Back to Etching

I'm working on jewelry for Red River Revel.  This is the biggest show I do every year. Last night and today I've been working on etching some copper and brass. 



Here's an etched copper plate.  I annealed it this afternoon and put it in a pickle of vinegar and salt.  The black stuff is bits of black fire scale coming off the back of the plate.  I annealed it face down so the back had the most scale.  It's almost finished in the pickle.  Next I rinse it, bath it in some baking soda water, rinse again, and clean it with 4 0 steel wool. Then it will be ready to cut with my disk cutter and I can dap it (dome it). After that I'll cut holes, antique it (or not), tumble it, and coat it with a permanent jewelry finish.  I like the finish I choose to be trouble free for the customer so I almost always coat my copper. After that it will be assembled into jewelry.

I made a list one time of the steps I go through from beginning to end in the etching-to-jewelry process and there are 15 steps.  Eight of the steps, maybe more, have multiple steps. Sometimes I skip some steps if I'm doing something different.  It isn't always necessary to pickle items after annealing them.  The fire scale can be attractive in some applications.

I love etched script and I found some wonderful script stamps at the Heirloom Productions rubber stamp show in Grapevine Texas last month.  I also got some really cool stamps at one of my favorite vendors,  Lost Coast Designs. I'm going to be using them soon.

One of my new projects is etched light switch plates.  I have some copper and brass switch plates and will be experimenting with them.

Great Deals and Tips #2, The Portable Bench

In the last year or so I've started doing more metalwork.  I found that I needed a surface to work on that I didn't have to worry about getting scratched or beat up.  I don't have a lot of room for another table so  I got one of these at my local Wal-Mart:

I got the 29 inch tall one and my friend Billye got the 24 inch one for her studio.  It works nicely for heavy duty hammering on the bench block, and I can take it outside when I'm working on things that have to be repeatedly annealed.  I can clamp my vise on it, or clamp a bench pin on it.  When it's not in use as a jewelry workbench it's in the kitchen.  I frequently sit on it while cooking. Well, truthfully, it's in the kitchen a lot when I'm hammering on it.  The top still looks brand new even though I've worked on it a lot. It doesn't take up a lot of room.

I don't remember the price but it was around $25.00.  I tried to look it up online, but they don't have the exact one I bought.

Here I am doing a little fold forming with a copper strip.  I found out that I need a wider vise or a short piece of copper.  I could only get half the strip in the vise at a time. I'm not sure where I'm going with this strip.  I was going to put it on a brass cuff but now I'm thinking of cutting it up and making earrings. There's still a lot of texturing and folding to be done.

This was the first time I'd used my new Fretz hammer.  It's the brown handled one in the back.  It's a great hammer.

The Dangerous Dark

I walk around outside my house all the time in the dark.  If the neighbors could see me I know they'd think I'm insane because most of the time I have one hand up in front of my face as I'm walking.  This is why:



I don't know the name of these spiders, but they are fat brown squatty looking things that build a new web every night. They have nice webs and it's kind of impressive that they do all that work every day. They like to hang their webs out in the middle of an open space where you never expect a spider could put a web. They're sneaky that way. Sometimes the anchor lines are ten feet long.  They almost always hang them with the center about 5 feet above the ground which is face level for me.

Many times I have wrapped one of the webs around my head.  I'm pretty sure people in the next county hear me screaming when this happens, even though I scream with my teeth clenched just in case something wants to run in. I'm not fond of spiders and I'm less fond of the webs actually touching me.  One good thing I can say about these spiders is that they run up one of the support lines when something big walks through the web.  I appreciate them not running around on my face, although it doesn't stop the screaming.

This spider hung her web right above my car hood.  I had a nice shot lined up with my cell phone when Scrappy jumped up on the hood and started walking into the web.  You can see the spider is headed for a support line.  Half a second earlier it was smack in the middle of the web.

This time of year I also have a flashlight.  That's because I don't want to step on one of these:



Click on the photo to go to my flickr page and see it full size.  This is a copperhead snake. I was on the way out to my small gold fish pond one night a few years ago and saw him next to the sidewalk. I was checking the pond for snakes. There wasn't a snake in the pond but there was a huge spider eating one of the fish.

Copperheads are really hard to see in the leaves like this.  When they are coiled up in the leaves their skin makes a rosette pattern. A few nights ago I caught Scrappy and Pawlie playing with one. I heard a crack and Scrappy jumped up about two feet and back about three.  The crack was the snake striking.  Fortunately, Scrappy wasn't bitten.  I called the cats over to me and looked for what they'd been after.  It took several minutes for me to find the snake.  I didn't see it until it started to move slowly away.  

So if you see me walking around the yard at night with one hand up in front of my face, looking at the ground with a flashlight you'll know...I can explain that. 

