I'm baaaaack ;)

Well, I haven't visited here for a while. And it's all fault of that adorable little creature:

The culprit!

This is Luna, and she's a weimaraner puppy, 5 months and 2 weeks old. And doing anything with her around was rather difficult until recently. Obviously, I can't take her with me when I work, and she wasn't very good about staying on her own. Fortunately, however, she finally seems to realise that spending some time by herself isn't the end of the world, and that she shouldn't try to eat camera tripod when I'm taking pictures, so I'm back to jewellery making. Unfortunately, I totally missed the Christmas-shopping period almost completely :( Oh, well... By the way, that's how she looked when we first got her:

Give me a moment to squee at my own dog ;P

Ok, now for the jewellery stuff...
I got a bunch of lovely stones, finally decided to get some silver sheet, and also got some pewter to practice casting a bit.
The first two things I made with my new cabochons are mixed metal pendants with bronzite. Until very recently I didn't even know bronzite existed, and now it's became one of my favourite stones. It's awfully pretty!

Running wolf mixed metal pendant

Background is made from copper, trees are bronze, and the wolf is sterling silver. The stone (isn't it lovely?) is prong set into a copper "bracket"- the metal part doesn't extend on the back of it - mostly because I wasn't sure I would manage to solder all those little prongs next to one another and wanted to save myself the time and trouble.

This is how it looks like on the back. Generally speaking, I'm pretty happy with it, only I wasn't able to file one of the wolf's paws as much as I would like: it's tiny, and the file couldn't reach everywhere it should've.
And the second pendant:

Fox and tree pendant

The metals sequence is the same here: copper on the back, then bronze, and then silver. After soldering the fox, I decided that its snout is still too wide, but there's nothing I can do about it now. Anyway, the fox was a pain to saw, file, and finish, because it's teeny-tiny: only 1.3cm long, and 0.5cm tall. Terrible.

Back looks the same as with the previous one. I was worried I wouldn't like the look, but it's actually not bad.
Both pendants come with 51cm/20in sterling silver chain.
I have three more bronzite cabochons, three rainbow moonstones, two labradorites (finally got my hands on some!), and a string of lovely peacock pearls. I'm really excited about working with those!

Apart from these pendants, I also made bat earrings, combined with an ear cuff:

Bat earrings

 By  the way, I'm actually really pleased with that picture! There's a surprise.
They're rather delicate, the bats being 1.3cm wide and 1cm tall. The earrings are 4cm long (without counting ear wires).

And that's how the one with the ear cuff looks like when worn. Not the best picture, but enough to get you idea. I really like them, and probably will make a pair for myself :D

And finally, there are also two new cuffs ( I really like making those!)
One's with an Eurasian Lynx:

And the other with a reindeer:

And that one really surprised me, because it sold not even a full day after I uploaded it to my shop! I could definitely do with more of surprises of this kind!

I hope I'll be back soon with more new stuff: I have several designs ready, now I only need to make them into reality :)

Have a great day!
Kasia

Delft clay casting pt.2: dealing with gas porosity, ring band moulds, and something akin to progress.

I spent another week learning how to cast metal. And today got pretty close to obtaining satisfying results. I'm not quite there yet, but I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak.
Last week I've ordered 20g of pure silver casting grain, to make more of my 30%silver 70%copper shibuichi alloy. I made about 5g (as I already had 10g of alloy, and I didn't want to melt all of it at once) more, and tried to cast something presentable.

It was a right amount for the wolf model, but I was still getting loads of porosity. Yes, I learned that those bubbles I was getting in the casts are result of gas porosity: apparently, gas can dissolve in molten metal. That was news for me. And using flux is supposed to eliminate it. However, I was using flux, and still getting the bubbles in my pieces.

So I went back to browsing the web, and at some forum (I really don't know where, sorry) read that if there is even a little bit of solder on the metal you melt, it will behave terribly in castings.

That got me thinking. I melted art clay pieces that I just gave up on. I did my best to clean them, but it was possible that some solder made it into the alloy. So I made another 15g from scratch, using only the casting grain and well-cleaned copper. And that actually helped a bit.
See here:

It's so tantalizingly close to good cast, I don't even know if I'm happy or frustrated.

 Sorry about the picture. But you can see that there are almost no pores here: apart from that huge one between the ears, and one on the paw, and, I think, some tiny ones on the snout.
I wouldn't mind the one on the leg that much, actually, but that one smack right between the ears just won't do. Next time I'm casting this piece, I'm going to add a bit more flux and see if that helps. There are more bubbles on the back, but that can be dealt with. But on the front I have very limited options for clean up available. Still, it's progress.

I also have to work on my ring band moulds, as I can't seem to find a good way of making them, and the metal solidifies in the funnel, without filling the mould itself. I, again, searched the net for pictures of how others make their moulds, and found one approach I didn't tried yet. I hope this one will work for me.

Apart from casting, that takes up huge chunks of my time, I also decided to make another cuff, and made project for another one. I could really use guillotine cutter, or good metal shears, because, even though I'm getting comfortable with using my saw, and getting to even like it (and that's a huge surprise for me, let me tell you), I absolutely abhor cutting through such thick sheet. I mean, it takes up to 15min to cut out 15cm x 2.5cm blank for the cuff! And after passing some length mark ( somewhere between 5 and 10cm ), my saw frame gets in the way, and bangs against the sheet, and keeping it going in straight line is tricky.
Anyway, here's how the cuff looks right now:

Unfinished cuff

It's close to finished, but I need to clean the etching up a little bit, and then of course oxidise it. I formed it, and then slapped myself in the forehead very hard, because I need to use gravers somehow on the etching! That means I need to flatten it again. I get overexcited sometimes, adding myself more work. But that's minor issue.

I also almost finished those lockets I've been working on for forever now. I have to clean them up, add all the finishing touches... and figure out what to do about a teeny-tiny slit that appeared in one joint on the raven locket. That's major reason as to why I haven't finished them yet.

So, that's it for now. I hope I'll have finished, nice castings next week!
Till the next time!
Kasia.