It's been a month or so since I lasted haunted the Rock Shop. We've had a lot of things going on, so it was really great to get there last night and spend a couple hours working on items that have been collecting dust for quite a while.

I spent most of my time finishing this piece of Agate. The shape is is free-form, meaning I didn't follow a template when I cut it. In other words, it's not perfectly symmetrical. But despite that fact, I really love the way it turned out. I worked really hard to get all the scratches out of the surface so it would shine up beautifully. 

Now I just have to decide if I want it to be a necklace or a bracelet. Part of me thinks it would be really beautiful as a pendant on memory wire, but another part of me wants to set it in a bezel and create a beautiful stiff cuff bracelet. It will most likely just sit and be a shiny rock for a long time before I actually get around to doing anything with it. Sometimes, it's tough knowing ones-self.

This is the other piece I started last night. Unfortunately I don't know what it is. It's difficult to see, but I was drawn to this stone because of these really subtle lines running through it. Plus I love the muted colors. To my dismay, I accidentally put a crack in it that might be beyond help. I think I'll keep trying to work with it until I determine that it's not worth it. Either way it would good practice.

If I was going to the rock shop tonight I would be working on these pieces.

If I was going to the rock shop tonight I would spend 2 very loud hours cutting, shaping and polishing these stones into beautiful pieces that would then sit on my dresser waiting for me to do something with them. I really need to work on turning these stones into something more than a pretty polished rocks. 

I certainly have ideas. They often involved more time than I currently have, but I look forward to the day when I can display them all proudly as rings and necklaces and bracelets. For now, I'll just have to enjoy them for what they currently are, beautiful pieces of nature.

Instead of going to the rock shop tonight, I'm going to stay home and spend some quality time with my family. This week has been a busy one and I feel like we've been passing each other like ships in the night. Well, no more I say! Tonight we're going to be together because that's more important than creating more pretty rocks to sit on my dresser.

Working with silver is fairly new to me, so I was pretty nervous walking into my PMC course today. I've never worked with precious metal clay and I wasn't sure how my mind would deal with an unfamiliar medium. It doesn't help that PMC is really expensive, so any mistakes would be costly. 

Failure was not an option...no pressure though.

After an hour and half of working with sculpey clay, I finally came up with a design that I loved enough to open my meager 20g bag of PMC. Here's what I came up with.

The large piece is going to hang on a necklace. The smaller leaves that were removed from the larger piece will become earrings. The lily shaped piece will get sanded down and soldered to a ring setting. I might set a small pearl or something similar into the center of it as well.

All in all, not bad in my opinion. I'm a long way from my own jewelry line, but at least my creative mind is starting to think in silver. Today really opened up my eyes to the beautiful possibilities. 

The past couple of weeks at the Rock Shop have been kind of rough for me. I took some time off before the holidays and when I came back I realized that my brain just couldn't wrap around shaping anymore. Well, I'm happy to report that last night went so much better!

I worked a bit on the piece of Jasper (pictured at the right) I've been hoping to make a pendant out of, but as you can see it has a flat spot. That's no good when it comes to stone work because a flat spot will never polish to a shine. I may be the only one that notices, but it drives me crazy. Certainly, it's a result of temporarily forgetting how to shape properly but I'm not sure I can save it. Now do I scrap it and give my beautiful sister-in-law one of the other stones in the picture. Or should I keep plugging away in the hopes that I can fixe it?

I'm absolutely in love with the other two stone pictured. Unfortunately, I have no idea what kind of stones they are but I have further plans for both. I want to make a silver pendant setting for the green stone and possibly a silver bracelet setting for the other one. I'll have a better sense of it after this weekend's class on Precious Metal Clay.

Thoughts, ideas, opinions? 

I've been doing lots of stuff recently. Despite the fact that blogging doesn't seem to be a part of the stuff I'm doing.  I have been doing lots of stuff. 

I've been crocheting a bunch. What do you all think of this little guy or gal? I haven't figured out which it is yet. Clearly I still have a bit of work to do on it - some eyes, a nose, and a mouth are in order and maybe a little tuft of hair.

I thought he or she would make an excellent gift for a little boy or girl who was about to become a new big sister or big brother. Know anyone who can use a handmade baby doll?

I also managed to get to the rock shop tonight. Not one of my better nights in the shop, but at least I had fun talking to the people. I did manage to shape out a second square to make a matching pair of onyx earrings. Also, I worked on the jasper pendant I mentioned in an earlier post. It has a flat spot, and I'm annoyed about that, but I'm sure a little more time at the grinder will fix it.

I also picked up this lovely piece of stone. 

The picture doesn't really do it justice. It has the most beautiful green color in it. Now I just have to decide what to do with it.  Hmmm.....

Remember this ring?

I fought with it a decent amount before the holidays and then put it down to pursue other endeavors - like crocheting Christmas gifts.  Anyway, I had a thrown down with it last night at the rock shop.  