Great Deals and Tips #1 - Fabulous Friday Find

This is the first in a new series of posts on great deals and tips relating to jewelry making.  I'll post when I find something or have a tip to share and they'll be searchable under "great deals and tips".




I spotted these at Big Lots today.  The cute little hammer was $5.00 and the 6 foot key chain tape measure was $2.50.  And did I mention the hammer is cute?

The hammer is just right for when I need a hammer and don't want to use one of my good jewelry hammers, like when I'm beating the heck out of some found object.  It will fit in a box when I travel. There were matching C clamps, spring clips, and a hobby sized hack saw, but I already have these, although they aren't as cute.

The hobby saw is also a great deal.  It was $3.50 and had several blades. The handle folds up into the frame for storage so it takes up about the same space as the hammer. I have a similar one that I use when I want to cut something and need more than the jewelry saw, but less than a big hacksaw, and don't want to break out the dremel.

My next great deals and tips post will be about the small, inexpensive, and very portable bench I use for a work surface  when I texture and pound on stuff.

Summer Goodness

Here are a few photos from around the house and family this spring and summer.

Black swallowtails aren't nearly as shy as their tiger swallowtail cousins.



I did get some shots of a tiger swallowtail.

There were three family weddings this spring:

My niece Angela and Suhail married in New York.

My niece Sarah and Chris married in Cancun, Mexico.

And their mother Mary married Bobby in Texas after parachuting to the venue.



My nephew Daniel graduated from high school. Here my father helps him tie his tie.

I think Dad's wondering if someone who can't tie a tie is ready to graduate.




We had the nosebleed seats.



Here he is afterwards with my parents.



The grand finale to the graduation:



Back home the garden is doing better than ever.



The Virginia Creeper leaves have already turned.




That's all for today!

Susan Tuttle's Digital Layers Class

I've been taking mixed-media artist Susan Tuttle's new online class "Digital Layers."  I'm getting a late start on it, but I'm having a really good time.  I can't wait until the last lessons when we get more into collage. 

Last Sunday we went to a family wedding at Lake Lavon.  The bride and groom parachuted in (that's how they met) and it was a casual affair on the lakeshore. The Cowboy Church preacher married them.  I managed to take 397 photos while we were there.  Don't you love digital cameras? I will be working through them for a while. 

Not all the photos were of the wedding.  I also took some photos of my son having fun at the shoreline.  I took pictures of the waves, the "beach" and a tree for use as texture photos.  

Here's one of the photos I did for the week 1 project 1 of Digital Layers.  As always you can click on the photo and go to my Flickr photostream to view it, and others, in better resolution.  And you can check out the group photos for the class from a link on this photo's page.




The photo really looks better viewed in a larger size.  I used a photo of my son at the water's edge for background, and layered another photo of the waves surging over the shoreline, followed by a layer of glass texture from Texture King. Texture King has lots of really interesting free texture photos.  The originals are on the Flickr stream for comparison.
                          
I have Susan's newest book Digital Expressions:Creating Digital Art with Adobe Photoshop Elements.  After I finish the online class I'm working through the book.  The book looks great, and the projects cover some techniques that I've wanted to learn for a long time.  There's a disk included with the book but I haven't had time to look at it yet. 

"Nap" Time is Over

Wow, I've been a bad blogger. Despite having a list of things to blog about on my to-do list I haven't posted in over two months.


I snapped this shot with my cell phone at my vet's office. I can't remember this kitty's name, but she loves the printer. The clerks lift her hiney up and hold her with her hips suspended  while the machine prints. She doesn't even wake up. She is one of several clinic cats.

Adorn Me! 2010--Evening Day 2 & 3

One of the lessons I learned at Adorn Me!  this year was that it's probably not a good idea to take an evening class on a day when I have a day class.  The first day with the sawing class wasn't so bad.  I think I was wired with excitement and that it carried me through the very long day.

Wednesday and Thursday I was very tired during my evening classes.  I could tell my brain wasn't working as well as it should be.  I still had a great time though. 


fun funky ring

Wednesday evening was Jane Salley's Fun Funky Rings class.  I only got the one ring done.  I got to use the dapping blocks and the disc cutters, which I loved. I had never used disc cutters.  I did get parts of other rings done.  Jane is a lot of fun and the class was kind of like having "playtime."  We used several methods of cold connections: rivets, mini nuts and bolts, etc. 


knot bead pendant

Thursday evening was Melanie Schow's Knot Bead Pendant class.  This was a great class and I enjoyed it very much. Melanie made the complex bead seem easy and she had a great handout with photos. Check out her amazing coiled jewelry here.

I was going to antique this bead when I got home, but now I've decided to leave this one as is and make a second to antique, and a third out of copper...