Enchanting Day

I had the joy of attending a wonderfully fun wedding recently. And to top that, I had the honour of working with the bride to create jewellery for her and her gorgeous bridesmaids.

Here are some photos, and please bear with me, as there are quite a few.

l-r: Bracelet, Earrings, Necklace & Headband/Tiara.

Those were the bride's, and were a combination of freshwater pearls, swarovski crystals, sterling silver and some silver plated & silver coloured findings.

Here's the bride:

Next, the bridesmaid jewellery:

How to turn off repeat customers

Part of my day job involves organising the annual conference for my organisation. It's a small affair with about 30 people from our 10 sites across the state.

For a number of years we've returned to the same venue. The price was great, the location was good, the staff had been helpful and organised and the rooms were comfortable and tastefully appointed.

This year... the rooms were the same, the price was the same, the location was the same.... but I won't be booking them for our 2009 Conference.

Someone in charge seemed to not be particularly interested in our function. Information hadn't been communicated to the floor staff. Discrepancies in the run sheet were not questioned - so no one rang me to check, and they just made an assumption about what we wanted (which was wrong). Details that I'd organised via phone or email hadn't been added to the run sheet, and so the catering staff didn't know.

Information just seemed not to get passed on, the staff attentions seemed to be elsewhere some of the time (I had to frequently go to the kitchen and ask for things like milk or coffee to be refilled).

I found this a useful lesson
a) On my part - don't assume that just because it's gone smoothly for two years, that the third year will be the same. I could possibly have avoided some of these issues by being more annoying and calling the conference organiser to double check and confirm every detail with her.
b) The importance of customer service and open communication.

Come fly away

This is one of my latest pieces. A commission piece that I was given the concept of (aka: a dove in pieces strung together with jump rings), and I designed it, cut it out and strung it all together. I have to say that my tumbler and steel shot is my new best friend when it comes to making my own jumprings. It was effortless to make them hard and shiny.

The dove is titanium with a cloudy surface texture, and all findings (chain, rings and clasp) are sterling silver. The feather at the end of the chain is titanium with feathery texture engraved on.

So this is why I was breathing titanium dust recently. :)

Hammered

I woke up this morning feeling as though someone has beaten me around the head with a bottle of Pinot Gris. I'm quite sure that several people in the office think I was out painting the town wine coloured last night, but all I drank last night was about 3 glasses of water and a hot chocolate. So I'm quite lost as to the origins of my headache.

On a similar, yet not, topic I've come to the conclusion that I really love beating metal with a hammer. There's something very satisfying about forging metal - it's noisy, but I love the effects you can get on the surface and how the metal thins out to be more interestingly unpredictable in width.

I suppose forging is bit like having small children around. They're noisy and unpredictable too.

Ok, so beating metal with a blunt object really is probably nothing like having kids around at all.

Both, however, could be responsible for my headache though.

Titanium Snot

According to Wikipedia, the correct term is 'nasal mucus'. Strangely, snot sound so much more user friendly. Nasal mucus sounds like something one needs to approach a specialist about.

For me, the long weekend offered me three whole days of uninterrupted garage time. Alone in the tiny workspace of a cluttered double garage (it sounds big but honestly, desk & floor space is a precious commodity in there) I was able to practice soldering on a series of "Blossom Rings" in between working on puzzle pieces of titanium.

Titanium is a great metal. It's light, it can take a hammering far longer than silver before work hardening, and it goes rainbow colours when you heat it.

It's also tough. Which is great in many ways - I can use a thinner sheet for a project without worrying it will bend. But it also means that I go through two dozen saw blades in one day, and my drill bit dulls extra fast. And you can't solder it if you mess up and cut through something you weren't supposed to.

All this equates to me needing gutsy rotary tool bits to make a dent on the surface to get the texture I want. And I have to be at it for quite some time with the Dremel in one hand and the thumbnail sized bit of titanium heating up like the surface of Mercury in the other. Which is why frequent breaks of soldering practice were essential. I went from burning my fingertips to singeing my nostril hairs. Good times.

A result of all this grinding of edges and surface texturing (which looks so awesome, btw, that I want to cry with joy), is fine particles of titanium dust. Couple that with a less than perfect dust mask, and I was enjoying the unique experience of gunky black nasal mucus for several hours after I left the garage.

Review of Glorydaze

Glorydaze on Etsy is a Melbourne girl who makes some fantastic messenger style bags. Not only do her bags look modern and stylish, they seem eminently practical for carrying around all the tools of daily living, particularly if you're a student - or even a mother who would like to fit nappy-changing gear, a change of clothes, rusks, spare toys and naturally, your own wallet, keys and phone into something that's a tad classier than a dufflebag.

