Contrariwise ramblings

After I posted about my upcoming trip to Barcelona, I got a message from Daisy Chain Jewelry. Coincedentally, she'd just posted a list of Barcelona bead shops in her blog. She's from the UK and has been to Barcelona a number of times. (UK to Barcelona is just a hop, skip and a jump, compared to traveling from the Midwest.)

So with the info in her blog, a little googling, and Google Maps (gotta love them!), I mapped out some potential shopping sites during my visit!

The shops cluster in an area of town called the Gothic Quarter (Barr Gotic). Based on the map, I'd say this is less than 1 1/2 miles from my hotel.



Even with the bead shops being an incentive, I'm sure it's a place that I'll be visiting anyway. I understand that the Barri Gotic area is the area of the old town of Barcelona and it has lots of narrow cobbled streets with tall old buildings.

From what I've read about it, it seems like it's pretty typical with other "old towns" in major European cities - small squares surrounded with labyrinthine streets. From my experience, these kinds of areas are usually great places to wander around. (Most of the Barri Gotic is closed to regular traffic although open to service vehicles and taxis. )

I'm looking forward to getting lost in the many small streets and squares - hopefully filled with picturesque buildings, old shops, and newer boutiques.


(Museums, cathedrals and shopping - oh my!)

I'm looking forward to seeing a Barcelona as beautiful as pictures that I've seen. Here's one I found on flickr: A view of Barcelona from the terrace of the Park Güell, by the architect Antoni Gaudí, taken at dusk.

I've got my camera and laptop! Hopefully I'll have access to the internet and will be able to post some of my experiences while I'm there!


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When I was little, my father used to tell me stories about the many places he traveled to when he fought in World War II.

Orginally part of the Polish army, he was imprisoned in a concentration camp in Siberia, was released and fought in a tank for the British forces in Africa against Rommel. He also fought in Italy and in France and who knows where else.

He saw the pyramids, the deserts, religious sites in the middle east (now Israel), famous places in Europe.

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Probably not.

It's only a sweatshop if you coerce minors into working long hours. When they coerce you into letting them melt silver into tiny little balls with a propane torch, it's called being too easy.

This is how I spent my Mother's day. Playing in my workshop, making new jewelry, and having my youngest daughter help me. No laundry. Minor dinner prep. No cleaning. I was infinitely happy.

Here's my 12 yr-old, Emma, on the right, melting scraps of silver into liquid puddles of sterling. (Ever since Jerry showed her how to do this, she's been wanting to do this again.)

The silver is flamed on a charred piece of wood - I think the carbon helps it heat up faster and hotter, then melt all the faster. (But I'm not sure about this.) The silver starts to melt around the edges, then fuses, then turns into a red hot spinning ball! After you remove the flame and it cools a bit, it gets dunked into water to cool. No wonder Emma enjoys doing this!








We made a couple dozen silver balls of various sizes. Afterwards, I chose the largest ones and Emma chose the tiniest to make earrings. (She just got her ears pierced a couple of months ago.)

I soldered on some silver posts. (Yes,I finally got some soldering equipment which I'll write about in a future post. )


Those tiny earrings were such a pain to make. The balls kept rolling around every time I tried to put a bit of solder on them and every time I tried to hold the post next to them. It took me quite a few attempts. (They say practice makes perfect, but I think it's just makes for exasperation.)

But I finally got them done. You can see the larger ones (about 6 mm) and the smaller ones in the photo above.

The larger balls have a slightly pebbly surface which really reflects the light wonderfully. These post earrings are great for everyday wear and I think the tiny ones would be great for those extra ear piercings. I'm planning on making some more of these post earrings, and listing them in my Etsy shop.

And don't the tiny ones look cute on Emma!



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Crafts, Tutorials...

Making headpins.
I love the kind of headpins that have little round balls on them. Ther'e made by melting the end of your wire with a torch until the end forms a small ball. It's a little problematic when you don't own a torch. I tried sticking the end of my wire onto my stove burner, unfortunately it's electric so that didn't work too well. I did successfully make them using my outdoor gas grill, but it's best that my husband doesn't hear about that again. So I broke down and bought a propane torch.

But I digress. Silver River Jewelry has a great tutorial on how to make these lovely round-ended headpins. By either hand polishing or tumbling, you can make them nice and shiny, like you see above. But you also have the option of oxidizing them, which gives them a really different look. Depending on the design of the jewelry, they can appear either rustic or modern.





To make paddle headpins, all you need are a hammer and an anvil. The idea is to pound the end of your wire until the end is flat and paddle-shaped, which then becomes the end of your headpin.


These are pretty versatile; my turquoise wishbone earrings, on the right, use a variation of the paddle headpin as the earwire itself.



