Alone Star Jewelry,  Just Talking

Catching Up!

I’m getting ready for my next class, coming up just before Halloween. For quite a while now, jewelry artists in the metal clay classes have been adding many new clay skills. Along with me, they must from time to time feel the longing for the satisfaction of sawing, filing, soldering and hammering (SFSH!). As soon as I made a pair of earrings as a model for the upcoming class, ideas for other projects bubbled up. I made three more pair of earrings, two little drop pendants, and completed a drawing for a dendritic opal that would be pretty dusty if I didn’t lovingly take care of it in all the time I’ve had it….Other metalsmithing project ideas emerged along the way. I liked the above pictured tourmaline earrings enough that I’m making a slightly revised pair of those with a set of gorgeous garnet navettes I purchased at Two Loose Beads in Houston, my favorite weekend haunt and teaching facility, no pun intended.

Putting together a ditto of the class earrings, made for a friend:

To finish, cut azures, file, solder on bezels and earwires, drill holes for jumps, drill and set rivets, polish all, assemble…………done!

I will learn to granulate for one of my projects! What’s something new you have recently learned to do in metalsmithing? Let me know! :)))))))

Here are some of the other sprouts from the process, captions included with a click:

Visit Two Loose Beads in Houston (formerly Beadoholique), where you can shop jewelry by Alone Star Jewelry. We have seats left in the metalsmithing class for Saturday, October 28 (Intermediate level). Beginning Metalsmithing will be in December. Phone: 281-256-0904 / 832-674-9005 17311 FM 529, Houston 77095