Just 4 kids

My husband won a holiday! We were pretty excited. I had visions of sipping cocktails around a pool with the palm trees rustling in the gentle breeze.
Those thoughts soon turned to "How the hell am I going to get up off an airmattress every morning with my dodgy knee" LOL - the holiday we won was a "Tag a long" 4 wheel drive camping adventure holiday.

No matter :) we are off to Far North Queensland in July to discover Cape York Peninsular and will venture as far as the most northern point of the Australian mainland. It's something I think we wouldn't have ventured out to do alone, travelling over rough roads and tracks in this remote area, so this type of tour and travelling in a convoy is an opportunity too good to miss.

The tour organisers have an agenda other than making holidays happen, they raise money for Aussie Kids..... and along the way during the tour they present cheques from their fundraising efforts to the communities in the local areas.
As part of this trip we'll be involved in the fundraising efforts too, so I'm kicking off my fundraising by making jewellery to sell so I can donate the proceeds.
I've just listed this little Sterling Silver Crossed Heart Pendant in my Made it shop. I'm donating the materials, listing fees, time, etc etc, so that 100% of the purchase price can be donated to the Just 4 Kids Childrens Charity. 

Hope it sells quickly so I can make some more - I've got the bucket below to fill with money!

Buy the necklace here within Australia....or here If outside of Australia

 More about the charity 

Where we're going...

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Irregular Pendant

I've been meaning to make a silver version of the chunky copper pendant from my last post and I finally had a chance to do it.
This time I've used Sterling Silver Wire and it's on a smaller scale - The largest link is around 5cm x 3.5cm at it's widest points. (2 inches x 1 1.2 inches) Still, thats a pretty decent size for a silver pendant.

I like that you can rotate the shapes around in the jump ring bail to give it a different look. The top pic shows it in a uniform order then underneath it's pictured in a more haphazard arrangement.

 

My current quest is to create from the supplies I already have rather than buy in more materials. I've plenty of this Sterling Wire, so I can see some more of these coming on, maybe even earrings too!


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Get Coppered?

No it doesn't have the same ring to it as "Get Silvered" does it? But lately I've been playing around a bit with copper and Brass.  What about "Brassed off"? Lol - no I think I'll stick with Get Silvered.

M. came in from the shed the other day and gave me a stack of nice thick copper wire. Each wire almost 3mm thick in 30cm lengths! Score! He salvaged it from work - it was a sample piece of Industrial cable that was going to be chucked out! There I was, thinking he was hiding in the shed playing with his fishing lures and reels when all the time he was stripping wire for me :)

We've had days and days of heatwaves lately with temperatures in the high 30s and even getting as high as 42 degrees (that's 107.6 degrees farenheit for the Celsius challenged!) Obviously, that's not the weather for soldering in a tin shed, especially when there are total fire bans.  So I waited patiently and courtesy of Cyclone Iggy out to sea further north we've had rain and even cloud cover and cooler temps in the last day or two. Of course I seized the opportunity to light up the torch -Here's the before and after shots. It's nice and chunky - The largest shape is around 8 x 4cm.

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Tiny Treasure Pendant

Before:

After:

This pendant was inspired by those gorgeous cylinder shaped Bali Silver Prayer Boxes. I've admired them for a long time.
For my pendant I used some copper pipe from the Hardware store, and used the same techniques that I used with my trinket boxes. I've plenty of spare pipe leftover - it was a 1.5 metre length and the pendant is only about 4 cm long. Overkill?? HaHa maybe! Anyway, I hope to experiment some more with the leftovers! I may try etching the next one, and I want to try out some kind of safety catch...and... if I get really adventurous I may try out a hinged version and....Oh well .....we'll see how I go.........     :) Pin It

Success or the opportunity to try again.....

How are your resolutions and goals going?
I'm on target so far - My housekeeping schedule is getting organised and I decided that as the house was spick and span that I'd treat myself to a day of metalwork today.

My plans nearly didn't happen as the postie delivered my late Christmas pressie to myself! I must say I have excellent taste when buying gifts for myself....

This is an awesome book with instructions for making all kinds of boxes and lockets as well as the hinges and catches. There's heaps of jaw dropping gallery pictures to inspire too!  But instead of sitting in the airconditioning reading all afternoon it inspired me to finish my second trinket box that I started last year at Tafe.

I had a few many soldering issues, then torch issues, but remembering Tim McCreight's comment in the book that there are only two outcomes - "success or the opportunity to try again" - I pressed on - trying again and again.......and again... until I finally got it right, all the while, ignoring my urges to go with third option which he never mentioned in the book which was to chuck the whole lot through the nearest window!
Heads up to my friends too - Carolyn for providing the copper pipe I used for the box and to Jane who suggested I check my torch tips for blockages. It did the trick!

Ta Da.....here it is:

 and opened:

and with my first box:

 

Specs for those interested: Copper & Sterling Silver - Its about 5cm (2inches) high including the dome and about 3.5cm (11/2inches) in diameter.

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Happy 2012!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and holiday season! Ours included a lovely day with most of the family and a Christmas lunch at our place, followed by a Boxing day lunch with our youngest who was away at work on Christmas day. The lead up to the New Year has been good, we're on hols from work, so eating leftovers, reading books, catching up with friends and general lazing around has been the focus.

Now the New year has arrived it's time to think about being more productive. I haven't made any resolutions but I have some loose goals and ideas I want to achieve so putting them down here makes me a little accountable.

