Contrariwise ramblings

The Earth Bazaar is having an end of the year sale and I picked up a few things....some tourmalines, swiss blue topaz, aquamarine, rose quartz, and peridot.


I love their online store. Their regular prices are outrageous, but if you order from their weekly specials, you can get some pretty good deals . And the quality is outstanding. I only order their grade A stones. They're the clearest and the cuts are so crisp. Not cheap, but oh so pretty.

Christmas isn't over, but from my selection, I think I've already begun longing for spring. (I didn't even realize it when I ordered these stones last week.)

What can I say. I can't resist a few more baubles. I've already got a few new designs in mind.

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I've been running my rock tumbler almost non-stop for the past several weeks because of the Christmas rush in jewelry orders. It's used as a final step to polish my silver jewelry. In the past year, I've probably probably been running it about 48+ hours a week.

I first noticed that it's a bit sticky where the plastic meets the O-ring. Then it started hiccuping.
I finally came to the conclusion that the O-ring is shot PLUS there's wear where parts meet.

The O-ring isn't anything you could easily find at Lowe's. I suppose I might be able to find it on the internet. But, since I only paid $3 for this tumbler, I thought it might be time to upgrade to a better model.

So, in honor of my tumbler's faithful service for the past year, I'm re-running one of my favorite posts from last year:


Adventures in Jewelry Making: The Rock Tumbler

A while back while I was out on a garage sale run , I found a toy rock tumbler -the kind that you can buy at Michaels Craft Stores - for only $3.00.

It didn't look too bad. According to the seller, the tumbler was never used, however the little rocks and grit were missing. But, all in all, not a bad deal. I thought my 10 year old would like to try it or maybe I could use it for something.

Well a couple years passed and the tumbler collected dust in the front closet.

I'd always heard that tumblers are great for silver jewelry. They supposedly shine silver up and harden it. Since I make a lot of silver jewelry, it sounded like it might be worth a shot!

Next step: find out what I need to know about tumbling silver jewelry.

Google, of course comes in handy. I found this site that tells you just about everything you need to know about tumbling silver: http://urbanmaille.com/articles.asp?id=148 Armed with the information, I am ready to begin.

First. I already have a tumbler. (So what if it's plastic! No snickering!) It looks simple enough and seems to work all right without anything in it..

Next, I need to get some steel shot - probably about a pound worth. After checking some sites, I realize that I will be paying more for my steel shot to FILL the tumbler, than I PAID for the tumbler itself. Plus there's a shipping fee for mailing a whole pound of stainless steel shot across state borders. This is getting expensive.

So, $24 later I have my steel shot:

I guess it must be dirty because the directions say that I'm supposed wash it before I use it with jewelry.

??? So what should you use to wash steel shot with???

Well, I have a colander. I checked the holes and decided that the shot PROBABLY wouldn't go through them. But...wait a minute... using a colander would mean I would have to put it and my steel shot in my sink and run water over them. Not a good idea. I don't want any steel shot going down my sink and into my garbage disposal!

What else? Let's see, I have some stainless steel mixing bowls. I can fill one up with soapy water, put the steel shot in it and swish it around. The shot could be washed on my counter top and not on the sink.

OK! Let's go!

So I got my bowl, put some warm water in it, and placed it around five feet away from my sink. I opened up my steel shot and started pouring it carefully in the water. Well, those steel shot are pretty heavy, and they seemed to gather some speed while I was pouring them in. All of a sudden -SWOOSH!

Do you know what happens when steel shot hit a steel mixing bowl. They start bouncing. About 5 of them bounce out of the bowl, and wouldn't you know those suckers bounced right across the counter top straight for my sink, with me scrambling after them and trying to catch them before they reached it.

I managed to catch two.

You KNOW where the others went.

Yes, they're down there.
No, I can't get them out.
Yes, I have to tell my husband something.

The plumber was called the next day. I was lucky. The house call only cost $120 because we didn't need a new garbage disposal. That would have been at least another $150 more.


In the end:

Rock Tumbler: $3
Steel Shot for said tumbler: $24
Plumbing bill for steel shot in disposal: $120
Look on my husband's face when the plumber handed him what was stuck in the disposal: priceless.

I was recently tagged by Freida of Deer Mountain Creations. Her blog is Deer Mountain Wood Art.

Freida said she wanted to learn more about me, Contrariwise. Thanks Freida. But remember, these facts will probably bring up more questions than answers about me. :-)

First, these are the rules:
1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blog.
4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Seven weird and/or random facts about Contrariwise:

1. In one of my earlier jobs, I used to take dead bodies to a hospital morgue.

2. I learned to speak English by watching television. ("Ehhh....what's up, doc.") But you'd never know if you heard me speak.

3. I've traveled to 23 countries

4. I have a master's degree in Molecular Genetics

5. I am incapable of shutting a drawer or a cabinet door. (This random fact is supplied by my husband, who follows me in the kitchen, shutting doors and drawers, as well as commenting upon my inability, as he goes along.)

6. Bruce Springsteen once sweated on me.

7. I can probably date an antique bottle from North America within 20 yrs of when it was made.

So now I'll tag the following 7 people whose blogs I follow and I would like to know 7 more things about:

Weird Bug Lady

Timothy Adam Designs

Carolyn Artist at Autumn Leaves Jewelry

Handforged by Kirsten Skiles

McFarland Designs

Lisa's Lovlies

Jan Finnell is Over the Top

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I am so seriously swamped with work, family, and with orders from Etsy, that I have barely any time to do anything. Not even post much on my blog.

So, instead, here's a picture of my dog:

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I've been trying my hand at making hoop earrings, lately. And these earrings suddenly emerged. (Yes, they really do that. New designs have a way of making themselves. It's almost like I have nothing to do with it.)


