Some little starfish charms teamed with beach coloured faceted czech glass and the sweetest teeny little seahorses. Just in time for Summer Downunder.
In my Made It SHOP
Bead Table Wednesday
If I thought working with 18 gauge brass was tough, bronze is tougher.
After beating my bronze coins flat-ish (oh for a rolling mill or a close-by railway track with an obliging train) I teamed them up with some delicious raku beads from Star Spirit Studio
Love how the metalic blue and bronze on the beads is complimented by the coin discs.
Now in my Etsy shop.
Edited: a cooee to Penny from Sparrow Salvage who featured my earrings among the delightful treasures she found on Etsy. Thanks Penny. To see the treasures for yourselves visit her BLOG
Now in my Etsy shop.
Edited: a cooee to Penny from Sparrow Salvage who featured my earrings among the delightful treasures she found on Etsy. Thanks Penny. To see the treasures for yourselves visit her BLOG
Feel My Biceps
Uncovered a very heavy package in the bottom of a chest of drawer and when I opened it there was some more "stuff-I-may-be-able-to-do-something-with-one-day"
Bronze coins that were withdrawn from circulation in 1992. That's right,19 years ago! (Anyone else guilty of squirreling that long?)
My eye lit up - and visions of pendant bases, earring disks and bead caps danced in my head. All I had to do was to hammer them flat.
A quick heat and anneal, seeing as it is bronze, a few taps with my little girly hammer on the bench block and it became clear that more brute force was needed.
'Liberated' my husband's best hammer and tried the engineers vice.
'Liberated' my husband's best hammer and tried the engineers vice.
Now an anvil is only as good as what it is mounted on and what was under the engineers vice was definitely not substantial enough.
With my map torch, water bucket, hammer, haemostats and coins in tow I wandered around looking for something more 'industrial strength'
Found this.
3 heats and anneals and much bashing later, the inadequacies of a common claw hammer surfaced.
Boy these coins are sure tough little hombres! Clearly the only way I was going to be able to beat these little suckers into submission was to go for the really big gun tool.
You know the kind - one shade off cannon grey, a hand grip made from leather from really angry cows and a label on the side that says "naaa nah nah naaa nah consider yourself hammered"
All I had to do was lift it up and the weight did the rest. 10 wallops per side, no heating/annealing needed!
Here's the result.
Here is my hammer
So do you want to see my new anvil?
It's really unique, bet I'm the only one with one, you will be soooo jealous even though it won't fit into my studio.
More Passing Shots
The President of our local Art Society is a 'Red Hot Pistol Packing Momma', although she modestly claims that she's not a bad shot with a small bore rifle.
She has a big competition coming up and urged me to make some more jewelry with the shell casings so she can sell some. The request included silver and gold.
There were some nickel casings so here are the silver batch.
Earrings with handpainted porcelain rounds.
I even made a bracelet in pink! and I am soooo not a pink girl.
Making something in gold was my next challenge. With all those bright brass cases I decided to go all out and OD on gold!
After all that bling needed something to sooth me, so resorted to my favourite - aged brass.
A Splash of Paint
Since I joined the local Gin Gin Art Society I have been inspired to do some painting, something that has been on the back burner in my life for a long time. As I child I always had a pencil/chalk/paintbrush/crayon/charcoal/pastels or some implement in my hand that made marks on a surface. Fortunately my parents supported this developing 'habit' and kept the sheets of butchers paper coming!
So here is my first finished piece in pen and watercolour - 'Ring of Bright Water'
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