Contrariwise ramblings

This week I'll be posting some photos of some new beads that I bought. Yesterday's post was on the new Red Creek Jasper. Today, turquoise.

First, a single lovely little teardrop cabochon. I loved the color and the pattern, bought it the instant I saw it, and already made a bezel setting for it! (Yes, I had a busy -but wonderful- weekend at my soldering station.)
I haven't decided whether it'll be a ring or a pendant. It's a perfect size for either. (Any opinions?)

The same dealer had some little intensely blue Sleeping Beauty cabs. He must have had hundreds rattling around in a box and my daughter spent at least 20 minutes sorting through them to find matching pairs for me to make earrings with. (Hey, 20 minutes is an eternity for a 13 yr-old.)
I'll have no problem thinking up designs for these little beauties. And they should keep me busy (and out of trouble) for a while.

The most jaw-dropping stones I saw at the show were intensely blue labradorite cabs. I have never ever seen stones of this color or quality.

It's so difficult to capture the iridescence of labradorite. But I had no problem capturing the iridescence of the stones I bought. Every photo was perfect. Unfortunately, I won't be posting the photos until.....tomorrow.

Do you want to subscribe to my blog by email? Click here!.

Would you like to be a Contrariwise follower? (I love having more friends!) All you have to do is click on the link in the upper right on my side bar.

Aren't they wonderful! They natural stone is so vibrant and the pair are amazingly well matched! Each is about 1 inch high and, of course, they would be perfect for earrings. In fact, I couldn't delay gratification - I stayed up till 1 AM that night making settings for them. (When the earrings are finished, I promise to post them here.)

I like these cabachons so much that the earrings may end up being MINE. Because of this, on the 2nd day, I bought some more!

Quite different than the first pair, aren't they? The top pair are delicate shades of pinks and golds and they bring to mind butterfly wings. The bottom pair are the painted colors of the desert....or, maybe prehistoric eyes. (I think they'd look great separated, and made into rings.)

This isn't all I got. Of course I bought more wonderful things at the gemshow. (Especially on that second day!) But since I had to wait so long for it, I thought that I would do the same to you.

Therefore, over the next several days, I'm going to s-l-o-w-l-y show you my new purchases.

Tomorrow: new turquoise for my shop.

Do you want to subscribe to my blog by email? Click here!.

Would you like to be a Contrariwise follower? (I love having more friends!) All you have to do is click on the link in the upper right on my side bar.

Here's another new piece I've worked on recently. A pendant, bezel-set in silver:
I love the light green color of this stone which is perfect for spring and summer. I bought the stone, along with some others, from a friend of mine. He's a retired professor who's had hobbies in metalwork and lapidary - and now he's made it into a business for himself.

He cut and polished this stone himself and told me what it is - but I promptly forgot the name! So I haven't listed it in my Etsy shop. Not to worry. I'll should be seeing him this weekend at a local bead and gem show, and I'll ask him. (But THIS TIME, I'll write the name down.)

I've also been practicing sawing metal. (And breaking a lot of saw blades in the process!) Usually the backs of pendants are open and openings are symmetrical or cut close to the bezel. I thought I'd try something different and make an interesting opening in the back:
What do you think?

Oh. And did you notice those little silver balls on the side? I recently had a project go a bit awry and it had to be punished. Oh yes. It melted down nicely into lovely little spheres of molten silver.

Bwahahahahahahah!

Do you want to subscribe to my blog by email? Click here!.

Would you like to be a Contrariwise follower? (I love having more friends!) All you have to do is click on the link in the upper right on my side bar.

Continued from yesterday's post.

After taking the non-set ring from the tumbler, I still had to set the sea glass in it. It's important that the stone fits tightly, otherwise it may be loose in the setting or you may end up getting buckles in the bezel.

I have a bezel setting tool I got from Thunderbird supply. I use it to gently push segments of the bezel against the stone. Think of a clock. I usually start at 12 o'clock, push a small bit of the bezel against the stone, then I move to the opposite side at 6 o'clock and do the same thing. 9 o'clock is next, followed by 3 o'clock. Then I do the remaining bits until all of the bezel has been pushed against the stone.

The next thing I do is use a burnisher and rub it all over the bezel until the metal is smooth and it shines.

Usually I find bits that I'm unhappy with (like the seam where I soldered the two ends of the bezel wire together). And I rub them with progressively finer sandpaper until I've removed the seam. (And, yes, there have been times I've rubbed them a bit too much and then the stone peaks through. So frustrating!) This is followed by more burnishing.

