Brain Workout

I have been fascinated by the Japanese aesthetic sense and their arts and culture for a long time, I plan to go there when I have saved up the funds. So when a series of classes in learning Japanese language was offered locally I immediately signed up. What a brain workout! I love it and I am super keen to keep going now the original series of six classes is done. However it really takes a lot of work to start learning a whole new language from scratch, not mention a new alphabet or should I say syllabary. Well three new ones in fact, since Japanese uses three different types of script - Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji - which they seem to mix up at random in sentences. I have pretty much memorized all the Hiragana syllables - I love practising them in my skinny black drawing pen. Now I am starting on the Katakana syllables, I'm leaving Kanji for last as it is the most daunting!

I don't have anyone to practice my (very limited) conversation with, so to hell with it I am just speaking it all out loud to myself, to my husband's amusement! He has at least learned two words - the word for cake (keeki) and the word for cupcake (cupkeeki) - we both laugh at that one.

Meanwhile I have bought some new enamel colours - Japanese ones of course - gorgous pinks and pale blues, deep purple and dark red. I haven't completed any pieces in the new colours yet so here is one I finished a couple of weeks ago.

Aaaagh!

I know that everyone makes mistakes and does thoughtless things in the studio but sometimes when you are on your own and make a doozy of a blunder you have the feeling that no-one else would be as stupid. Here is what I did over the weekend so you all can learn from my disaster...

By the end of Friday I had completed five new necklaces in silver and enamel. All that remained to do was to add a sterling silver jump ring to each piece and to carefully solder it closed. I have done this before quite a few times and using extra-easy solder and a very small torch flame have been successful. I have also briefly pickled the pieces to clean up the jump ring with no problems.

Saturday morning: I went ahead with the process as described but as I took the pieces out of the pickle pot I noticed the enamel was matte not glossy and pitted looking on each piece. Eventually I figured out that the pickle I was using was stronger than normal - I recalled I had made up a strong batch some time before and it was much evaporated and so even stronger. So there I was holding a bunch of ruined pendants.

I spent all saturday removing jump rings, stoning down enamel and refiring and re-soldering rings. As for re-pickling, I just poured some pickle into a small container and held the pendat upside down so only the jump ring was submerged - worked fine.

Organised Randomness

My most recent commission was an exercise in organised randomness. How to creatively arrange a group of stones so that they looked pleasingly random on top of the ring? I could have spent weeks just re-arranging the stones within the circle endlessly, never quite satisfied that they looked really random. Obviously there was a limit to how long I could spend so what did I do?

I started with 16 stones. I took out two, one was badly chipped and the other was a very strange uneven cut. Of the remainder I found two matching ones, one to go on each shoulder of the shank which I put aside. That was the easy part. I was left with one big stone, three medium big stones and eight very very small stones.

I played around with the composition of these stones for several days! I was aiming for a casual looking arrangement whereby the stones looked easily spaced out but not evenly spaced. I put aside one of the tiny stones to give me an odd number, this helped. In the end I never did really resolve the arrangement to my complete satisfaction but I had to stop and actually make the ring so that is what I forced myself to do. Even after I had soldered all the bezels in place I was still tempted to add the last little stone but I knew it would only make the design slightly different, not better, so I resisted the temptation.

Chasing Bears

Black bear in a tree in our yard

My neighbour went away for three weeks leaving me to look after the fruit trees in her yard. Consequently I have spent the last three weeks chasing bears. We have quite a large population of black bears in our area and September is the month when they wander into town foraging for food before they hibernate. They LOVE fruit trees! These animals are beautiful to look at, when their fur catches the sunlight it gleams, and despite their name they come in all shades of brown from reddish cinnamon, through chestnut tan , chocolate, and black.

Anyone who grows fruit knows it is a toss up between leaving the fruit on the tree until it is ripe enought to eat and risking a broken tree or picking the fruit early and finding it to be useless because it is underripe. Sometimes you get both - the bears will climb the tree to get a few plums or pears and a young tree or a brittle old one will break under their weight. So I have been over at my neighbours' everyday surveying the damage, dragging broken limbs away and picking underripe fruit, hoping the bear is not creeping up behind me!

In spite of all this stress I have completed a recent challenging commission. So I am patting myself on the back today because firstly my neighbour got home and didn't grumble about broken trees only thanked me for looking after them, and secondly my customer came to pick up the ring and said she loved it. Phew!

