back in the soldering saddle again....giddyup

yeeehaaaa.  ohhhhh i just wanna solder EVERYTHING! 

my next project is to figure out just how i am going to assemble the sacred bone necklace i started on some time back.

so this afternoon i thought

 sacred bone makes me think head hunters and jungles....lost civilizations.  

medicine man.

vintage pharmacy labels

so i cut glass just a bit larger than the pharmacy labels. 2 days in a row now i have cut glass.  i have got the nack back baby.......uh....pretty much.

nope, you are not seeing double.

yup, if you know me you know what this means.

this is one of those -  one for me, and one to sell pieces.

one of the most important steps when you are assembling your piece to solder - make sure you clean clean clean the glass.  you do not want to find a schmere or fingerprint after you have it all taped up, or worse yet, after you have soldered the piece.  i use plain old vinegar and a paper towel, followed up with a shop towel....um...errrrr....usually  my shirt though.

next...repeat after me

flux is my friend.

the flux will clean the tape.  trust me if you miss a spot you will notice the solder refusing to stick to a spot.

too much flux though and it will loosen the tape, or ruin the piece because it can seep underneath the tape and get sucked between the layers of glass and destroy what you smooshed in between the layers, especially if you used something printed on an ink jet printer.  trust me, i have done this.

soldering jump rings.  this can try the patience of a saint. but, if i can do this i know you can. why do i know this?  because about 37 years ago i had surgery on my ear to make a new ear drum.  i woke up in the middle of the surgery, and i am guessing somewhere in the process it caused some damage and my hands shake. 

i also did all of this with the beast acting naughty as well. 

(the beast, if you are new here, is vertigo caused from positional vertigo and meniere's disease)

 i hold my jump ring with an old pair of needle nose pliers, and i say old pair because the next step will kinda  corrode them,  dip the jump ring in the flux. 

 

if you don't need to open the jump ring to attach the piece to your whatever...like chain, then solder the opening of the jump ring down. 

if you do need to leave the opening to the jump ring exposed to attach it to your chain, then solder the jump ring closed after the piece, or charm, is attached.  i have received many compliments from buyers and gift recipients for taking the time to do this. 

soldering dots....i can not tell you how many times i have soldered dots and boink...they pop off and roll off my soldering table.  

flux is my leetle friend.

i flux the spot that i want to place the dot on before do this.  all i can say is that over time they have stuck more and more.  i have not lost a dot today, and only 1 the other day when working on the easter ornaments. 

i still want them to look more.....dot-ier.  but, i have come to accept that maybe this is just gonna be my 'style'.

i love all things old, loved, worn and used and that is why i love the novacan black patina.

before you patina you must clean off the flux, i use vinegar on a paper towel

to get the shiny silvery look on the tops of the dots i go back over the dots after the patina has been applied, i use my leetle friend...flux and dab the top of the dot and then touch ever so lightly with the soldering iron for a fresh shiny tidbit of solder.  

i always wear these when soldering, and like i have said in the past i pretty much don't even cut a piece of paper in my studio without these one.  getting a chunk of metal i was cutting in my eye just one time is all it took for me.

after i have given some patina to my piece, i then give it a coat of this

the plan is tomorrow to start assembling the sacred bone and the medicine man necklaces. 

i ran in to a issue with some of the beads not having the size holes i need which has forced me to rethink the hows of it all.

let's hope i will have pics of the necklaces well under construction to play show-n-tell with this time tomorrow.

hope you had a beautiful day!

nighty night. 

smooches.



i think i found my mojo

i have spent a couple of weeks cleaning and reorganizing my studio, getting rid of things that after years i have not used, but  will in a week or month or so i will find a use for....as always.

my studio still needs some work done, but i have enough room to work and this arty girl is starting to find her oh-so-lost mojo again.

since easter is around the corner i figured what better project to start off with than one that has a bunny.