So after quite a bit of work , this is finally what I ended up with:

I tend to like an asymmetrical look, and you can tell that I tried to set the stone that way with off-set accents of silver. And you can see that I put my silver scraps to use - I made the silver spheres from them.

The color of the sea glass is amazing! It's translucent and when you look down into the ring, it reminds me of the color of a crystal clear swimming pool.

Do you want to subscribe to my blog by email? Click here!.

Would you like to be a Contrariwise follower? (I love having more friends!) All you have to do is click on the link in the upper right on my side bar.

In my last post, I showed you some pieces from my sea glass collection. See the bright blue one in the middle of the photo? That's the one I chose to work with.

Here are the supplies I would use to make a ring. Some 24 gauge silver sheet metal, silver bezel wire, and the piece of sea glass.

First thing I did is cut a piece of bezel wire to match the shape of the stone. Then I would need to solder the two ends together. So I cut a tiny piece of solder wire and, using tweezers, tried to carefully place it at the junction of the two ends.

@#%*#@!!!!

After not being able to find the piece of solder that had fallen to the ground, I cut another piece. Using the tweezers I aimed for the junction. It was at this time that I realized that I probably shouldn't have had those 3 cups of coffee that morning. However, after many shaky attempts, I finally got the darn piece of solder to stay in place. (I even have a photo to prove it. See that tiny speck in the picture on the right. Yup, that's the recalcitrant solder.)

I hadn't soldered in a couple of months. (The soldering station is in the garage where it's been WAY TOO COLD.) And I think I was out of practice because I couldn't get the solder to melt. But I did get the bezel hot enough to melt it!

Sad. Isn't it.

I had to start again. And wouldn't you know, it happened again!

Yes, I used flux, cleaned the metals, and got everything hot, not just the solder. But it wouldn't melt for me.

I then gave up and used my paste solder, which melts at a low temp. Got it to work that time!

The next steps were to shape the bezel to the shape of the glass, cut some silver sheet slightly larger than the bezel, and solder them together. Here's what I had:
There's still a lot more to do.

The extra sheet needs to be cut and filed smooth. At this point I decided to add some decorative bits: little silver balls that I make from silver scrap. (And with all those ruined bezels, it looks like I'll have a lot of scrap for this purpose!) All this has to be done before attaching it to the ring.

The ring itself is made from heavy wire - cut to make a size 7 ring. (Which, oddly enough, just so happens to fit me!) It needs to be soldered together and made into a perfect circle.

After spending an afternoon doing all this, I was ready to solder everything together. It went without a glitch and I now had everything I needed to set the sea glass into:
Yes, I was dying to finish it, but there were still a few things to do. It had to be tumbled for a couple hours, then I had to make sure everything was filed smooth. AND I still had to make dinner. So I would have to put off finishing the ring till the next day.

Since I had to defer finishing the ring till the next day, I am going to defer showing you the final product till my next post tomorrow.

TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW
(Don't you hate seeing those 4 little words?!)

Do you want to subscribe to my blog by email? Click here!.

Would you like to be a Contrariwise follower? (I love having more friends!) All you have to do is click on the link in the upper right on my side bar.

Yes. I'm ba-ack!

A little bit of a hiatus from my blog, but I have lots of things to share with you.

The newest:

I just got back from a quick trip to Palm Beach and I had an opportunity to add to my collection of sea glass.

I don't know why, but I've always been fascinated with sea glass. I mean, sea glass is really just little bits of TRASH! But after being buffeted by the surf and sand, they almost seem magical to me.

I was raised on the east coast and lived within a few miles of the ocean. I remember going to the beach when I was little - catching snails and minnows. Picking up shells and bright bits of sea glass...

Now I live in the midwest. HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of miles away from the nearest ocean. I regret more and more that I didn't spend more time at the beach when I had the opportunity.

But when I have the chance to walk on a beach, I always look for the little bright glints of light in the sand that might mean that I could find a new piece of sea glass.

So here are some of the pieces I added to my collection:

There are few pieces of bright blue and cobalt glass which will be perfect for rings. Some of the larger pieces might work as pendants. I think I'm going to have to set them this week!

Do you want to subscribe to my blog by email? Click here!.

Would you like to be a Contrariwise follower? (I love having more friends!) All you have to do is click on the link in the upper right on my side bar.