When snow turns to sludge!

I bought some fabulous Agate Drusy cabs and decided to set one in a ring. I didn't want anything fancy - just a nice simple bezel type setting.
As you can see below, that's what I made - all went well with the metal work, making the bezel setting and all that - here's the finished ring.......


Actually though, it all went pear shaped at the last minute.
The stone started off as a lovely snow white, frosty, sugary WHITE stone. By the time I finished it was a GRAY! My snow had turned to sludge!



Here's what happened - The stone was straight sided so I couldn't set the bezel in the traditional way of pushing it over the stone. I decided to use 2 part epoxy. I had done some research (um, web surfing) and discovered that the use of glue to set stones is frowned upon in many jewellery circles -Warning: please turn away now if that's you ;) - but as I didn't want to do other fancy settings, it was my only option.
So, I carefully selected a top of the range Ultra clear epoxy - (8 mls for $9.40 - hey, that's only the equivalent of $1175 a litre - it should do the job - argh!!)

Meanwhile, the white stone against the polished silver looked a little bland, so I oxidised the ring with Liver of Sulfur to get a bit of contrast. I did this before setting the stone so I wouldn't discolour it (Ha Ha - that's ironic!). I gave the inside of the setting a quick sand to remove the oxidisation there and later on I glued the stone in and set it aside.
On checking it later, I was shocked to find my white stone had turned gray.

I'm thinking that I mustn't have removed all the oxidisation properly inside the setting and a chemical reaction of some kind occurred that caused the remaining oxidisation & the epoxy to be absorbed into the porous stone. Any metalworkers or lapidary people out there who can shed some light on it? All suggestions and theories welcome as I still want to make myself one of these rings with my remaining stones and I'd like the stone to stay white next time!

The story does have a happy ending though. My stockist liked the monochromatic purple/gray shades of the finished ring anyway and happily took it to put in her shop. Pin It

Possibilities in Metal

Over the last 2 Sundays I've attended the "Possibilities in Metal Casting" Workshop at The Fremantle Arts Centre
It was lots of fun, I went with my talented friends Lotta & Jane and the teacher was renowned Local Artist Sarah Elson. We enjoyed it so much we have signed up for Sarah's class for Term one to explore some more of the possibilities!
We cast all sorts of things, I tried a wax model of a lego brick, some twigs, a resin mini plane (that Jane made a mould of from a little toy plane I had lying around).

My most succesful casts were the twigs which I cast in Sterling Silver, the other things require quite a bit of clean up so I'll save them for another time. This morning I spent some time polishing up one of the silver twigs and soldering the jumprings on - I had sawn out the little sterling silver bird earlier in the week so he got soldered on too.

It's not really an original idea as I've seen lots of similar sorts of things done with cast twigs, I imagine because the obvious thing to do is to pop a bird on a branch! The beauty is of course, that no two twigs are alike. Anyway, I'm very happy to have a cute necklace to wear as a result of the course.

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Freo Bazaar - Woo Hoo, I'm in!

Very excited that I'm going to be at The Fremantle Arts Centre Bazaar again this year.
I'll be sharing a stall again with Jane & Petra. I'll be concentrating on my metalwork and chainmaille, Jane does beautiful jewellery with semi precious & crystals & pearls and Petra does some amazing work with mostly pearls and some semi precious. Petra's been doing felting too so I expect she'll have some of that on the stall as well.

We're pretty chuffed to be accepted for the 3rd year in a row. They had over 100 applicants for just 57 stalls and of that 57, they selected 25 new exhibitors and just 32 previous exhibitors.

It's one of the best local Art/Craft shows around. Applications have to be juried by a committee and all the work has to be made by local Artisans here in Western Australia - absolutely no imports goods are allowed. Definitely worth a look if you're in the Fremantle area in the first weekend in December as the quality and variety of crafts is very high. Pin It