I've been an engineer, a mathematician and a trainee actuary. Now I'm a studio jeweller and a mother but my brain still works the same way it always did!
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As some of you may know, we’re going to be renovating our home here at some point (hopefully this year… which is what we said last year). They’re major renovations, and we’ll need to move out for the duration of the construction work.
Which got me thinking… if I could only work out of one large toolbox or small cabinet for a few months, what would I absolutely have to have in it?
My list so far…
Soldering:
- Butane torch + butane canister
- Solder block
- Solder pick + tweezers
- Flux + brush
- Citric acid for pickle
- Solders
- Binding wire
Other tools:
- Files
- Emery paper, sanding stick
- Liver of Sulphur
- Soft brass brush
- Chasing and planishing hammers
- Deadblow or rawhide mallet
- Small bench block
- Saw frame, blades, lubricant
- Glue stick
- Bench pin + jig/clamp
- Pliers, cutters
- Small box of drills and burs
- Something to drill/bur with!
… plus a selection of materials… sheet, wire, stones, beads. That might be the hardest selection of all ^_^
This is a long list! I’m sure I’d have to cull it to fit into my workbox… and it doesn’t even have some of the things I love best in it (because they’re too heavy etc).
What would you put in your box of essentials? Why? What would you leave out?
PS: Image from Buyster.com.au… I want a whole bank of these Dulton goodies when my new studio is done, if I can still afford them then! (sigh) ^_^
(warning: this is a bit of a long post!)
I’m a rather messy and absent-minded person when it comes to my workshop. I’m getting better at organisation but it’s a slow process. It stems partly from having far too many ideas at once and not waiting to try each one out (and thus not always *putting things away* properly before I move onto the next project), and partly from not respecting my workspace as I should (being brutally honest, this is a self esteem issue, and I’m working on that too ^_^). Being a creative hurricane at these times can be exhilarating but I need to learn to temper it with some self-discipline.
A lot of my experiments don’t work terribly well. Some I scrap entirely, immediately, in shame; and some I salvage the parts that I thought looked good out of the disaster and put them in a selection of boxes and tins to be reused later.
You might have guessed that with my constant drive to try out ‘new’ stuff… I rarely come back to these boxes. I’ve been working this system for five years now so there’s rather a lot in there, and some of it’s getting pretty OLD – some of what I thought was reusable and good back then really doesn’t look the same to me now as my work has changed and evolved. Sometimes diving into the boxes is a revelation, but more and more lately it’s a reminder of the failures of previous work and poorly-thought-out projects (particularly as I tend to cannibalise the really good bits and leave the so-so behind – the average quality in the box can get worse over time).
I recognised yesterday that these have become little storehouses of regrets, and they’re all over my workspace!
I took the opportunity yesterday afternoon to start going through these boxes with a very critical eye. The aim is to keep what can *easily* be reused (any appropriately-sized pieces of sheet silver, plain silver discs, good sturdy headpins, wire big enough for ring shanks etc) and sell the rest for scrap, as now is a good time to be doing that with the skyrocketing price of silver. This has a three-fold purpose: recycling what I’m not using, ridding myself of regrets past so I don’t have to look at them anymore… and raising a bit of cash to pick up a few tools I’d like to try out. My hope was that the end result will be something that brings me joy rather than being a subtle reminder of the things I haven’t done well.
While I was pulling out these various little boxes and tins I also found a few little boxes, baggies and vials of wire offcuts and other bits and pieces that I used to save up for melting projects when I was starting out and beading more than smithing. Bonus! Into the scrap tray with those as well.
I have to say that the end result of my three hours’ work was a shock (net weight, but there’s still a weeny bit of copper and other stuff to pick out of one tray):
 I set the scale tare with these boxes and trays empty... This is a little more ‘regret’ than I’d expected to shed. Probably four times as much, and I’m not finished yet. Liberating!
