Making, Learning, Digging

Hi, Steemians! It's been a while!

I've been very busy not being busy.

And by that I mean, slashed work hours in Jan, Feb, & March meant that I had lots of time to read, make art, & play. I honestly kinda forgot about blogging. But I just remembered! So here I am. I know my posts aren't super interesting and don't get a lot of reads, but I like writing things down so here's a documentation of my silversmithing journey thus far:

I blogged previously about my experience at Argentum Jewellery School learning silversmithing basics. It was so interesting and fun and I became completely addicted to this craft of shaping metal and making jewellery. I didn't have much opportunity to play in this area until recently. I managed to buy myself some silversmithing tools so I can play around at home!

This is SO, SO exciting!

I have don't have enough equipment to create perfect, complete pieces, but I have enough to create imperfect, complete-ish pieces! At least enough to be working on building a solid foundation in the skills that make a good smith- soldering, sawing, forming, problem-solving.

My kitchen is a mess and the dust bunnies are multiplying. Our bedroom smells like sulphur and butane, there's silver dust everywhere, and my fingers hurt.

But I'm having a BLAST!

@mstafford is being so so very patient and supportive as I make a mess and get sweaty and frustrated each evening. "try again," he tells me! SO I do.

It's interesting. Although there is certainly a lot of technique and knowhow involved in photography and painting, it feels like when I picked those hobbies up, I just did it. I wasn't amazing at first, but I was 'OK.' I could do it. It wasn't hard.

THIS is HARD. So many tools, so many things to learn! But so worth it! I am really loving working with my hands rather than sitting at a computer photoshopping out blemishes or power lines. This is just so much more satisfying.

The first complete piece that I made at home was really tough to do. I failed and failed and failed at proper soldering over and over. I kept trying to get too fancy with my design before I have my skills locked in. So I simplified, slowed down, and ended up with this:

A far-from-perfect sterling silver ring with a pear shaped strawberry quartz.

This ring is nowhere near perfect. I made the bezel (the silver that holds the stone in) a bit too small so the stone wiggles a wee bit. I don't have all the sanding and polishing equipment I need so there are a lot of little blemishes and imperfections. But, it's the first piece made entirely at home, and I'm super proud of it! It fits on my index finger perfectly :)

For my second project, I reeeally wanted to make a sunstone piece for my bestie for her birthday. I had picked up this stunning faceted sunstone that I thought would be perfect. I had this big idea to do a double-shank design etc etc. The stone itself was rather imperfect, so I struggled a lot with setting it properly. And, after making the bezel too small with the strawberry quartz, I was afraid to do it again, and ended up making this one too tall. I also had to give up on the double shank idea because my soldering just isn't there yet. So I ended up with this really rough and kinda crummy looking ring holding this beautiful yet slightly wonky sunstone. I decided to roll with the rough and weird look and went ahead and used liver of sulphur to oxidize the silver and make it nearly black. Now the whole thing just looks kinda badass:

The black almost makes the rough bezel look like it's supposed to be that way, and really makes the sunstone pop.

So I'm happy with that decision but still can't wait to get back at it to try again and do BETTER. I think I may back off a bit and save up to buy some proper sanding & polishing supplies so I can be doing a better job of properly cleaning & completing my pieces.

Here's how those two look on my hand:

Should I still give the sunstone one to my bestie? Or is it too amateur-ish looking?

So that's where I'm at with my home bench. I'm loving being able to work at home. I still need to figure out the ergonomics of my 'bench,' but that's ok. It will take time. In the meantime I'm consciously trying really hard not to hunch over my work.

One aspect that I also really love is gem hunting. I have bought a huge variety of different stones to mess around with so I can learn how to set different shapes, sizes, textures, and hardnesses. (Did you know that lapidary artists selling their stones on Instagram is a thing? I'm so addicted! Check out @newstoneagecobochons if you love stones!) I am finding them to be so inspiring and intriguing to work with. I have to consider- how can I best show off this stone? What are it's physical properties? What are it's metaphysical features? How does it interact with light? What metal will best compliment the colours in the stone?

Just a teensy sampling of the beautiful stones I have waiting to be made into lovely pieces.

Then there's also literally looking for stones. @mstafford and I have been kinda interested in learning how to "rockhound" as we think it's a neat instersection of our hobbies (jewellery, hiking/rock climbing, vanning). We have learned about local Dallasite that is easy to find on our local beaches, and have been trying to learn how to find other semi-precious beauties that form in BC, such as jade, rhodonite, garnet, peridot, quartz, opal, agate, and pyrite. We have a rock tumbler to start with, but have aspirations of eventually getting a rock saw and grinder so we can make cabochons (flat-backed, domed & polished stones for setting in jewellery). I went to our local Rockhound Shop last week to get some advice and pick up our first set of grits for our tumbler. We're going to fire it up next week!

The 4 different grits to be used in the polishing process.