BeadFest Texas: LOOK WHAT I MADE

On the next day of the BeadFest, I took an all-day introductory Metalsmithing class and lawdy, do I want to do an ethnography of jewelry workshops now.  I started out in the grumpy zone because I had to go to the class without breakfast and coffee, and then wait until the break to get some blessed caffeine.  But enough about the misery.  Let's get to the jewelry.

In the morning, we learned how to saw, file and texture metal.  I have tried sawing, filing and texturing before, but I picked up a lot of tips. My favorite was one for texturing metal, known as Look Like A Crazy Person.  This technique involves 1) abandoning all hopes of dignity; 2) putting your metal on the driveway/sidewalk/road; and 3) hitting the everliving daylights out of the metal with a hammer.  Optional step:  Avoid being hit by cars in the road.  It was AWESOME.  Although there were lots of people staring at us, nobody bothered to come up and ask what we were doing.  They just gave us a wide berth.  Anyway, we made two pairs of earrings.  The blurry ones in the front of the shot were made with a texturing hammer and the ones on the right were made on the sidewalk. 

Then after a lunch break for food and more caffeine, we learned about soldering.  After a loooooonng nonlinear lecture, we finally got to make three stacking rings out of sterling silver wire.  I wish I had gotten to solder more because it seems like the kind of thing you learn by doing, but GUYS GUYS GUYS LOOK WHAT I MADE:

Two rings have a satin finish and the middle one is hammered.  If you look closely at the picture, you can see two of the joins.  The teacher said that the most common mistake of beginners is to use too much solder.  So I didn't use enough.  Yes, I'm special that way.

I planned these for my middle finger and now I have discovered a flaw in my plan.  I keep wanting to walk up to people, extend my middle finger and say "LOOK WHAT I MADE!!  I MADE THIS!!!  FROM WIRE!!!"  Except what people see is me giving them the finger.  It might be a flaw.

After the class finished, we went out to dinner at a Thai restaurant in Arlington which was lovely.  Then we tried to go back to the hotel, which was inconveniently located next to the World Series game.  The police blockaded all the streets leading to the ballpark, which also happened to be all the streets leading to our hotel.  So we drove around, a lot, and eventually we were able to get back to the hotel.  All night the stadium was rocking, and once the game finished, the very drunk baseball fans came stomping through the hotel until all hours of the morning.  It was okay, though, because when another group of loud drunken men were shouting in the hallway at 3 am, I thought about going outside and saying "Hey!  Guys!  GUYS!  LOOK WHAT I MADE!!!"

BeadFest Texas: The Deliciousness of Beads

Friday I went to BeadFest Texas and there were some great vendors in the exhibition hall.  I was standing at one table looking at beads when a woman next to me picked up a strand of beads and starting saying "mmmmm.....Mmmmmm.....MMMMMmmmmm!"  It's the kind of sound I would make while eating a cinnamon roll.  Startled, I looked up and saw a woman holding the strand of beads up near her mouth.  Well, I'm not one to judge.  Go ahead and eat the beads, if you want.  There is something incredibly tactile about a strand of beads, and when you find the RIGHT strand of beads, well, there is an inexplicable urge to eat the beads.  Maybe it brings us back to our infancy, when everything interesting went in our mouths.  Or maybe beads are DELICIOUS.

I have enough delicious beads in my stash.  Really, I do.  But there were some very cute, very sad beads in need of a good home.  I mean, what could I do?  I had to bring these sparklies home.  Citrine is so very hard to find, and these faceted strands are gorgeous.  See the sparkle? Shiiiiiny....preetttyyyy....spaarrrklllllyyyyyy.....ooooh.

Material Inspiration

Look what just arrived!  These fabulous sheets of anodized aluminum are just begging to be made into components.  I'm already working on sawing and filing these into some cool necklace and bracelet pieces.  The red one really needs to become something special....hmmm.....

Design Challenge: One Bead

Sometimes when I sit at my jewelry bench (well, desk), I get overwhelmed by the colors and textures of my stockpile.  To push myself to make something, I'll pick ONE item and force myself to design a piece around that.  This week, I chose this botswana agate coin bead:

The chevron striation is just gorgeous and I love the variety of colors:  grey, cream, brown and pink.  Well, I'm not a fan of pink, but the stone looks so neutral the pink seems to fit in.  I really wanted to showcase this stone, so I decided to create a mirrored background for it.  Using my handy dandy dapping block, I domed a silver disc so that it gently cupped the stone.  And here's the final product shot for the necklace designed around this bead:

Jewelry 101: Wrapped Loops vs. Simple Loops

When I started purchasing jewelry, I didn't know much about how it was made.  I just knew what I liked and what I didn't.  It was always disappointing to buy something and have it break the first time I wore it.  The more you know about how jewelry is made, the more you'll be able to assess the quality of the jewelry you purchase.