I don’t think I’ll be spending it all on tools for myself, that’s a bit greedy. I think I’d like to put some of it toward funding local crafty events or holding some workshops or something of that sort – chances to create lasting and positive personal memories out of these little regrets.
If you have ideas for where I could go with this – July or later if possible, given my (very pregnant) personal circumstances – I’d love to hear from you! ^_^
Inspired by all the lovely new leather sample pieces I picked up on Thursday… so many gorgeous colours that I simply had to show them off! Handmade ripple-textured rings and etched housings in oxidised sterling silver are attached by rivets to mini ‘swatches’ of carefully-cut leather in a variety of delicious shades.
These six pairs are going to Shop Handmade next week, and the following in-progress batch to in.cube8r Mosman… if you’d like a pair too, please let me know where they need to be! :)
I’m seriously excited today… !
You might have seen some of my work with leather in handmade silver housings recently. The prototype pieces I showed were really well received and for that I’m really grateful! The great feedback on those pieces made me look at my little stash of leather pieces (mostly reclaimed from scraps that the regular trade didn’t want) and I realised that what I had wasn’t terribly exciting and there was really very little there ^_^
To try and remedy that, I went to a couple of leather supply places around my city to try and pick up some new scrap – but I discovered that many of them weren’t doing scrap anymore (except for kangaroo lacing offcuts, which are far too stiff for my work!) or the scrap they had was pretty uninspiring. I then did web searches for what I wanted… and found very little that fitted what I needed, and most of that came with high shipping cost from overseas (not really in keeping with the reclaimed ethos that I wanted for these pieces!).
Enter yesterday… I was sitting at my laptop having my lunch break and attempting to keep up with my Twitter feed, and lo, what happens? These guys send through a tweet that they’ve just received a box of leather swatches into their industrial reuse centre! Hurrah! I abandon my lunch, jump in my car and I’m there in under ten minutes… I really wanted to go through that box! ^_^
(Aside – I really love this place and what it stands for. If you’re in the Sydney area and into mixed media, I absolutely recommend following their Twitter stream and going in for the occasional rummage.)
In the end I’ve got a fabulous haul of lovely little pieces in a gorgeous range of colours and even some patterns (I took nearly half the box… and debated with myself for a while as to whether I should just make an offer on the lot), and much of it is the weight and texture that I love best as well. I look forward to playing around with these over the coming months and bringing some new pieces to my range.
I know that this isn’t really what most people think of when they think ‘thrift shopping’… but this is what works for me ^_^ What have you thrifted or reclaimed that gave you that little shiver?
I’ve spent much of the last week holed up in my studio, isolated with my work. While I’m quite happy to work on my own most of the time, I do often miss the vibrant environment that comes with working around others. The internet is very useful for keeping in touch with people from the isolation of your workshop, but face-to-face interactions are important to me too. Wouldn’t it be lovely to have some of both worlds?
I know that lots of creatives get this sort of stimulation from subleasing studio space in larger collective workshops and that’s a really fabulous thing, but while my family is ‘new’ it’s particularly difficult to commit to that sort of environment. Part of this is that I want to be home with my child(ren) for some days of the week, and my indie business budget consequently doesn’t stretch to paying both childcare on work days and permanent studio rent (when I can only use a studio for at most 3 days in the week).
One of my personal goals is to (one day) have a multi-disciplinary workshop space – perhaps attached to a retail store or my own personal workspace -where several creatives can bring work on a casual basis and just lease a bench for the day. I’d love to rent a bench in this sort of space myself on occasion but I can’t find anywhere that offers this service in Sydney.
I love hearing about craft groups like the Brown Owls – who find spaces and knit/crochet/sew together on a regular basis. Such a fabulous way to stay in touch with your community! Unfortunately, jewellery work is generally a bit dustier/dirtier and needs more space per person than the venues they’re using would accommodate.
