Rings and Things - Part 1- The Design

I have to get better about tending to my blog. It's really fun, but I just never seem to know what to say when I sit down to write and all the things I wanted to say just seem to have flown out of my head when I do sit down. Today I decided I will definitely post and do better for the rest of this year!

Being an aspiring metalsmith, it took me a while to get to the point I would attempt a ring. They are so darn small! They are so complicated. I wanted to share the process just so ring lovers everywhere would know how much goes into creating these little beauties.

Rings- geesh, every woman I know has at least one, some have a collection that would compete against the crown jewels. Me, I love rings, I like all the varied shapes, designs, colored stones and even just designs in metal. I haven't gotten to the point of wearing them on multiple fingers, but I do wear one or more (stacked of course) on each hand. So, a little blog about something as simple as a ring- more about the process of creating this small but eye catching little piece of jewelry that can have meaning of friendship, marriage or just says we love to have fun. I hope those who love and purchase rings will appreciate just how much goes into the process before you put that little ring on your finger!

First comes the idea- The Design as it were- do you want a simple band or fancy, a stone - large or small, faceted or not, gem or natural cabachon, all metal- gold, silver copper or mixed metals. Do you see where I'm going with this? Creating a ring is no different than any other piece of jewelry- so many choices. Now comes the hard part- is this ring going to be a unique one of a kind piece or is it going to be something you want to offer your customers on an ongoing basis so they can have more than one, different colors or give as a gift to a friend that admired theirs. I love the whole idea of stacking rings, you can change your selections to match your outfits, have plain metals mixed in and wear as many as you want. I have started making a bunch of them and can't wait to offer them to my customers. Stacking rings are just so much fun! How can you not love these?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/allwiredupjewelrydesigns/4448341035/

These have to be customized to anyone who orders them, you can't just make one size, so that involves having a lot of stock on hand- silver, gemstones bezel cups or bezel wire and silver sheet and all those grand mealsmith materials like torch, solder, hammers, bezel pusher, burnish- oh, the list goes on and on.

Now, back to the making of the ring. Assuming you only want to do one- or you have only one terrific stone nd you want to show it off- what next? First, you have to measure the stone or know it's calibrated size if it's a standard shape. For a non- standard shape, measuring the outside and then the height is of the utmost importance. Next you find the bezel wire you want- plain, serrated, scalloped, gallery wire- and it has to be just the right height to hold the ring in place without covering it up too much. Now the fun part, you measure around the ring again with the bezel wire and cut- the old adage measure twice, cut once- is really important here, otherwise you have a lot of wasted silver bezel wire laying about. Now you carefully solder that together and clean it up so no seam is visible, check that it still fits around your stone. Not fitting is another blog entry!

Now, find a piece of silver sheet for the back of the ring. You have to solder the finished bezel to that. Cutting a piece larger than your shaped bezel is important because the little devil bezel might move when you solder the bezel to the silver sheet. Another question- are you going to make the back larger than the stone and add embellishments or are you going to cut and file it off so it's a perfect fit with no material showing? Are you going to leave the back solid or will you saw out a piece of the back to let a little light shine through the stone- see this is harder than you thought! Remeber, you have to use a different solder than you did on the bezel when you attach it, otherwise the first solder join will melt apart. Solder comes in hard, medium and easy and each melts at a different temperature. Hardtakes the most heat, easy the least. I always start with hard and work my way down to easy if I am only doing a basic ring. Again, another blog post if your doing something complicated where you need to protect a second stones set next to a bigger one or adding a wire design or other embellishments.

I will stop here so you can just think about the design process. Keep in mind, we haven't even made the band yet or checked to see if the stone will still fit into the bezel soldered on to the backplate. Heck- I haven't even gone through soldering on the backplate yet! If it doesn't fit, you have to usually start all over.
Next time you are browsing through the rings category- just look at the top- the part everyone sees and know that lots of work went into just that part that you want everyone to admire when you wear the ring.
I promise to blog again tomorrow with Part 2 - Making the band and sizing. Part 3 will be all about setting the stone and finishing to make it pretty and shiny!

