I'm Really Lucky.

Got some eye candy for ma ladies.

 Here's a little something. I gold foiled those big links, then rubbed them with some sandpaper to grunge it up and make the vague facet edges show up. It was a pain.

 When I got this choker base, it gave me the idea to join this unwieldy round piece and container thing.

 I used a big-assed rosey copper head pin on the focal and mounted two raku cabs on the sides.

A little foil, ox, seal and done.

 Here the thought was "let's use up some of these zillion pendants I have all over the place."

 I dunno. What do you think?

Oh, look at this pretty thing! Rough garnet and greek ceramic discs and a layered focal. 

 The shell is a white locket that I rubbed some gold highlights on.

 Oh look at this craziness! Raku cabs on salvaged tin with devil horns and a sweet bow made out of faux druzy. They were plastic cabs in a very plastic bracelet and I cut them apart with my wire clips.

 And you know what it's been forever since? It's been forever since I made any of my patented* mud-and-wax-paste sludge to grunge up a thing. Or in this case, to sort of bridge the gap between a thing and the thing that thing is glued to. Thing.
*No patent pending.

Here's a kinetic ring. "Kinetic" sounds better than "It flops around but I'm going with it." 

Pre-Columbian beads! No, not before the country of Columbia, but before Columbus got here. Duh.

 Here's some ancient metal. There's electro-formed slabs of layered stone with druzy tips. All patroness stuff. All of this!

 There's only one pair of earrings in this whole post for general consumption. But all this means I don't have to measure, I only take three pix of anything and never a size reference one. I don't have to worry about using expensive supplies in things no one's gonna buy. I don't have to describe it in a listing or come up with a clever title or quote. Or fucking tags! That's what having a patron means to me... God, I'm so sorry you guys, I didn't mean to be rubbing it in. But remember, before etsy I was a useless mess.  Like, lying in the gutter eating my own poop useless.
Aaaaaaanyways, these stones are REAL DIAMONDS. Very rough and raw, they dange under silver spoons with antique porcelain teefs found in a dentist's estate. Real but imperfect diamonds, fake but perfect teeth- fancifuldevices: for all your ironic symbolism needs.

As for my auntie time, within an hour of arriving in Wisconsin, I had a seven year old boy asking me, "Why do all girls have gainas with hairs?"
...

Which reminded me of a time with David when he threw a ball right into my crotch. He started laughing and said, "I hit your penis!" When I explained that girls didn't have penises and he said, "Oops, I forgot."
So last time there was a day he came over and was playing for quite a while without removing his outer wear. So jokingly I started going, "Take off your coat! Take off your scarf! Take off your hat! Take off your shoes! Don't take off your pants!"
"Haha! Cuz then you could see my underwear!"
"Yeah."
"Or even my penis."
"Um."
"I couldn't see your penis though."
"Ummm."
"Cuz girls don't have penises, hu?"
"That's right."
(Thoughtful pause.)
"I'm really lucky though."
"What? Why?"
"Cuz I get to have my penis!"

gggghhhhhhll

These are long bronze tubes from Africa. I could have picked two of the same, but I like to add interest with variations. The druzy drops for example are almost having a conversation.


Here's a new faux mercury glass pendant, yay. The frame and glass were from Uruguay, as well as the picture of the little girl, though they didn't come together.

The rest of the necklace were long links taken from a kuchi belt. Am I just going too fast to be of any use to anyone? What do I mean by that? Da pims that's what. Sucks out my will to live. Tomorrow Imna go play aunt and I think I'll need an energy drink. I was just looking at my list of posts for the past two months and I seem to have blogged almost exactly every other day for the last several weeks. Mind-blogging.

For the Patroness

I toned down the jarringly primary color of the glass cabs by dabbing them with a champaign colored metallic stamping ink pad. Then spray sealant, cuz it didn't wanna stay. I love champaign, it's like the exact point between gold and silver. I gave the kuchi a verdigris patina by using oxidizer mixed with water and letting it air dry. After I waxed it for protection, the verdigris rubbed off. No prob. I ran it under the sink and again let it air dry. Added Roman glass and book chain, and I even used the foldover clasp as part of the hook closure.

Shiny silver kuchi hoops got oxidized without, leafed within. I punched a bunch of holes and hung iridescent crystals which I wrapped using a 10x easier system of wire wrapping that I devised my own self. Gives them a bit of swing.

 This big square druzy pendant was too damn square. I had to sort of cut and bend down the back to punch holes in the bottom because after dremeling it for an hour I'd made no headway. But I hammered it back and oxidized and it's barely any worse for wear. I mounted an old photo brooch on a cross metal bit using a little slab of plumber's putty to add height and dimension. Then I dangled this African bit at the bottom. I also filled that bit with putty cuz one good sit-uponing and that thing would squash like a fly.

Now I feel like it's nice and strong and will last tossed in a careless lady's purse. It happens.

Finally, she purchased this pendant just because she couldn't see it go unsold for as long as it had. Pity purchase? I'll take it! She asked me to necklace-ify it. Didn't realize how difficult that simple request could be. Especially for things I'd only envisioned being tossed on a chain.
Anywho, I used her own materials to come up with this. The biwas use the same wire link as the crystals above, effectively chaining them from center-drilled to drops. For some reason I can't abide center-drilled biwas. They just never work for anything! Ever! And as I said, this connection is super cheaty easy. Yeah that's right, I said "I can't abide" like some Jane Austen novel. I'm fancy.