• I've decided not to go back and start another Tafe course this year, so the extra time at home will be spent creating and making more metal jewellery, so that the skills learned last year become second nature. I hope to devote at least one day each week to my metalwork! 
• I'm happier when my house is in order, so I'll continue with my ongoing decluttering and try and establish a cleaning routine that will work for me. I joined Flylady a few years back and although I don't subscribe now, I've adapted one of their cleaning plans to suit my house and I'm going to follow that to keep on top of things. I just revisited the site and it really does have some great ideas there.  
• Last year, one goal was to sort out the many pre digital family photos, it didn't happen so that's going to roll over to this year. 
• No suprises here: to address my health & fitness! I'm not doing too badly but the body could do with a little more exercise and a little less calories.
• "Being Happy" is a bit vague, so I'll be working on specifics for that one - I'm pretty sure it'll include finding more time for connecting with family and friends but all of the others above will contribute to that too I hope!

Happy New Year Everyone - Hope all your wishes and dreams come true in 2012. 
What are your plans?

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Stringing it along....

I love wrapping gifts - so Christmas is a good time of year in that respect!

This year I'd been coveting the red and white bakers Twine that is all over the internet at the moment. I picked some up last month when we were in Sydney! My husband thought I was crazy that we go all the way to Sydney and my first purchase there was.........string!

Well, this festive string has a bit of a natural look to it so doesn't really work that well with the glossy, patterned Christmas papers, so some regular plain brown paper was in order.
I tizzied up the ladies' gifts with the other over exposed ever popular paper product...doileys, but that wouldn't do for the men!  Instead I got the printer fired up and made up some labels with a vintage wreath image and a holly border.

 

Now what am I going to do with the other 45 meters of Red & White string?

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Sydney.............

In my last post I may have given the impression that since the term finished, I've been chained to the vaccum cleaner. Well that's not strictly true....M and I did find time for a short break on the other side of the continent.
We were celebrating our 33rd wedding anniversary on the 11/11/11 (Don't you love those numbers! - it wasn't planned back in '78 - just a lovely numerological coincidence!) and then M.'s Birthday on the 16th. What better excuse to spend 6 nights in fair Sydney Town down at the best ever location in the Rocks!
What can I say, we hadn't visited there in 25 years and it's still an awesome city.....

The  Icon ;) Covered in self cleaning tiles no less!

The other icon complete with a most cooperative Seagull

 Icon 2 viewed from inside Icon 1

 Icon 1 viewed from Icon 2 - it was high - I felt brave!

The Heights: Didn't climb over but did walk across the bridge!

The Gaudy:  No, I don't mean Murray !

The Quirky - No washing just birdcages!

The Arty- Recreation of the original laneway.

The Old Buildings - They treasure them and don't flatten them.

The Oldest Pub - one of many we visited :)

The Atmosphere: Friday night markets at The Rocks.

The Unusual: A Lovely pressed metal construction.....Umm... a urinal!

Thanks for joining me in my express 12 photo tour of the Rocks in Sydney. Believe me,you got off lightly -I was rather snap happy and took 251 photos. Maybe I'll put some of the other better pics up on Flickr. I'll pop the link up here when I get the chance to upload them. Pin It

End of an era - well that sounds rather dramatic....

"Life is what happens to you, while you're busy making other plans" John Lennon 

My year of study has come to an end. It happened over a month ago, but this is the first chance I've had to blog -  I've been filling  my time with other creative endeavours...........Hmmm, I wish.......I've actually been catching up on the housework, but it does make me somewhat happy to have a clean kitchen floor and a tidy linen closet ;)
I'm still waiting for my Cert 2 in Jewellery Manufacture to arrive in the mail. I've passed but I've been told not to hold my breath for the actual certificate to arrive. In the meantime I've done nothing creative! Despite my smug attitude about my kitchen floor and the sparkling bathroom tiles (did I mention the sparkling bathroom tiles?)  I thought that with the extra free day each week now the course has finished, that I'd be churning out magnificent jewellery creations, but no.....  it's pretty much been housework and the occasional half decent meal every now and then!
I still have my copper pipe trinket box to finish. It's probably only a half hour or so of work  to get to the clean up stage but the weather's hotting up here in Perth and soldering out in the tin shed isn't that appealing at the mo. And of course it's the "season to be merry" and lots of shopping, wrapping, decorating of trees, socialising and prep to do before Christmas. Yeah,  I know.....excuses, excuses!

To be continued.................

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Class countdown!

The Tafe year is nearly over for my course. I have mixed feelings - I'm looking forward to spending the time at home creating instead but really will miss the classes. And then there's the motivation issue when I'm at home - there's so many distractions: housework, shopping, washing, ironing and cooking.
I'm not saying I do them but the need to do them definately distracts me from the task of creating ;) Not to mention the biggest distraction of all - The Internet!!!
Anyway, we had a great day in class yesterday. A classmate is working on a new range and the teacher gave us all a lesson/demo in how to make a rubber mould. Jane was then able to use the mould and use the wax injector to reproduce her design in wax.

I took about 20 grams of scrap sterling in to class and melted it into an ingot then spent far too long (but I love doing it) rolling it down on the mill and then drawing it down into .8mm wire which I'll being using for earring hooks.

Another classmate Carolyn generously bought in some copper pipe for me to use for future trinket boxes. The teacher took us down to the metal workshop and we had it sliced on the cold metal bandsaw (at least I think that's what it was).
It took the metal workshop teacher a few minutes to do and will definately save me an hour, probably more of sawing. I'm always pleasantly amazed at the resources available at Tafe.

I also rolled down my ingot from last term a little more. I've decided I'll leave it now at about 1.5mm thick until I have a definate project in mind for the silver.

We also got the course info for next year. There's a possibility that we may be able to enrol in the Advanced Diploma as part time students and just do a few of the units. There's about 5 of us from this course interested in doing more.  Love to be able to do that if it fits in with all the other commitments I have, like family and the day job!

Now that the formal class projects are out of the way I have to plan what I want to do in class next to make the most of my last 3 classes............. 












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