There's also this nifty article which doen't require anything except round nose pliers and a wire cutter: Quick Homemade Headpins. I tried this out...it works but I didn't like the look. So, instead of cutting off part of the loop, I then bent the end around again and made it look like a tiny flat spiral.




Creative Jewelry storage

I found a site that has some great ideas for jewelry storage . I especiallylike the look of the little bowls to keep your earrings and necklaces from becoming all tangles up. If you already have odd saucers and cups, this is a cost-free option.


I've seen these types of shadow boxes for sale on Etsy. But you could make your own to either hang on your wall or set on your cabinet. You can use small decorative bowls perched on the box's lower ledge to hold rings, pins, brooches, and other little things. Hey, the whole thing doubles as a work of art!

The above link gives instructions on how to make one for yourself.


Joyful Abode solved her jewerly storage in the way that I solved it. By making a jewelry board. Mine is a plain corkboard (I didn't over it with fabric like Joyful Abode). And instead of ribbon, I used a narrow line of linen cloth, the kind used for cross-stitching. What's good about it is that you can poke your earwires in the cross-stitch holes. You can even poke post earrings through it!



My jewelry board hangs on the inside of our linen closet, in our bathroom.

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...and more!

Taking Folk Art to a Different Level

Above, my friends, are fine examples of redneck art. Behold the Assquatch, or the delicate art of shaping a deer’s butt into a face of the monster.

Mastery of the art is attained, apparently, when you can shape the anus into lips. The artist who created the masterpiece on the right, has obviously taken butt-hole manipulation to a whole new level.

Many deer butt snobs will put their art outside, bragging on their good taste. For example, on the left, you can see the popular deer butt doorbells. Can you imagine the look on the faces of your company when they're greated by that tremendous piece of...uh, art.

But if you don't have any deer butt's handy, don't despair. Many creative folks will go on a scavenger hunt, searching for fresh road kill to use for their red neck art. Here is where the creative process is critical and you can let-loose with your artistic freedom to come up with a wealth of affordable fine art for your home. Even rodents can be sculptured into fine redneck art plaques. An example: the lovely squirrel butt coat hook.

But you don't have to limit yourself to hunting trophies or roadkill when you have a potential source of inspiration in your own home. Is your kitty getting a little old? Has he been missing the litter box lately? Coughing up a few too many hairballs? Well, maybe its time to convert him into a kitty cat butt refrigerator decoration! What better way to remember him forever!

You’ll find instructions for making your own folk art here, including illustrated instructions for proper anus tying.

And remember, no matter how you slice them, creating animal butt art is a fun and educational experience for the whole family.

Cute Overload
I can't help it. Baby kittens just make me melt. LISTEN to the little purr engine on this one.


Sigh. That kitty is OBSCENELY adorable. Like, it should be against the law, to be that cute. So precious, I think my brain melted out my ears.



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(If you haven't been following the story you'll need to read Part 1 and Part 2 first.)

I couldn’t wait till Saturday!

Emma, my 12 year old, was determined to go with me. (Sigh.) So we set off for Jerry’s house.

We knocked on the door and Jerry opened it. I could see that my friend was inside already.

Jerry took one look at both me and Emma standing there and said, “I see you brought reinforcements. You must be worried that I might be a dirty old man!”

He took us to the dining room where he had place a slab of drywall on his table as a workstation (!) and started pulling out tools and silver. And boxes of polished stones for Emma to play with.

The first step was making the bezel. Using the fine silver, I got it into the right shape, soldered it, and then hammered the join to smooth it and stretch out the bezel to fit correctly.

Then Jerry pulled out different gauges of silver sheet. We decided that 26 gauge silver would be similar to the earring, and he handed me a pair of scissors ($1.00 at Harbour Freight !) to cut the sheet to a matching shape. It was a little difficult to estimate because the model earring has rounded edges and I had to do some guesswork.

Next I knew I would need to get the texture right and get the edges curved, so I asked if we were going to use a dapping block. No. Too elaborate I guess. Jerry goes to the corner of the dining room and pulls out a tree trunk with holes and circles drilled in it. He also had some bolts that he uses as punches!

It took me quite a while to get the silver shaped right. I was surprised that he suggested I use the round end of the ballpeen hammer. But it worked great and got the surface to look like the earring’s.

While I was doing this, Jerry was entertaining Emma by showing her how to use a propane torch to melt scraps of silver into little balls on a piece of blackened wood. She loved it. She took to it like – well, like her mother!

I finished the curved base. I’ve learned that the edges would have to match perfectly for the solder to hold, so one side of the bezel had to be filed to match the curve perfectly.





Soldering the bezel to the base wasn’t too bad. (Look! From the photo on the left you can see it's already starting to look like it's mate!) What was really a pain, was soldering on the earring post. I tried to melt the solder, then stick the post on, but it didn’t want to stay. And in the middle of it, I knocked the earring off the soldering stand and it fell on the floor!