I hope you've enjoyed this first entry and come back to read more.
Have a wonderful day everyone.





Posted in General by ppennee on April 12, 2010 at 3:47am
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Rings and Things - Part 1, Design



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Work in Progress, Sawing

Spring is Sprung - Aspiring Metalsmith's Team Challenge

I just had to write a little piece on the aspiring metalsmiths spring challenge before the final voting is done tonight. Our groups first challenge was rings. I had never made a ring before, but stepped up to the plate and turned one out. Needless to say, I barely got an honorable mention with my quite amateuish entry, but I learned a lot. Winner of the challenge got to pick the next challenge. She throws out the age old ditty-" Spring is sprung, the grass is riz" and says to us, we will vote based on best interpretation AND thinking out of the "boxness". You gotta love anyone who can make up a word like that and keep a straight face. You can check out the entries here at http://aspiringmetalsmiths.blogspot.com/. You will notice if you look at all the entries, one in particular- the current leader and most likely winner- is totally out of the box. An egg, in the fashion of the great Fabrege with a totally cool scene inside complete with sky inside the top, grass in the bottom and a bow on top. This baby is outrageous! I must say, I now realize I don't think out of the box at all when it comes to metalsmithing- at least not yet. But Asa, from asap designs, http://www.etsy.com/shop/asapdesigns, certainly got out of the box and showed us all what's possible.

I guess I should show my entry, which I originally thought was a little out of the box. I really had never seen a stack of bracelets with flowers and birds so I was quite pleased with my efforts. I even got a few votes.

I have been enthralled with some other metalsmiths gorgeous flowers, so I sawed out my own, put a little created ruby in one, made little silver and copper balls I soldered to the inside of others and then made a tiny little birdie. These were soldered to my twig bangles. As an extra, I added a separate twig bangle with balled ends to simulate budding branches. I had a great time doing this set and even surprised myself  a little in the process. I am learning so many new things!

So, the winner of this challenge gets to pick the next one. I think everyone wants a little more time to finish the next project since many of our members just couldn't get one done in time for an entry. I am looking forward to seeing with Asa comes up with, since she is definitely our  most "out of the boxness" member! 

I also want to mention AWE shop, found at http://www.etsy.com/shop/AWEshop, who came up with the coolest copper tree and bird lariat I could ever imagine- she did this on short notice since she hadn't planned on entering because of other commitments! Said she was working on a project, this came to her, she stopped what she was doing and made this great necklace! Check it out on the metalsmiths blog, I want to have this kind of inspiration come to me while doing anything!

 Depending on the deadline, I may or may not be able to participate. I am off to Spain for a much needed 2 week vacation. Spain had been on my to do list forever- DH was not supportive of this trip, he wanted to go to Scotland. My response was, we went on 2 other trips he wanted to do, this one was my choice. See, I really do know how to stand my ground. Of course, if he wouldn't go to Spain, I would have caved in and gone to Scotland. My reasoning with him was simple, they don't grow grapes in Scotland so I can't drink wine! I would have to drink Scotch all the time and would be asleep half the trip because that stuff kicks my butt!

The Step Bezel Nightmare

I realize this isn't a picture that says much to the average person who likes jewelry, it's just a blue stone in a silver casing with a ring on top so you can put a chain through it and hang it around your neck. To someone who has journeyed along the path of an aspiring metalsmiths, they can see all the pain I went through to get just this far and will know I am still struggling because it fought me every step of the way. They say it's always the journey that's most important. So here's a little story about my journey to get to this point.