I don't know why, but they somehow remind me of the paintings of Mondrian. I know he mostly worked with squares and right angles. But if he had painted circles instead of squares, I could image this design element in his work.

I really like the way the spaces around the smaller circles and larger circles are balanced. And the way that small hoop on the bottom hangs down. I think I need to do a bracelet in this pattern - but with heavier silver.

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That blissfully ignorant short space of time between the moment I open my delivery of 300 boxes for my customer's jewelry orders....
.... and then suddenly realize they're all the wrong size.

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Google Image Searches can bring as much or more traffic to your site as all other search engines combined. I did a little analysis of my blog for inbound searches recently and found that well over half of my inbound searches have come from Google Image Searches!

Three of the most important things that Google Image Search looks for, in descending order, are:

1. Alt Text
2. File Name
3. Surrounding Text

1. Alt Text
See the earrings above? In Blogger, in Compose mode all you see is the image. But if you click on the Edit Html tab, you will see the following html language:



Notice the alt="" that I highlighted in yellow?

The Alt Text (the part between the quotation marks) can contain keywords describing an image - BUT ONLY IF YOU ADD THEM. Alt Text is the text equivalent for an image, and is used by blind people (and also for other things).

But, importantly, Google uses Alt Text to find images. It's the MOST IMPORTANT element of Image Search Optimization.

How can you add it? Just by putting a description between the quotation marks.

I'll show you how. For this example, let's add the words "sterling silver hoop earrings swirls":

Remember, try to be descriptive with your Alt Text, but don't over do it. The best thing to put here are keywords you personally would search for if you were looking for that image.

2. File Name
Instead of calling your photo file image1234.jpg, rename it to something more descriptive such as sterling-silver-earrings-with-swirls.jpg. Try to keep the File Name either the same, or very similar to the Alt Text. The name of the file for my earrings is silver-hoop-earrings-with-swirls.jpg. The html Image Name for the image is:

Google will use the Image Name as it searches for images.

3. Surrounding Text
Always try and place a paragraph of descriptive text directly above and below your image, with words from your Alt Text and Image Name included in this text.

Google will look for relevance. If it doesn't think your Alt Text and Image Name correspond with your surrounding text, it might ignore your image.


It may take a while for google to crawl through the web and find your site, but you' ll be AMAZED at how many more hits your blog will have if you remember these 3 steps.

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Recently, the Indianapolis Star ran a newspaper article about shopping online for Cyber Monday rather than going to the malls. And Etsy was prominently featured in the article and in the photo!

(Click on the photos to bring up a larger image.)

And guess whose shop was included in the photo!

Yes! It was mine!

I was absolutely shocked and ran around the house showing everyone. I had absolutely nothing to do with it. It was just luck that my shop was in the screenshot for the article!

Made my day.

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Overall, I think they didn't turn out too badly - for a mistake.

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I've recently learned to solder. While my early attempts were making bezel-set rings, lately I've been going to simpler things: hoops and circles.

Just making simple rings from wire, soldering them to make perfect circles (more or less), then hammering them to the desired shape can be so gratifying.

Especially the hammering.

I've had a number of designs in my head. Not content to go with simple circles, I wanted to make them a bit more...organic. So I was thinking about graceful curves, hammered to bring out a dimensional look.

Plus I wanted them to be substantial. So I decided to be daring and pulled out my 14 gauge sterling wire. It has a lot of heft. Yes, perfect.

I made one large and one smaller circle. Soldered them, formed them freehand and hammered them. Then hung them on handmade links.

You can see them above. Notice I left the tops of the hoops unhammered, but flattened the bottoms to create some dimension.

As with all new designs, I had to wear them - let's call it quality control. Sometimes new pieces have quirks that need to be modified before they can be considered ready to be sold.

So I wore them -- to a roller skating rink.

While there, I found that they had an annoying little habit - they didn't want to stay in position! Instead, they tended to flip around to this:

Why did they do that?

I think it's because the flattened areas (which I wanted to hang down) tended to weigh slightly less than the unhammered tops. So when I moved around, gravity made them shift.

Sigh. What to do?

I thought about a number of fixes:
Solder the rings together and solder a jump ring to the top. (But I would lose the movement I wanted in these earrings.)

Tie them up on the top with wire. (I didn't think this would look good.)

Drill a hole at the tops of the hoops and put a jump ring through it. (Maybe. But the hole would have to be pretty small and so would the wire for the jump ring. OR I would have to hammer the tops, which would make them lose the dimensional effect I wanted.)

I spent a couple of weeks thinking about it until I came to a solution.


TO BE CONTINUED.
Tomorrow: the solution.

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Angels and Demons Trailer

It seems almost a family tradition that we go to the movies on the day after Thanksgiving. I guess we're all sitting with a food hangover, no one wants to brave the malls on Black Friday... so why not a movie!

Well while there, I got to see the Angels & Demons trailer. This movie is based on a book by Dan Brown, who also wrote the DaVinci Code. I've read both books (who HASN'T READ the DaVinci Code) and really preferred Angels and Demons, hands down.

The story takes place in Rome, much of it in the Vatican. In the opening scene of the trailer there're a breath-taking fly-by over St Peter's. It eventually pans to a statue of an angel on the basilica - FLASH OF LIGHTENING - which turns into a demon.

Very, very cool effect. Except they made a mistake. There are no angels on St Peter's. None. I've been there and the top of St Peter's has huge statues of popes and saints.

Still, I'm looking forward to the movie.




Coming up on Contrariwise Ramblings tomorrow: new jewelry design that didn't turn out. (Hey, we all make mistakes.)

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