This morning I’ve got a little boy on my lap playing with some cabochons, and I’ve been poking around on Google to find and evaluate local community spaces. I’m looking for a suitable community space that can be leased inexpensively in order just to have a one-off get together of this type to see how it goes… a day out for the sharing of skills and just to work alongside others for a bit.
Are you in the Sydney area and would you be interested if we could find a space to have a working get-together? Which days would suit you best? Do you know of a great community space that could be used for small-scale, workshop-style activities? Please let me know!
Done, dusted, oxidised, and a quick shot before I wrap it up and trundle it off to the Sydney Royal Easter Show people.
Some parts came out great, some didn’t work quite as expected, but overall I’m quite happy ^_^
ETA: more pictures…
   I’d also like to take this opportunity to encourage my Australian friends-in-silver (and other crafts represented!) to enter the Sydney Royal Easter Show next year. I delivered my piece with just over an hour to go (!) and this year there really weren’t very many entries in the cabinet in the silver section! It’s the only big state show in Australia that currently has silversmithing categories and as far as I’m aware it’s not limited to entrants from NSW. I do feel that by supporting events like this one, we’re furthering the notion of handmade. The show gets over 800,000 people through their gates over a two-week period and items entered into the various competitions can be made available for sale if you wish. If your item makes it to display for the actual show (not all do) then it’s a lovely little opportunity to get your name and work seen and possibly even sell your piece.
Just a quick one: working on show pieces this week. Still working on the joining mechanisms for some bits, but this is the rough final layout. My torch won’t handle this much metal in one hit, so some of these connections will have to be cold joins.
All the black and white cutout paper bits are going to be etched silver. It looks a bit hodgepodge right now but when all of this is in silver it should tone together a lot better.
Stones: prehnite, prasiolite, larimar, London Blue topaz, turquoise, peridot.
I’m scared stiff of this project… my calculations are showing nearly $150 in silver on top of the many stones. I really, really don’t want to stuff this up. :)
Some of you may know that we’ve been planning a house renovation (major) for quite some time. Our plans have been approved, but we’re looking for a different builder/project manager to the one that did the first part of the process for us as we weren’t particularly happy with their service to date.
I didn’t realise when I started the process that I would need to have all of the finishes and fittings and colours neatly chosen and fixed before I got quotes from builders (yeah, I should have used my brain on that one). This part of the process is almost certainly going to be 100% my choices as my other half won’t *really* care one way or the other, and it’s a pretty big job as we’re virtually gutting and rebuilding the house. Every room has something happening!
For some reason – probably that ingrained ‘nesting’ instinct kicking in – it’s been on my mind a lot this week. Particularly the bathroom part. Nothing house-wise is going to happen for some time yet (baby in 5-6 weeks, haha) but I really need to start keeping a scrapbook of the stuff I love to make the process better when I *do* it later in the year.
Years ago, before we had this house, I painted the bathroom in our apartment in a dark pea green with white trim one week when my husband was overseas (tiny bathroom, and yes we owned the unit… you can’t make changes like that in rentals here!). I loved it. Our real estate agent when we sold the place a year later hated it and we had painters make it (and the rest of the apartment) an off-white… but some part of me still really wants a GREEN bathroom. With white wainscoting and a white claw bath like the one in the picture above (from Country Living – image 10 in this slideshow – photo by Gridley+Graves). I’d love to soak in one of these baths with a great book, with that shade of green on the walls again. Your mileage may vary! ^_^
Is there something in your home environment that you’ve wanted to change for ages… or have you already made your wishes into reality?
 Who are Ponoko?
Billing themselves as “the world’s easiest making system”, Ponoko is a hub for people who use digital technology to prototype stuff and have it made. Ponoko gives direct access through its various locations to 2D laser-cutting/engraving and through the US hub to 3D printing, and it’s super easy to use.
They’re also a marketplace for your laser-cut and 3D-printed work – buying or selling. (I am having a total geek-out moment over the piece shown above, by Ponoko user ‘digits’ – click the photo to be taken to the product itself on Ponoko)
What can Ponoko do for me?