That’s when I found out Jerry’s carpet was a synthetic. Even though I quickly grabbed the piece with tweezers (yes, I had the wherewithal to NOT pick it up with my fingers), the hot metal melted the carpet and I had dribbles of melted fibers firmly welded onto the silver!

Yes, I was embarrassed, but it didn’t seem to faze Jerry in the least. I guess any man who has a tree trunk in his dining room and solders on his dining room table, isn’t going to be concerned about keeping his carpeting spotless – or even intact!

As you can see, it took both of us, a Third Hand, and a jar of marbles to finally get the post soldered in. Then I pickled the earring, cleaned it up, and put it in a tumbler for a final shine. (The melted carpet was still on the underside.) While it was tumbling, we had the treat of checking out his basement workshop.

It was exactly what you’d expect the basement of an old house to look like: a mess with boxes and boxes of rocks and junk. Which meant it was GREAT. We got to rummage through his rock boxes and he showed us molds that he was working on. Emma spent most of the time under his tables looking for scraps of silver and pewter so she could melt them in little balls with his torch.

Finally the tumbling time was up and it was time to set the stone.

It fit! I finished it up with a bezel roller and burninsher, then oxidized it to match the other earring. Now my friend now had two earrings that matched.

We thanked Jerry and asked him how much we owed him for all of this. He said,” Oh, let’s see… three hours of instruction…silver…turquoise…how about...$20?” He saw that we were speechless and said, “What? Too much?”

Can you believe it!

He also asked if I needed any soldering equipment and sold me a soldering stand with a screen (home made) for $5. Then he gave me a hemostat and a magnesim block. Emma walked away with a polished piece of fossilized dinosaur doo and a big chunk of pewter that she had melted down from scraps she’d found.

What a great day!

I spent a lot of time that weekend ordering soldering equipment and supplies - I can't wait till it comes. And my friend was so happy that she now has her favorite set of earrings to wear again.


These is what we ended up with (before the final oxidation step). The original is the one on the right:



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(Continuation of yesterday's post.)

The next day I called the instructor to arrange for us to come over to make the earring. (For the sake of this story, let's call the instructor, Jerry, since that happens to be his real name anyway.) That's when I learned this was going to be a 2 step process: pick out a piece of turquoise first, then come back and do the metalwork.

So I drove over to his place with the lone earring to pick out the turquoise. I thoroughly expected that Jerry had pieces of turquoise already cut, and all I would have to do was pick one out that would match.

Wrong.

He brought out boxes and boxes of little chunks of turquoise that he'd saved from other projects throughout the years. I rummaged through them until I found one that I thought might be the right color and about the right size for cutting to match the stone in the earring.

He agreed that it was an OK choice, and then set off to his basement where his lapidary equipment is.

What a treat! He had tons of equipment that I'd read about but never seen. Saws! Kilns! Casting tools! And boxes of uncut stones! I could probably spend days down there exploring!

He cut the raw chunk of turquoise on a special saw and handed me the piece you see on the left. At this stage, it was still about 4 times bigger than the stone in the earring.

I was expecting that the next step was that he would shape it and polish it to match.

Wrong, again.

Jerry brought out a couple pieces of sandpaper of different grits and and told me I would need to sand the chunk of turquoise down to the right shape. I rubbed the stone against the sandpaper - and realized it didn't make much of an effect on the stone.

Then he got out a bottle of tin oxide and a piece of leather and said that after sanding the stone down to the right size and shape, I would use this polish it.

Now you're probably thinking the same thing that I was - this would take forever!

I told him that I would work on it and get back to him when the turquoise was ready. I took all this stuff home that night and looked at the turquoise, the sandpaper, leather, and tin oxide.

And that's when I took out my dremel.

Sandpaper? BAH! With the dremel and a grinding bit, it didn't take long to form that stone to the right size and shape. In fact, most of my time was spent hunting for the turquoise on the floor - it kept popping out of my hands and flying across the room when I was grinding it.

(Note to self: GET A VISE.)

When I got the turquoise ground to the approximate size I wanted (see photo on the left), I used the sandpaper to smooth out the rough edges. The tin oxide was next. It really made the stone shiny with very little effort. In fact, it was pretty impressive!

Overall, it only took me 20 minutes to make the cabachon. Not bad.

The next day, I called Jerry and we made arrangements to meet to do the metalwork to create the matching earring.




TO BE CONTINUED...




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A good friend of mine told me about a jewelry designer she knew in Minnesota. She' d purchased quite a few pieces for herself and for gifts, but he'd retired a while back and she never found anyone whose work she liked as much.

Crafts, Tutorials...