 First, the blue stone was a gorgeous London blue topaz briolette that I had wire wrapped as a pendant. While trying to repair a small mistake in the wire wrapping I broke the tip of the stone where the wire goes through and holds it together. That was a really expensive slip of the pliers! So, I call on my trusty group of friends on the aspiring metalsmiths thread and get some advice. Make a step bezel says Clarity, you can do it, here's how. So I follow directions and find that, even following directions, metal has a mind of it's own. The little square wire I soldered onto the bottom of the bezel wire, made it almost impossible to move it into shape around my lovely stone. I had to do this in order to solder it together so the stone would stay in there and not fall out the back. The little square wire is the "step" it sits on. After much pushing, pulling, yelling and throwing a few obscenities, I did get it soldered closed and guess what- the stone fit. But, yes, there is always a but in metalsmithing , the bottom of the stone was fatter than the top, so it was laying belly up, tip down. The extra wire at the top is supposed to lay smoothly along the stone folded over with no" ruffles" to just hold it from falling out the front. Well that's all very nice in theory, but no one told me that after all that pushing and pulling that my little tool called a "bezel pusher" was going to need the strength of a sumo wrestler behind it to push what is now called "work hardened" metal over that stone. Along comes more advice from my friend Clarity (you must see her work at http://www.scrollworkdesigns.etsy.com/  ) she really does know what she's talking about, but she has a horseshoe somewhere to get all the work cranked out every week that she does! Clarity tells me, put the stone in something that's hard but with a dip in it so the stone will sit down in it while tapping with your hammer to get out all those nasty ruffles. You can see those in the picture above.  Well, that little piece at the top of the page is small- smaller than a breadbox for sure, and smaller than every bottlecap and twist top I could find in my house. So, I finally found a teeny tiny cap and hammered away. I also have a little tool that I call a bezel smoother- it has a notch in the bottom that you scoot around the bezel- again trying to remove ruffles. (I actually used to like ruffles- on clothes anyhow).

I must digress a bit, because another step I took- without asking first- was to solder on the top of this project- the bail used to hang the pendant. This soldering not only got in the way of the hammering I was trying to do, but also hardened up the metal around the stone even more! Enter the second sumo wrestler to assist the first one! My thought was, I couldn't solder anything to the top after the stone was in there, the torch would fry my lovely blue topaz. As you can see from the second picture, the twist I put in the top made the part I soldered way to close to the front- no way to get a tiny hammer in that space.

Well, Clarity and I chatted again and she says, you can do this, try again, smooth it out, hammer it some more and file the back of that thing so it looks like you really tried. I won't bore you with the details of the third session, but the picture at the top is the final result I obtained without shattering the stone or melting the whole thing down and starting over. I learned a ton of information, hopefully I can retain it, and make a lot fewer mistakes the next time.

I see a lot of beautiful, professional looking work on Etsy and Artfire and many other sites. I wish the customers that shopped at these sites had even a tiny idea of what it takes to get to a place where you feel you have something really worth taking a picture of, writing a description for and offering up to the world to see and buy, handmade by you, with love and an awful lot of melted metal and crumbled stones before you have finally arrived at the point of offering your work for sale.

March Madness Sale

Getting around to having a sale is a lot tougher than it sounds- department stores have them all the time! Stores have tons of items that they put on sale every week to attract buyers, lost leaders, they call them. They get you in there with the promise of something really inexpensive, it's not exactly what you want, but the price is sooo good you buy it anyhow or, if you don't they figure you'll buy something else while you're in there.
Doing this in an on line handmade shop is a lot different. As an artisan, I have a lot fewer items to sell. I have already tried to price my items fairly and competitively with other artisans. But since everyone loves getting a bargin or just can't afford your regular price, I have decided to have a sale!
Rather than offer a small percentage off all my items, I have decided to offer a few items each week in March at a really good discount 15-20% off. Now to me, that's a sale. 
My first item for sale the first week of March Madness is my 24k gold vermeil diamond moon pendant and labradorite marquire briolette necklace. This necklace is all hand wire wrapped in 14k gold fill with a great gold fill chain and lobster claw clasp and it does have a 1 point diamond! .http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=30391235. There are also matching earrings I will be putting on sale later this week.
I would also like to introduce some of my new heart charm bangles, these seem to be very popular, my cut out heart bangle is one of my best sellers. Stamped jewelry is also very poplular this year, allowing people to express themselves a bit. So I have added a poetry heart bangle http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=41659929 and two puffed heart bangles, one hammered and one smooth to my collection.

On a personal note, my daughter's wedding plans are moving right along. We have "the dress". A fun experience with her trying on everything her bridesmaids and I picked out, modeling and getting pix- the best were her with her knee high socks peeking out from under some gorgeous gowns! Now for the caterer and flowers! Wish me luck.