Of course, what I really love is the spot at the front for pens and a notebook. Not that I'd use the pen part - mine always get lost if I use those loops, but I love that I could have my sketchbook so easily accessible to jot down quick thoughts without digging through an entire years worth of bus tickets and ATM printouts (yes, I'm one of those people).

And did I mention pretty? Crumpler might make ones that you can buy with beer, but they aren't nearly as delightful as Glorydaze's (handmade) creations.

Lord of a Ring

Sterling Silver Ring with Pink Gold 'blossom' feature.

September 2008

Sometimes I have these grand ideas for new projects that I plan out on paper and in my head, but after the saw blades bite into the metal and I stand back and look at what I've sawn, soldered and smacked with a hammer, I'm left wondering where I went wrong.

Not so today. Granted, the execution of this idea was not well thought out.... it was a general sort of "maybe if I..... and then I could...." I knew what I wanted in my head, and had attempted to sketch it, but in the end, it's often experimenting with the materials that will tell you the best way to get from Vague Vision A to Actual Reality B.

It's so satisfying when it just works. No dramas about things not fitting, or the silver melting into a pool of metal before the solder even heats. It just all came together and the few minor hitches were easily solved.

The Extra Awesome Bonus is that I now have a pretty new ring.

Attack from Above

Australia is known for it's warm sunny beaches, the deadly jellyfish, blue ringed octopus, sharks and crocodiles that lurk beneath the waves, the red deserts and the poisonous snakes, the misty grey bushland and the host of spiders lurking and waiting to bite an offending body.

What you may not realise is that danger lurks above between August and October.

Other than Dropbears, possibly the most frightening experience I've encountered in areas with trees (suburban, rural or bushland) is the sudden clack of a pointy beak right behind my head and then the sudden Fwhop-fwhop-fwhop of wings beating the air to give the creature enough height to take another swoop at my uncovered head.

I can face a baby red-belly black snake (from ontop a chair, but I still faced it, and moved it with a stick!) but that sound and feeling of attack from above is terrifying.

Magpies are nesting in a tree across the road from the bus stop. One went after me three times today, and followed me halfway to the next bus stop. I'm not ashamed to admit that I ran like a girl till I was out of its range.

Tomorrow's plan of retreat: I take an umbrella and cringe under it. If that doesn't work I'm taking a long cut through some back streets and praying there aren't any feisty Mama & Papa birds hanging out in other trees along that route.

Under a Carnelian Sun

I took a walk across Prince Alfred Park, the decomposing leaves of the plane trees (platanus xhispanica) looked like the skeletal remains of giant hands (giants with very thin bones, at that).

A dense black snagged my attention. A charcoal-blackened gum leaf lay damp and incongruent beside the discarded desiduous matter.

Odd as that sighting was, it swiftly reminded me of childhoods in summer, when the bushfire clouds would roll in over our suburb and litter our green backyard with charred and smokey smelling gum leaves. They were perfectly leaf-shaped, often still retaining the fine markings of veins and grub-eaten edges, but they were charcoal all the way through. As though someone had snap-burned them.

I remember one year, the fires got 'close' and we kids were up on the roof clearing the gutters, and Abs packed things into boxes and bags.

Most of all though, I remember the sun. I could look at it through the clouds of smoke and admire the colour, and relish the quiver of fear it created. Bloodshot red to pale orange, depending on the density of the smoke - an omen of the last days, a portent of danger.

Inspired by this memory, I bought several small carnelian cabochons. They're the right colour for a sun behind bushfire smoke. I might make some earrings with them.

an auspicious something

In a world of mass produced consumerist greed, I attempt to convince random strangers that my handmade jewellery is not only elegant and aesthetically pleasing, but good for the environment and good for the soul.

1. No private vehicles are involved in my jewellery whilst my pieces are in my possesion. I walk/public transport to my suppliers. I walk to Australia Post to have the items posted across the world. No Cars, trucks or private jets!
2. I recycle where possible. Packaging, display materials, tools, icecream containers... etc.
3. No Child Labour, or Sweat Shop Labour went into any of my pendants. They are 100% made by a thirty year old woman who still lives at home.
4. They are really shiny
5. They are my own designs. Not that I'm going to claim that NO ONE ON EARTH EVER could have come up with a similar thing. But I didn't copy them from anyone. I allow room for the 'great minds think alike factor'.
6. They're mini-sculptures. Sort of like if Henry Moore wanted to get into wearable art, and went small scale with silver.

But when all is said and done, mostly I just want a rational excuse to keep making things from materials that are costed per gram. If people buy my work, then that's a pretty good reason to keep going with this expensive passion of mine. At least, that's what I keep telling myself.