steel and lavender oil

Welllll????
I'm close, really close to figuring it out.  The two pairs of earrings 'I thought' were finished ... well I realized I hadn't run them through the stainless shot/lavender oil combination.  Consequently the area where the earwires had been soldered to the steel is starting to rust.  That rust works FAST which is okay by me.  I know within a day if the pieces are good to go.

And the pieces I tumbled yesterday ... well I should have put a bit of oil in with them for that last run ... rust is setting in around that soldering area.

They're very close, though.  So I took the embellishments off the 'finished' earrings and have chucked everything back into the tumbler - stainless steel shot with a squirt of lavender oil in the water - one more time.  Feeling like this will be the one.

And while the tumbler's running, I'm heading off into a completely different direction and have hauled out my treasured little sewing machine, 'Bernie' the Bernette.

I love this little machine!  I've had her for about 17 years.  The best part is, I bought her with money I made from selling jewelry to a sewing class that was happening the day I went into the shop to make my purchase ... total serendipity!  I was making this crazy jewelry - little flakes of slate wire wrapped with base metal wire and beads and little hammered wire doo-dahs.  I had just been to a gallery to sell some work and had my travel case with me.  The owner of the fabric store was a friend and urged me to bring in my wares to tempt the students.  Et voila', I sold enough jewelry to buy my little machine ... and she's a peach!  All metal gears, no bells or whistles.  Basic, very basic.  The only 'fancy' features - she does button holes and the top plate slides off to do shoulder seams.

I had bought two colors of linen to make napkins to go with my new table runner and turns out I have enough left over to make a skirt out of each color.  And since the napkins will take a while ... all that mitering of corners and such, I'm going to work on the skirts so's I'll have them to take to Florida.  Sweet!

Oh yes! ... a special Thank You for your comments!  I really do love comments ... it's so very very nice knowing I'm not carrying on to just my own little self.

Okay, from the soldering station to the cutting board ... it's all creative!

l i g a - kvk

p.s.  check out this trailer for Jonathan Fields' new book ... can't wait to get my hands on a hard copy.

steel and sparklies

A wee bit further on the design trail.  The thing slowing me down this morning is trying to remember the combination I used for tumbling/finishing these pieces.  I made these bailing wire/mild steel components at least a year ago, maybe two and they've never rusted.  I know it involved putting some lavender oil in the tumbler with the stainless shot.  But I had an unattractive mess this morning when I opened the tumbler ... so now I'm running it again with borax to clean everything up and will see how it looks at that point.  Can't remember if I put the pieces through the abrasive media or not.  Maybe I should write this stuff down .........

When I do figure it out, and figure it out I will, here's a couple of possibilities for the finished product.  

 This pair of earrings has blue topaz & labradorite dangles and wraps of raw diamonds 

This pair has tiny wraps of raw diamonds ... minimal, but I think they look very cool

I woke up kind of grumpy, so I'm trying to not succumb and keep moving forward.  The swings of that dern pendulum are kind of narrow right now ... not happy about that.  Seems like one day up, one day down, half a day up, half a day down.  Little pin-pricky annoyances that mean nothing, but still annoy.  Deep breaths.

onward ......

l i g a - kvk