March Madness Starting Early

I have been having so much fun learning new metalsmithing skills this month, I decided to start early for a March Madness incentive in my Etsy shop. Starting today I put one item on sale http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=30391235. I thought it would be fun to put a different item on sale each day of the month that will remain on sale for the entire month. Sale prices will be anywhere from 5-20% off regular prices. I will also be adding some new items every week- since it is March- look for some beautiful aquamarine gemstone jewelry for those March born and also some of my newest bracelets, earrings and rings created with my newly learned skills. As always, my facebook fans and blog followers get 10% off any item in my shop.

My daughter's fall wedding plans are the other all consuming thing in my life lately. Yesterday the 2 flower girl dresses and th ring bearer's suit arrived. Too cute for words. But, why is she buying all this stuff when she's having an officiant do the service at the reception site? Boggles my mind. The photographer has been chosen, boy am I in the wrong business, for 6 hours pay that guy could help with the national debt! The DJ is still up in the air- they each have so much to offer (who knew?). I am in charge of finding the caterer and arranging for flower arrangements- that sounds strange. I get to do food and flowers because they are two things I do really well at home AND my daughter could care less about those things, she is really looking forward to a big party. If I sound a bit jaded it is not because I am not happy for her or unenthusiastic about the upcoming nuptuals. I come from a different era where buying a home and having money in the bank for emergencies (or lack of work) were the top things my parents taught me to always think about. Pay yourself first, they would say- it's important to have momey in the bank, you never know what's going to happen! I'm not tottally a follower of this way of life, but I am a little shocked that there are people that take out a second mortgage on their homes to give their children a "proper wedding". I know I will get through this and have a wonderful time once the big things are done and we can think about what day to have a shower and all the pre-wedding fun stuff. It's just the planning part that's amking me nuts. And it takes time away from what I like to do best- make jewelry!

My First Ever Bezel Set Ring

Joining up the the Aspiring Metalsmiths Team on Etsy was probably one of the best things I ever did for myself! Not that I don't love wire wrapping beautiful gemstones to create great necklaces, earrings and bracelets, but there is so much more to jewelry than that. Once you learn how to saw, solder, use a torch and forge metal, the world of creativity really opens up.
The best thing about this new team of men and women is they are willing to share not only success but failure and answer any and every question about techniques and tricks learned from other teachers and mentors. The next best thing is they have made me challenge myself. I don't think I would have ever attempted a ring for years to come, just wasn't on my radar screen. But here it is, not perfect, and no great design revelation, but it is complete and doing it gave me grear ideas for many more projects to come. Lord, I can't wait to see what they come up with for their next challenge.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4063/4354588083_99351faeb3.jpg

Blizzard Jewelry From a Frustrated Metalsmith

It's just snowing like crazy and blowing even harder here at home. So what do I do, I make jewelry- or at least I attemp to. I am a frustrated metalsmith. I really want to be a metalsmith, but there are limited classes I have access to with a full time job (now there's a conundrum- I have to work to even do this hobby). So I go on line, I buy a tutorial to make something and off I go. Well, I actually had some level of success today. I made a spin ring, for those who like to fidget with their jewelry, this ring has an extra ring in the center that spins around.  I also pierced with my trusty saw, 2 lovely trees on copper to make earrings. The trees didn't turn out exactly alike so I just said, hey, no two trees are alike, and I finished them anyhow. Next I bought another tutorial to saw out flowers to make earrings, I decided to make them look like dogwoods even though dogwoods don't come in copper color. So, all in all, I had a productive day.
Check out the ring on flickr and you can see some of my other blizzard projects!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/allwiredupjewelrydesigns/4346371821/

I have to saw I am not looking forward to shoveling out tomorrow- which I must- with the help of my daughter and hopefully her fiance. But I am looking forward to eating my great smelling veal goulash that's been simmering on the stove all day. My friend from Austria even sent me a link from youtube on how to make spaetzle to go with the stew. Can't wait to eat something warm while watching snow blow.