One of the basic elements of most beaded jewelry is the loop.  There are two kinds:  simple and wrapped.  Here's a picture of a simple loop inside a green circle:

The advantage of the simple loop is that there's not a lot of metal between the crystal beads, so it really shows off the beads.  The disadvantage is that these can come apart with a little pressure.  In fact, you can see this loop is already opening, which means that it's easier for chain, hair, and clothing to get caught in it.  If you tug on it trying to free it from the hair, clothing, etc., you can open the loop and break the piece of jewelry. 

The more secure type of loop is a wrapped loop, which looks like this:

See the coils of wire between the bead and the circle?  That's the wrapped loop.  This puts more metal between the beads, but it's much more secure.  It's a lot harder to accidentally open it, get your hair caught in it, or have it snag your clothes.  All the jewelry I make now uses wrapped loops because they offer more strength, security, and durability.

Design Challenge: Produce a Lot Quickly

Thursday I gave myself a design challenge:  produce 5 pairs of earrings in under 2 hours.  I got this idea from back in the day when I visited a friend in art school; she was given the task of producing 100 drawings/paintings in a week.  Or maybe it was 75.  I don't quite remember.  I just remember the point was to make yourself CREATE, and having to do a lot in a short amount of time was supposed to help you get the juices flowing.

I ended up making 5 pairs of earrings and a necklace in about 3 hours.  Here's a sneak peek at what I made:

What kinds of challenges do you give yourself to get the creative juices flowing?

Magic Numbers

A lot of Etsy sellers say that views and sales really pick up once you pass a certain, mysterious, magic number.  Some say 50, some say 75, some say 100, 200...There doesn't seem to be a strong consensus, other than more is better.  My guess is that means that it's not really a magic number.  I suspect for some sellers it's that in the process of making that many items, you stumble on to a product that's a hit with your customers.

For me the magic number is more useful for setting a goal.  Right now my store has about 90-95 items so my goal is to get over 100 items in the next two weeks. 

A quiddity by any other name is....

...not the same.  What's in a name?  When I decided to start my Etsy store, I spent a long time thinking about the name.  I wanted something unusual, something fun to say, and something that would pique a customer's curiosity.  (Yup, it's pique, not peak...I stopped to look it up, because that's the kind of geek I am.)  I also really wanted a word that started with the letter Q.  Q is just such a beautiful letter.  I could imagine it becoming the basis of a logo that I could maybe stampon the lids of my jewelry boxes.

So I pulled out a dictionary, turned to the letter Q and started reading.  When I found "Quiddity" I thought it was perfect.  It means "the essence of a thing which makes it different from all others."  It carried connotations of uniqueness and a sense of being utterly yourself.   I did a quick search of the web, and of Etsy, and found just a few other companies using the name.  There was one closed Etsy account named simply "quiddity"; to distinguish myself, I tacked on the "Designs" I saw other jewelry makers using.  And QuiddityDesigns was born.

Of course, when I started the store, I wasn't sure if it would last.  Maybe no one would purchase, maybe I'd give up on designing jewelry...who knew?  Because I thought it might be temporary, I did not purchase the .com URL or any of those other things I *should* have done.  Now there are a few other "Quiddity Designs" businesses out there and they've snapped up the domain name.  Ironically, "QuiddityDesigns" is no longer such a unique name. 

Jewelry 101: 155 Headpins

Ever wonder what kind of work goes into making the tiny little pieces of jewelry? I took a few snapshots the last time I made headpins (155 of them at once!) to show you.

First, I get a coil of fine silver wire. Fine silver is 99.9% silver (as opposed to sterling silver which is 92.5% silver). This means that fine silver has fewer other metals in the alloy--that's good news if you're allergic. It also means that the silver wire can be melted without creating some black stuff called firescale that needs to be pickled off.  Then I cut the coil of silver wire into 2.5 inch strips.

Using a butane torch, much like you foodies might use for creme brulee, I melt the end of one piece of the wire so that it forms a ball. I couldn't take a picture of this because I need one hand to hold the torch and the other to hold the wire, and I'm just not proficient enough to take a picture with my foot while juggling open flame.

After balling the end, I quench the piece in cold water, put the headpins in the tumbler for 30 minutes, and then polish. Voila!

These headpins are used in pieces like this onyx necklace. See the little silver balls under the onyx beads? Those are the balled headpins!