Gunna!

I've looked back through my posts so far this year which have been few and far between and I can't help noticing that I was Gunna Do this or Gunna Do that.
Well I'm reporting back and to tell the truth not a lot of it has been done.
For instance I haven't touched the negative scanner that I blogged about in January, it is sitting here mocking me as it gathers dust. In fact it's dropped of the To Do List indefinitely now!
In that same post I mentioned Decluttering and Healthier eating etc. The Decluttering is an ongoing thing - sort of one step forward and two steps back. The more I get rid of,  it seems the more other "stuff" comes into the house -usually via the other family members! It's like the universe is saying to every piece of stuff  "Hey come over here - we've got some free space to fill now - you'll fit right in!"
The good news from that blog post is I've decluttered a couple of kilos, I'm exercising fairly regularly and I'm generally healthier than I was then!

My blog post in March I was gunna create wonders with my new dies and the hyraulic press - well I did manage to create a mess!

My hydraulic press is manual and I obviously gave it one too many cranks as I broke the die and the metal cut through in places - that was not meant to happen! Shame because that was my favourite shape but I do still  have the large size and the small size die left to play with later....probably a lot later.........

It's not all negative though, I've had sporadic bursts of creativity and made myself a ring with an enamel dome I made when I first got my kiln last June, when the kiln was my hot blogging topic and I was gunna do lots of enamelling.
Here it is:

I really want to fire up the kiln again and start experimenting with more enamel work but well.........I'm not gunna make any promises about when!! Pin It

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

Where's the day gone........

Day off today and this morning I felt a sudden urge to get creative. Anything to avoid doing the house work and washing!
I've had it in the back of my mind to make a ring for myself and simply never got around to it so today it happened!

It wasn't all smooth sailing though - the silver got the dreaded fire scale when I soldered it which meant lots of extra filing and sanding - for a pretty simple design I've spent the best part of the day on it! It's not perfect but I'm not going to point out the other faults - can't see 'em when I'm wearing it anyway, so I'm happy with the day's efforts. Pin It