about a year ago while wandering the bead section of a local artsy fartsy store i came across the beads for this project and knew exactly what i was going to do with them.  one set of beads have flowers printed on them...the other remind me of heads of lettuce or cabbage.


 i needed this guy (and his twin) for the necklaces....... because this is one of those make one to sell and one for meeeee kind of pieces.    these bunnies have been part of our easter decorations for about 20 years. 

even though the bunnies are 20 years old, they did not look old enough so i aged them with a bit of sanding and......

how about that chippy neon pink polish i am sporting....huh?   every time i would look down at my nails it would about blind me!

i using a sponge brush i rubbed a bit of this over the bunnies....

the top bunny has been aged with the distress ink, and the bottom one....not yet. 

later today i will spray a bit of clear coat on it to seal the distress ink. 


the next few steps were very tedious.....i cut 60+ 4" pieces of 18 gauge steel wire.

there are 2 very important tools, besides the clippers, for this job.....

i love my nitrile gloves.  they help keep my hands clean....er, and keep me from getting poked by the wire.  after a messy job like this i give them a good washing with some dish soap and ring them out. 

my safety glasses with built in bi-focals.   this arty girl will be 47 this april, and even though i feel like i could be my 21 year old daughters twin sister, my eyes and their abililty to focus on objects within arms length would beg to differ.  


i use to wear my safety glasses all willy nilly until a few years ago when cutting the tip off of a large sewing needle, about the size of 18 gauge wire,  the chunk hit me dead center in my eyeball.  yipes!  i kept looking at my eyeball all evening expecting to find the chunk imbedded in my eyeball...several hours later i found the quarter inch piece in the lower part of my eye lid.  it took over an hour to get it out of my eye....believe it or not, it is much easier to get an eyelash out of the ole eyeball than a chunk of a needle. 


i now wear my safety glasses 99 % of the time and usually won't even cut a piece of paper without them on.

so after cutting these 60 pieces, which takes some muscle let me tell ya, i then began sanding off the annealing.

i have found that the easiest method for this is to sandwich the wire between 2 sanding blocks.

 i use the super cheapies from harbor freight.

below you can see the difference.  i love the aged look the annealing gives, but it rubs off and it is icky, so if i want to age and darken the steel i rub a bit of novacan black patina on it...which i do not have a picture of.  you can buy it at shops that sell stain glass and soldering schtuff. 

thank goodness i have a tiny t.v. from the dark ages in my studio.  it gave me something to watch while i undertook this boring task.  i am too antsy to sit for too very long doing something like this.  even while engrossed in a movie i had seen a dozen times before.....eagle eye....i still had to get up and fidget in my studio every 15 or 20 pieces. 

by the time i was done with this my shoulders and hands were in cramps, so i decided it was a good time to join the peeps upstairs for the evening....and if i began to feel a bit guilty,  all i had to do was remind myself that my nitrile glubs were-a-drying and i had to wait for them to dry for the next task anyway.


the next task will be to apply a coating of this stuff.....

this will seal the steel and help prevent rusting in case it comes in contact with water.   i have not had much experience with this stuff, just under a year of working with it, but many artists that work with steel use it and swear by it.  

i am hoping by later today i will have completed this step and be well on my way wire wrapping the beads and assembling this piece.

you will have to excuse the blurry-ness of this photo, but it is a bit of a peek of what is to come. 


i am still not sure of  how the bunny will connect to the necklace.



and i am ending this post with a pat on my back, because the beast (meniere's disease vertigo) has been kicking my butt big and bad...i spent two days in bed because i was unable to walk....i was able to do all of this while my world was still spinning and tilting.   i am able to walk at this point, but i kinda look like a drunk trying to walk on a waterbed, and my hands sometimes forget they are attached to my body and i drop things.....alot....which makes the whole entire process of creating slow going  at times.   my fear of becoming an invalid from this disease has given me the strength and determination to push myself beyond what i thought i could do.  i am pretty darn proud of myself.

with that said, and my back patted, i hope to be able to post later this evening with photos of what i have completed.

xo