenging piece so far for me but now that it is finished I am excited to do another one soon. I was hoping to get some great pictures this last week of the new stuff we have been working on but our weather has not been cooperative. I prefer taking my pictures with some natural light and the rain and overcast weather has not made that possible. So as soon as there is some sunshine I will post! In the meantime I have posted a slideshow of past sold designs. I have numbered all the photos so if you see something you like, you can reference it. Most designs can be special ordered upon availability of the stones. Let me know if you see something you like!

Halfway thru our 3rd Semester!

In June of this year my husband Matt and I decided to expand our horizons with jewelry. My personality type is that I get bored easily and to keep my attention to things I like to constantly learn. I was a little bored and uninspired with the selection of "things" to put together in Jewelry. I decided that I wanted to really expand my knowledge and skill into the age old practice of silversmithing. This is a skill that takes alot of patience and time but the reward is absolutely amazing. So far we have been lucky to work with and learn under Ed Barker who has been silversmithing for at least 40 years. Since our first class in June we have been able to complete several projects. As I get great pics of our latest projects I will be posting those as well. We are about halfway thru our 3rd semester and hope to have our own studio up and running sometime next year.

Treasure/Evil Eye Necklaces

I was lucky to have almost an entire day this last weekend to dedicate towards finishing up these Treasure Necklaces... I love them!  My favorite part is that each one has something unique about it. Of course don't forget the Evil Eye... They can also be customized upon request! Here is a snapshot of some of them that I took with my blackberry... Go camera phone! I was impressed but of course I will be posting formal pics in the future. I hope to update this as often as possible :)