Wire works

My work is almost always associated with a curl or two – or many. It seems as if I just HAVE to create jewelry centered around or adorned with this particular shape. Do I have a curly mind? Perhaps that is the reason… Anyways, these days I’m again working with my curly hoops.

They have turned out to be quite a seller, and I see why: Especially the simple version appeals to many different kind of women – both the very young as well as the mature ones. A few days ago I sold a pair to a woman around 60 (at least) who had decided to get holes in her ears, and so happily bough a pair of the small, simple curls – without having the holes yet!

Inspired by the interest for my curly hoops, I have thrown myself into experimenting with the design again. I created a large batch of the small simple curls of cause – as I said, they tend to sell quickly – and then headed for new explorations within the more complex ones.

I work with 1 mm wire, mostly silver, but at times also gold. Yesterday I created a pair of the simple curls with some scrap red gold I had. That of cause required melting, milling and drawing down the metal first, which takes some time. But I love the irrational feeling of growing wealth as I see small blob of gold, which looks like nothing, elongate more and more. Of cause the amount of metal stays the same, but it FEELS as if I get more of it! The result is well worth the work, even though I had to create special little red gold bails for the pendants. What a fiddly task that is!

So why is wire a medium that I return to over and over again? Well, it’s like drawing. I draw in the air with wire and pliers. As I work, my mind finds peace and I literally go into some kind of meditative state, where the shapes, lines, curves and curls easily manifest themselves in my mind and transfer into reality through my hands. Afterwards I am always a bit stunned and awed by my creations and deeply cherish the ability to turn my dreams into solid matter.

Ohhh… pictures moving!

YouTube is the source of so much inspiration for jewelry aficionados like myself. There are both videos on how to create the pieces and of cause of the end result. Most of us can’t afford elaborate commercials like this amazing Indian one (LOTS of gold here!)

And hence we do slide shows, which are a lot more accessible. I like this one from Catherienette Rings (a fellow Etsyan)who creates steampunk jewelry. The soundtrack is awesome for this kind of jewelry!

Another Etsyan –Spinning Castle – used some kind of very nice template for her video - very nifty:

Now I wanted to do one too and a here is the result. It’s featuring jewelry created from silver or gold wire, in other words the airy selection of my fairytale designs – now with music :-) Geaorge Winston is playing his Japanese Music Box.

I tried to incorporate the look and feel from the video with the green grungy backgrounds. Hence the new look of this blog, my homepage and the YouTube channel featuring this slide show. I’m looking forward to creating more, cuz it sure was fun!

Stone slut in heaven

It’s been months since my last entry here simply because I have been way too busy! Starting a new business, complete with a shop and all is time consuming enough, but my part time job on the side was becoming an increasing drainer. Without going into too much detail, I can safely say, that the psychological working environment was hell. I’m this cliché artist-type of person, it seems, with a fleeting artistic mind and a fragile mental constitution. Or at least that’s what it felt like, as I slowly fell apart and last week I simply had to “throw in the towel” aka give up and have my doctor turning me in sick due to stress.

A week has passed from that moment, and it was the right thing to do, I can feel. I have been nesting at home, just doing non-challenging household work, reading, sowing, watching a movie and generally limiting my world and numbers of decisions to make to a minimum. It has done me good and although I’m still short-fused, cry easily and am generally somewhat fragile, the mood at least has become a lot better.

Today it got a LOT better, when I attended a private gem selling event at one of my commissioners. He knew a guy who once a year travels to India and comes home with literally tons of stones! He had brought a few kilos to this event and here we are:

Oh…. Being a genuine stone slut, this is exhilarating like nothing else! For the next hours I browsed through all the baskets fishing for those stones that were the very best ones. Though the gems were very fairly priced, of cause I went wild and ended up using a LOT more money than I had anticipated!

But at home, I could spread out the stash and felt like a happy dragon over her treasure, grumbling “Mine! All mine!” at my somewhat puzzled boyfriend, who really wasn’t that interested and rather would play WoW. Heh – my gems are REAL, although they do not grant extra dexterity when wearing them.