Well, apart from having some really awesome stuff in their marketplace if you want to do a little shopping… they can make things for you!
I’ve been using Ponoko for years now and I love it… I’ve made things from product pieces for my jewellery (my spirographs engraved and cut from acrylic, little bamboo-ply sakura and more), earring stands and displays for markets, through to templates, tools and stencils to make my everyday work a little easier. If you’re lucky enough to own a hydraulic press for jewellery (something I really want in the future!)… you could have your matrix dies for press-forming cut by laser from acrylic sheet up to 8mm thick (I’ve already done this but have no press to test them on. Am I keen on this press thing or what?)
Depending on the hub you choose, the materials available include acrylic (plexiglass), some non-precious metals, leather, thick felt, card, polypropylene (great for stencils) and more.
I use Illustrator, following the templates and guidelines they give for laying out cutting and engraving lines. (Other vector programs / file types are accepted as well, but Illustrator is what I was used to.) I generally try to fit as much into one piece as I can to minimise materials wastage and reduce the shipping cost per item cut… the P1 size (about 18x18cm of usable area) can fit nearly fifty small pairs of earring pieces and costs about $6 to ship to me in Australia from New Zealand, which is rather inexpensive.
Material costs vary with what you want to use, with a small sheet of acrylic starting at a couple of dollars. Making costs depend on whether you’re on a free plan or a monthly subscriber to their Prime account (US$39/month) and are charged based on laser time, simple outlines on thin materials will have lower making cost than intricate pieces with heavy engraving.
What’s the favourite thing you’ve had cut?
At the moment, I’d have to say the simple shape stencils I had done in polypropylene. They were under about $10 per P1 size sheet (with Prime membership pricing). I got a bit sick of printing my simpler pierced shapes onto paper and then gluing the paper to silver sheet to get my cutting lines… so I use my scriber with the stencils I had made instead.
The earring screens I made for my market display received nearly as many comments as my jewellery in February, and they’d run a close second.
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So, that’s a bit of a rundown on a company that I think really adds something to the indie scene :) If it’s set your cogs to moving, why not drop me a line in the comments and let me know? ^_^
Hello everyone! Here’s a quick shot of what I’ve been doing today… many of these just need a spin in the tumbler from here, a few need oxidising as well to finish :D Later this afternoon I’ll photograph them and start the listing process.
(Size reference… the Fan Blossom discs with the central holes near the middle of the group are 5/8″ (16mm) across.)
In this photo (all jumbled together!):
- Trefoil pendants in Petite and Small sizes
- Square Burst pendants in Small and Medium
- Medium plump butterflies
- Creature pendants in Kitten, Puppy and Bunny
- ‘Foliage’ and ‘Blossom’ pattern heart earrings and pendants, size Small
- Small Violets pendant
- Baroque pendants, styles 1 and 2
- Medium Petal pendants
- Fan Blossom discs; centre-drilled for hoops and top-drilled for hooks
- and a pair of Rain earrings (before they get their London Blue Topaz drop dangles!)
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Lately, I’ve been trying rather hard to condense my pieces into more of a ‘standard’ range, instead of ‘whatever I feel like making today’. It’s very difficult to keep track of inventory and do proper accounting, the way I tend to make things at the moment; and it’s also a nightmare when I get wholesale requests because there’s no way I can build up a catalogue if everything’s a bit of a one-off.
As a result, today I’ve been making singles of a lot of the things I’ve decided to make more permanent… so that I can get the photos and get them up on the web, where you can see them ^_^
The biggest change, to me, from what I have been doing is that my pierced pendants (a lot of which you can see in this photo) will now be made of thicker silver sheet than I’d previously used. While mine have never been ‘thin’, I have felt for a while that the pendants need to be a little more substantial – more tactile and a little heavier. Earrings and etched pieces will stay as they were; etched pieces were already using a slightly thicker sheet than pierced pendants and earrings shouldn’t be too heavy ^_^
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