I annealed it to make it more pliable, in the hopes that I wouldn't break the bezel.  I took the dremel to it, opting for the precision of a small tool over the large wheel tripoli, in the hopes of saving it from being flung from my grasp and smashed...again.

And when it was all nice and shiny, I lovingly and gently pushed the precision cut rock into the bezel....

And then I pushed a little harder...

And a little harder still...

And then I considered taking a mallet to it.

The darn thing didn't fit! Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!

No matter how hard a pushed and prodded I couldn't get the stone to sit flat on the bottom of the bezel. So, after too many hours spent on this darn thing, I've resigned myself to melting it down and starting a new.I'm sure it will make a lovely...something else. Until I get around to that I'll let Isabel wear it around.  It makes her happy.

The evening wasn't a complete bust though.  I got started on a beautiful piece of Jasper that I know my sister-in-law is going to love.  Every time I look at it, I see her.

So, obviously this story continues....

Jump backward to Tuesday night, my regular rock shop night, when I get to spend the evening listening to loud machines grinding and cutting to help myself decompress.  I went with the specific purpose of cutting, shaping, and polishing a new piece of obsidian to fit my bezel ring.  I was feeling good...confident in my ability to craft the perfect stone.  

That confidence lingered for all of 10 minutes until I cut my first rock too small (head slap - doh!).  

It wasn't so much the cutting part that really hurt my pride.  It was the fact that I just picked the wrong size square as my template.  I mean how can that happen???  I have the ring setting.  Shouldn't I be able to figure out which size rock it needed?  Sigh.

Anyway, the second stone I cut was the right size so I set about shaping and polishing it.  After 45 minutes it was done.  I set it in the freezer to unstick it from the dowel it was on and took up the task of drilling a hole in a piece of jasper I've been hoping to work on for a couple weeks now.  After the hole was drilled, I took my new shaped stone from the freezer, popped it off the dowel, held it up to my ring and...

...smacked myself in the forehead because it was too small for the bezel.  Ugh.  Humiliating...I think I'm might have screamed, but don't worry no one in the shop was alarmed since they are all used to my antics by now.

I was pretty much ready to throw in the towel on the bezel ring and pick it up another time, but the wonderful shop manager, Eileen, told me to give it another go.  I heaved a huge sigh and forged ahead with raw determination otherwise no as pure anger.  Forty-five minutes later, I had a perfectly shaped stone to fit in my ring.

Now, I haven't actually set the stone yet, so this is close to what it should look like when it's done.  I tried my hardest to destroy the ring with the tripoli sander first.  It flew out of my hand twice and bent the silver all crazy like, but somehow managed to remain intact.  It still needs some work  with shaping though and hopefully next week I'll be able to finish it.

So, last week I had my final silver-smithing class.  I was all set to finish off my bezel set ring, take photos, and post a picture showing off my shiny new adornment.  Everything was going well, right up until it was time to set the stone into the bezel.  It was going to be a snug fit.  I knew that when I made the ring, but that's  nature of a bezel setting.  The silver is tailored to fit the stone so it will not fall out of the setting.  

Well, when the glorious moment arrived, I went to push the stone into it's snug little fitting and...it chipped!  My beautiful, hand-cut obsidian stone chipped.  It was a little soul crushing, and a lot of debate ensued about whether to take it out or leave it be in the hopes that the bezel edge would cover the chip.  At first, I really wanted to take it out.  I'm a bit of an obsessive perfectionist when it comes to art, so I wasn't psyched about the notion of leaving a chipped rock in my ring.  But, much to my dismay, the stone wouldn't come out.  So I took a deep breath, smacked the perfectionist inside me and said, "Relax!" before blowing out a huge sigh and resigning myself to the chipped stone.  It gets better...

After quite a bit of effort, we realized we couldn't get the stone all the way into the setting.  It sat, stuck tight, on a slant that was just horrifying annoying.  That was when I broke out in an insane maniacal  laugh and decided that I knew how to solve the problem.  

One large mallet later, the stone  was out of the setting...in a million pieces...but it was out.

Ugh.  It's Monday.

There's a whole lake full of water in front of my building, but there's not a drip running through the pipes in my building right now...until 5:00 p.m.  Yep, it's one of those days.

We had a great weekend, enjoying the mild weather.  

Isabel was the only girl invited to her classmate's birthday party.  I think that's adorable.

Here are last week's rock shop items.  The roughly shaped rock on the right is a piece of jasper.  I'm planning on drilling a hole through it and rounding off the edges so it will make a pretty necklace.  The item on the left is the beginning on a bezel set ring.  I'm working with the same transparent obsidian rock I used for my pendant.  Once I get the edges filed down all I have to do is cut a piece long enough for the ring and solder it on.  Finishing it off shouldn't be to difficult and I'm hopeful it will turn out great.

Can you believe it's almost December?  It feels like it snuck up on me since I didn't go through any of the black friday chaos up here.  Did you see the amount of money people spent?  I guess the recession is over.

Well, I hope everyone had a nice thanksgiving.  I already have a holiday party planned.

Happy Monday!