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!!!"