My Inner Sculptor

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I took a wax carving seminar a few weeks ago, and my inner sculptor is dancing for joy. I haven’t really sculpted since I picked up metalsmithing two years ago. Yet I’ve always found three dimensional art more intuitive - even as a kid, when other kids were drawing, I was creating worlds out of play-doh in shoeboxes. Time just seems to fly for me when I’m sculpting.



For the moment, I’m sketching up ideas and whittling away like a mad sculptor. Once I’m happy with these, I’ll hollow them out and cast them in silver. I already have a perfume bottle necklace in the works, which I turned on a wax lathe. I’m really excited to see what comes of it all. You can definitely expect to see some new pieces in my shop in the next month or two!

I Carry Your Heart With Me

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This week’s Etsy Metal Project Runway challenge was to create a companion piece to one of our previous challenge pieces. I tinkered with a series of Modernist designs, and finally decided on this one - two stylized hearts in sterling silver with a garnet cabochon.

My Two Hearts necklace is a smaller, more delicate companion piece to my eye-popping Mod Daisy necklace, which I created several weeks ago for the Create a Character challenge.



As I was finishing this necklace last night, I had ee cummings running through my head:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

It’s always a good day if you have ee cummings running through your head, right?

Corroded

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For those metalsmiths who doubt the strength of my organic pickle recipe, I present Exhibit A - my stainless steel crockpot. No, your eyes do not deceive you, the organic pickle has eaten through the stainless steel. It seems to have worked particularly well just under the rim, where the metal is completely gone. How insane is that?

I’m now heating my pickle in the microwave. So far so good! And as a bonus, it saves an enormous amount of electricity…

Welcome to the Zoo

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This is just a small snippet of one of the three, count ‘em, three long lines that I stood in yesterday. Outside. In the hot sun. For two hours.

So what was all the excitement for? Were we waiting to meet Angelina and Brad? Oh no, this minor riot, complete with security, a ton of little kids running completely wild, a camera crew from Fox News, and an amazing number of attempts at fraud (apparently punishable by a huge fine) - this zoo was the line for the swine flu vaccination. Aren’t you sorry you missed all this fun?

But what the heck, I’ve now been immunized for both the swine flu and seasonal flu. Which, apparently, is worth more than gold at the moment. And it only cost me $10. Well, and those two hours of my life which I’ll never see again…

Grocery Store Musical

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OK, if you need a really good laugh today, you need to read this blog post and watch the video at the bottom. Because, you know, I think everyone needs to watch people burst spontaneously into song in the middle of a random grocery store in Queens.

I laughed so hard I almost spewed tea…

Guess what new blog I’ll be following?

Little Pot

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I never was a traditional bride. Come to think of it, I’ve rarely been a traditional anything, so I suppose that’s not much of a surprise. So when I saw that the Etsy Metal challenge for this week was wedding jewelry, I was stumped. Should I go with pearls? Could I make something that mainstream?



Be true to myself, I decided. Make something that I would would wear, if I was getting married this year. So I did. For me jewelry is very personal, often quite quirky, and at its best when it has emotional meaning. A perfect piece of jewelry is beautiful, comfortable, entertaining, and reassuring. I’ve whiled away many an hour in a boring meeting or class, or in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, amusing myself with my jewelry.

So I went back to my roots in ceramic sculpture and crafted this little pot out of hammered sterling silver. And if I was getting married tomorrow, this would be featured front and center. It’s graceful, warm, and comforting to the touch, not to mention a bit unexpected - it’s very, very me. And in the end, that’s the whole point, right?

Roots

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Soldering the neck onto my little pot. I’m overly enthralled with this piece. Perhaps it’s the thrill of getting back into three dimensional pieces - tapping into my roots in sculpture, which I’ve dearly missed.

Egg

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My first attempt at cutting disks, doming them, and soldering them together. Barring tragedy at the workbench, this will be the bottom of my bottle pendant before the week is out. There’s something oddly appealing about my little egg…