Saving the planet, one piece of jewelry at a time.

It's been about 9 months since I put up my first piece of jewelry of Etsy, and I'm thrilled to say that I've raised $52 so far to donate to Earthworks. The way I have planned to donate is on a yearly basis, as it doesn't make too much sense to do it $1 at a time. In the grand scale of things $52 may not seem like a lot, but every little bit helps and it's a step in the right direction. If every jewelry artist gave to the cause just that little bit, it would make a huge impact on the lives of the families that supply the raw materials we depend on.

Custom Road Ring

I just finished the custom road ring I had posted last week, and I must say, it looks much cooler in silver then in wax! It's one beast of a ring too, size 12 and 2/3 of an oz of silver, it was way too big for even my thumb! Here is the map it is stylized after, along with the finished ring.


I made a brick gold and silver ring a few years ago that I really liked, which reminded me of this road ring project. I'm thinking of continuing this theme into my next batch of designs. This way I'll have all the nature/bug/plant pieces and then a urban/industrial look as well, which fits with my overall goal of mixing machinery and nature.

Tools at last!

Well the tools are here and the very first thing I made with them was a Kitty Fortress! (with a little help from Kaitlin!) The pictures pretty much explain themselves.

Tools!

Well they were supposed to be here Saturday, but I'm actually home today working on things so I'll forgive FedEx.  But I'll have a pretty solid little machine shop to set up...and shelves; I need more shelving big-time.  It usually takes time and experience with it to really understand how your space functions.  Here are some tool pictures and, yes, the handpiece is sold separately...

Projects

Just a couple of projects in the works. The first is a batch of jewelry straight out of the oven! The type of silver I use can be heat treated to make it stronger. I like to make batches and cook them altogether, it saves the amount of times I have to heat up and turn on the oven. It usually takes 485 degrees for about 1:45 hours.

This next project is a custom men's ring, using a road map image. I'm very excited to see how it comes out, the wax images never do it justice, but this is for people who enjoy seeing how things start off. I'll make sure to put up images of all the finishing stages.


And speaking of finishing things and waxes, I just ordered a ton of new tools! I'm super excited as I have had to use other peoples shops lately to do certain tasks. There is something to be said for having your own creative workspace. Pictures will most definitely follow, they were suppose to be here yesterday, but as long as they get here I'm thrilled!

Office Space

Most of this month has consisted of renovating a few room in our house. We're redoing a room that use to be a little den and making it into Kaitlin's office/library area. This space was previously used as my office and place to draw and package shipment. The downfall was it's on the 2nd floor and my shop is in the basement... This translated into a lot of running up and down the stairs. So now I have a office/music room that's right next door to my shop, and I'm already feeling the benefits of not having to run to every corner of the house. Everything in the name of productivity!


It's a very yellow space, but your eyes adjust to it quickly. We were going to repaint it, but it's more work then we have time for right now. A lot of music equipment doubles as photography stands and furniture as well.

See if you can find the dragonfly in the pictures!

It's a new month, and time to start fresh again.  So I have some exciting things coming up, a new wholesale order headed to Alaska soon and keep an eye out this month for a feature of the dragonfly in Craft magazine.  On top of that I have been working on new designs again, the process from drawing to wax to metal can be slow sometimes, but I'm aiming to have another collection of pieces finished in the coming months.