Commissions

Ring in 18k white and yellow gold with pink sapphire

I'm currently working on a ring commission at the moment using the customers old gold jewellery to melt down and the stones that were in these old pieces of jewellery. With gold so expensive now I find a lot of people are digging into their jewellery boxes and finding things they want re-vamped. I genuinely like doing commissions especially more complex ones but there are things about the work that make me anxious and I find myself procrastinating a little when I should be concentrating and trying to figure out exactly how to do a piece especially when the design is forcing me to do something I wouldn't normally choose to do.

What makes me anxious?

When I can't get hold of the customer, they don't return calls or emails and I am left wondering.

When I meet with the customer for the first time at my house - I use my kitchen to meet in as it has the best light. No one has openly said that it is strange yet, and it does make me clean the kitchen extra well.

When I have to give them the quote - someone in business once told me that if you don't have anyone saying "Oh that's too expensive" then your prices are too low.

When I have to guestimate how much gold I need for a piece.

When I have to decide on placement of stones especially if the design calls for a random look.

When I'm making a bezel for a stone that isn't round or oval.

When I am sizing the shank of a ring - I want it to fit perfectly at all times and I know this isn't possible.

In short - most of the time. I do enough ring commissions that I feel okay accepting them but not enough that I feel super comfortable with every situation. They are a good source of income in my business though and things have started picking up after a year or so of slim pickings. I have balked at the idea of promoting ring commissions on my website though because I find doing long distance work is more fraught with customer complications than working with someone I can physically meet. I'd like to hear from anyone who does though, perhaps they could give me some tips.

Cloisonne Enamelling

Here is the cloisonne brooch I started working on at our local culture tour. I have finished it and it is now up on Etsy. I found it difficult to work on a cloisonne piece while doing a public demo, far better for me to be alone in my studio with no distractions. I am definitely a beginner when it comes to cloisonne - this a really a very simple piece with only a few wires to lay in. I do aspire to make more complex pieces but I know it will take a lot of work to get there.

I would urge anyone who is dabbling in enamel to try cloisonne work because the effect is so lovely. Having said that it can be very frustrating dealing with the tiny pieces of fine silver wire. Not only that but my eyes sight is going through a transition at the moment and my optometrist and I are deciding what kind of contact lens to get so that my working vision is good and my long distance too. At the moment I am going back and forth between a pair of magnifiers over my contacts and a magnifying lamp to get the best working vision. Add to this putting on the dark kiln-proof glasses when firing and I am getting in a bit of a muddle.

Another point to think about is whether to use leaded or unleaded enamels in cloisonne work. I always use unleaded enamels when I am sifting dry but as cloisonne work is done wet I have safely used leaded enamels on a few pieces and got some lovely colours to show for it. I am planning to stock up on more leaded colours, particularly the warm colours of red, pink, orange to use on future cloisonne work.

If you have never seen the exquisite work of Harlan Butt find some time to check it out. He really is a master of enamelling and cloisonne work - www.harlanbutt.com Now I am going to go and browse my enamelling catalogue for all the things on my wish list - new colours of enamel, more trivets, gold cloisonne wire... It is so much easier to sit and do this than to actually do any work!

Waiting for Business

Unfinished production pendants in fine silver and enamel.

Last saturday and sunday I was part of a local Culture Tour - demonstrating my enamel jewellery techniques. It went about as I had expected - not a complete loss but not really busy enough to get excited about. Because I had set up my work table in a local boutique where I sell my work there was a steady stream of people coming in. But I was surprised at how many of them just concentrated on their shopping and showed no interest in what I was doing. As I have said before, I don't really think that the geography and sparse population of our area were conducive to this tour being a success, but I was happy to give it a go.

By the way I had been worried about taking my kiln up to the store and plugging it in. We (myself and the store owner) had finally managed to get hold of an electrician and he came and temporarily replaced the breaker for the outlet socket I was using. I was relieved, and everything worked very well.

The pieces I worked on during the tour were some small, very simple pendants, using the textured foil technique. It is an easy technique to do while talking to someone but it looks quite effective when finished. I had a cloisonne piece set up to work on too and I did a little, but I really needed to be at home alone doing that one. I did have some people who werer very interested in what I was doing and they really made it worthwhile. I even sold a few pieces!

All in all I'll call it a weekend spent promoting my work rather than selling a bundle of it. I guess it all helps in the end, and I did get quite a few pieces made!