Less is More and More is Also More

Before:

After:

And yes, Sparrow, David is crazy brilliant, even more so because he was a premie, and they can end up a bit slow. It's even cuter because he's tiny for his age and talks that way. 

Before:

After:

Mom told us how on the plane home, the pilot reported the temperature in Cali was 66 degrees Fahrenheit. 

"That's like you, Abuela!"

"Whuuuu??"

"You're 66 too!"

Then I made these next two pairs from SacredCake goodies. This was a buckle:

And some gumball charms, with acorns from potterygirl1:
He also expressed concern because everything evolves and he's not sure what he's going to evolve into. He hopes it's a dog.

Nephew David

My nephew who just turned 5, as he kept informing everyone- "I'm a whole five years old!"- visited from Cali so Mom and I took him to the Science and Industry Museum.OK, I hadn't been there since I was a school kid and it was amazing, but that's not what this story is about. This story is about our tour of their coal mine.

David was very eager to go and when the guide told us we were 600 pretend feet underground we heard some "whoas" and "awesomes". 

Later he was showing how the flame lantern miners used to check and see if there's methane down there basically turned them into walking bombs. But the flame things only cost $30 while the methane meters, invented in '62, cost $600--- "Which is how deep we are underground!" David exclaimed. That took us all a minute to process. 

 The point being the modern machinery is often prohibitively expensive. "Like this building-sized drill modern mines use, can anyone guess how much this costs?" Our wonderful, patient tour guide asked. 

David goes, "Three... hundred... forty five.... million dollars!!!" He loves coming up with big numbers. "Did you just say three hundred forty five million dollars?" asks a very perplexed guide.          "Yeah!"                                                        "Um, yeah, that... that's just about exactly what it costs..." 

Gathering his thoughts he explained to us it had a section called a roof shield.                                                           "Knights used shields too actually," David informed him.      "Yeah," the guide rolled with it, "and do you know what they used them for?"                                                                  "Well, if an asteroid came down they could bounce them off the shield!"

By now I'm bent over double trying to stifle the lafinks and Superguide comes up with, "... yeah... and this one's also to protect from falling rocks."

As we were leaving the tour, which was proclaimed "awesome," by the boy of the hour, the lady from the other family that was with us tells my mom, "That boy's going to invent something someday."

David turns around and looks at her. "I'm gonna be a ninja."

^Someone asked about the wires. They're just 20 gauge brass. I was surprised to find I liked the 20 more than 22- it's sturdier in the ear hole, without being uncomfortable like 18 gauge.)

For some reason all visit long, he was explaining to us that "infinity is not a number, it's a concept." The final night something occurred to me. 

"David, what's a concept?" I asked.

He threw his tiny arms up, "I don't know!"  

And in case you think I only poop rainbows, here's a piece of crap I threw together out of really good bits that didn't work at all-->>

Goddamnit.

Til the Break o' Dawn.

It's like the party don't stop around here.
I made these for my patron from all her stuff. These metal bits are super ancient and when I tried to get wire through them, they'd filled in with deposits and when I pressed on, they started to crumble under my fingers. So putty and epoxy adhesive to the rescue!The smaller dangle had one drop almost gone so I added a long biwa to balance it out. Also, two thick coats of wax to keep the metal from continuing to disintegrate. That changed the patina from bright verdigris to a wider variety of colors including on the right the most intense royal blue like I've never seen occur naturally.
So I was looking through LushRocks to see what the gems were that I used above and can we just look at these druzies for a minute:
Tell me those don't look exactly like what you're right now thinking they look exactly like. People? Is it me? Get some Preparation H for those pinksters. Amiright?
...I know, can't unsee...
Patronus had this micromosaic she asked me to do something with so I balanced it with some more rustic bits- the final three "green hearts"(thanks commenters, I knew it was something like that), some Elaine Ray ceramics and a gaggle of Indonesian babies from yukidesigns.Some more of those same Indonesians top these very asymmetrical earrings. My big contribution was to think of using these two pendants as earrings. They weren't working in necklaces, and how easy is this?
Wacky math intermission:
 

matthen:

The smooth motion of rotating circles can be used to build up any repeating curve even one as angular as a digital square wave. Each circle spins at a multiple of a fundamental frequency, and a method called Fourier analysisshows how to pick the radiuses of the circles to make the picture work.Decomposing signals like this lies at the heart of a lot of signal processing. [more] [code]

I didn't understand that babble under it either but felt compelled to include it. Here's what I made from ALL MY OWN SUPPLIES:

Then I realized that as much as I like it the focal is so huge that the necklace isn't enough or something... Same for the one below.

But you know what face cab is mounted on? A bottom of one of the little tins from my German haul from ages ago! So these things eventually work their way in. Ida never thunk I'd use the back, but there you go.(... I had an English  student once who worked in a deli and thought the other counter gals were being rude when they said "Here you go" because she thought they were telling the customers to go.) 

Well, I'll work on these some more. Maybe some of those old cords I used to make like so:

Man I need to get back to some of these jingle-janglies. It's like I forgot how to make them or something.