Here are the smaller, more delicate gemstones only.

As you can see, I especially bought a lot of topazes of a varying quality.

I love this cool blue and so do my customers. In other words: Nice new pieces with blue (and other wonderful) gems will soon surface!

Oh to be a stone slut with a fresh stash… yummy!

Delicate gold pendant

Gold is just delicious, isn’t it? The warmth of the metal, especially in contrast to something cooler, such as silver or diamonds is just so sumptuous. Lately, I have had the opportunity to work a bit more with gold, as a number of my customers have brought me gold to be reforged.


This time it was a very simple and, to be honest, rather ugly pendant in a lovely, slender snake chain. It was rectangular with 5 little bowls in it, each holding one diamond. The pendant was made of 14k gold and had diamonds – that was the good part. The shape was uninspired, to be friendly. This is when I should show you a before picture and doh… I didn’t make one. Then at least I should show you process pictures and again… I didn’t make them.

So, to be quick about this, before showing you the end result, this is what I did: I pulled out the diamonds and cast the gold into a stick. I rolled and drew it down to 1,5 mm wire and then I created “the usual” Karin-curly-pendant, this time with balls holding 3 of the diamonds and a facet cut drop of clear quartz.

The result I absolutely loved!

A blacksmith came by

Recently, my gallery has gained a new acquaintance. His name is Kasper, and he does iron age blacksmithing! Now, obviously, without a furnace, he couldn’t work within his trait, but he circled my grandfathers old ambos with a lot of love and asked how silver reacted to being forged. Now, I don’t do MUCH forging – I flatten out wires to achieve that elegant whiplash effect that I always aim for, but apart from that… not so much. At some point I have tried to stretch a piece of silver to become thinner – and failed, wondering how on earth that is done. I can now report that I know!

 

So, Kasper was given a piece of silver – roughly 6x30 mm and 2 mm thick to play around with.

Kasper has never worked with silver and never so small, so to him it was a real challenge. He had to use far smaller hammers and pliers than usual and get a lot closer. Then again – since the metal isn’t hot when being forged, it’s a lot safer.

And so of he set, creating his specialty: the woman’s knife. It’s a very beautiful tool that every woman who was worth anything, was carrying. He learned a lot about silver and I learned a lot about forging – and also what some of those weird tools that came along with grandfathers anvil was for.

And here we are: a tiny, 3 cm long silver iron age knife, oxidized to get that original, dark look.

Here you see how tiny it is compared with the originals, which are approximately 12 cm long.

I think it’s VERY beautiful, and have suggested that he starts producing more of those knifes – both the real-size in iron and the small silvery one for pendants and sell them on Etsy and Amio. I think he will, eventually, so keep a lookout for Danish iron age knives

London Blue –creation of (yet another) ring

By now the regular readers of this blog have seen how I have created a number of different rings with set stones. They are all different, but of cause the basic steps are the same, such as the tapered bezel. However, If you would like to see the creation of yet another beauty, please take a look at the Danish site Amio.dk (something equivalent to Etsy, where I also have a shop), where I have been asked to show just such a process. It's written in Danish, but the pictures of cause speak for themselves. Here it is

Jewelry gallery –now with homepage!

My gallery has been in office for a month and it has been paramount to me to give it a virtual home too. With the help of my good friend Michael, I have been building and building and now it’s done: http://www.gallericastens.dk/ . Take a look at it and especially the amazing artists who have their work exhibited here too!


And haven’t I been working at my bench at all while the homepage came into being? Of cause – I have to ;-) Amongst others I decided to do a light version of an older design – the fairy flower, made of oxidized silver with gold leaf, a peridot and a light amethyst.

Here is the new version made of bright polished silver, a wire of 14k gold, a peridot (again) and a pearl. Both are beautiful I think – can’t decide which one is my favourite…