They Call Me Mellow Niello - Wildacres, 2019

Another summer is almost over and I'm happy to say that I was able to take Gia's class at Wildacres in June.  The Florida Society of Goldsmiths puts this on every year and they do an AMAZING job!  This time I learned a technique called "Niello."  Niello is a black metallic alloy used as a surface decoration and is fused to a metal base.  We made designs in sterling silver using engraving tools (and sometimes burrs), making designs in the silver. Once finished we filled the spaces with the Niello substance and fired.  Once cool, we then sanded until the designs surfaced. 

Such a great class!  That's Fred the Deadhead in Cyndi's hand.  She snuck him into Meike's bed when Meike was off doing something else in hopes of freaking her out when she walked back into her room.  

Personally, I would have screamed...loudly...if I came upon THIS in my room, but Meike is on to Cyndi's shenanigans.  LOL!

Always a joy to come back to this beautiful view again. 

Below you see us outside watching Gia make the Niello.  He's firing silver, copper, lead and ground sulfur.  Some of us came prepared for this with our heavy-duty respirator masks.  If you are downwind from the smell of these chemicals while they're being fired, it's not going to be a good thing.  The lead and sulfur are highly toxic.

Me & Meike

Here is the beginning of a piece.  This was the first time I'd ever used engraving tools for ANYTHING, so my work is messy.  But by the end of the week, I had a better feel for this process.

When the piece was finished with the design work, I added the black, powdered Niello and fired.  This is how it looks once fired.  Then I went to the sanding machine and took off most of the Niello there, and finished with a regular file.

Here's how it looked when almost finished.  Just a little more sanding and polishing to do.

This is Gia's finished pendant along with the bracelet he made in class.

I was the lucky purchaser of this bracelet at the auction!  Sooooo happy to have this.  It's gorgeous.

Fred liked to be with us every day in our studio. 

This is a sterling silver pendant that I had etched at home and brought with me to Wildacres. I filled it with Neillo, fired, then sanded and polished.  It came out pretty good.  I was surprised how much detail there was.  Another person in the class brought some Metal Clay pieces she had made and they also came out great filled with Niello.

Another beautiful sky, another wonderful week in North Carolina.  

There is a sign entering Wildacres that says, "You are now leaving the real world."  At the end of the week as you begin to drive home, the sign says, "You are now entering the real world."  I can't tell you how true those words are, but everyone who goes to Wildacres for a week knows what I'm talking about.

Etching with Carol Webb

In the beginning of November, Carol Webb arrived in Atlanta to give us an excellent, information packed three-day workshop on etching.  Here are a couple of Carol's finished pieces (copper and silver laminate) in case you aren't familiar with her work:

We started off by transferring our black and white designs onto blue PnP paper, which we then transferred onto copper (with heat from a warming tray).  Our first assignment was to completely etch through the metal.   

Here's Carol doing a little annealing:

We then layed our plates face down in a batch of etching solution and checked them every ten minutes or so until the design had etched all the way through.  You can see in the photo below where the etchant is cutting right through the metal.  

Here are examples of student experiments showing how the black sections of the design will stay copper while the white will be removed.  I can't tell you how many times we mixed this up.

We also did some heavy duty etching in this spray etcher.  It was amazing how deep the etchings were in a fraction of the time.  This technique is perfect for using etched brass plates to transfer onto sterling silver through a rolling mill.

The major reason I took this class was to learn how to make and etch copper and silver laminate (bi-metal).  To accomplish this, we started with sterling or fine silver sheet (20 to 12 ga), along with a sheet of copper (26 to 24 ga) and heated it until a eutectic bond was formed, which can take some time.  Often it takes more than one attempt with the torch.  We then rolled the bi-metal down to the gauge we needed for our project.  At this point, we simply followed the previous exercises in etching to get the results desired.  Carol also showed us how to use different patinas to cause a striking contrast between the silver and the copper (see first picture above).


We somehow managed to do all of this in three days!  It was an amazing amount of information to to cover in such a short time, but Carol was organized and kept us all on task throughout the entire class.   She gave excellent instructions and handouts to help us along, plus provided us with pages and pages of designs to use in our projects.  I learned so much my head was spinning...and that's the way I like it.  

Golden Gaze

Harold O'Connor (www.haroldoconnor.com) came to town last week to teach three worshops, and I was fortunate enough to be in two of them: Surface Embellishments and Unconventional Stone setting.


We learned about reticulating sterling silver, forming and folding metal, laminating copper to silver, laminating gold to silver, plus a demonstration on granulation.

In the stone setting workshop we watched Harold make sterling silver cable, a silver cone shaped piece that was then attached to a small stone by pegs and wire, how to use a tap and die set, and how to make a slide mount (among other things).

Here's Charlene working on reticulation:

And this is Amy, obviously enjoying herself:

Harold brought a few of his works to show us. Here are a couple of my favorites:

It was an excellent workshop. I learned so many new skills that my head is still spinning! I especially enjoyed learning how he reticulates silver and how to fuse gold to silver.

Here is the piece I finished a couple of days ago, inspired by Harold's workshop:

It is made of sterling silver, reticulated silver, granulation, and 22k gold fused to silver. It was then oxidized with liver of sulphur, which gave it all those wonderful colors.

She's making a list, checking it twice...

With the holidays upon us here, I'm spending more time decorating the house, cooking holiday meals and doing online shopping than working on my jewelry projects. But I wanted to post the results of the recent design challenge I'd mentioned in an earlier post.

Doing a design challenge is a great way to force yourself to just play with different textures and sizes until you create something you like. You'll be surprised how this exercise gets your creative juices flowing! All you need to do is make 3 different textures in your metal and then cut out a number of pieces, same shape but different sizes. Then you play! What I had originally planned changed and changed again the more I messed around with my pieces. Here is a photo of the necklace before I put a patina on the metal:


The bracelet changed dramatically from my original intentions. Here it's easy to see I've taken the same shape and cut it out in different sizes and textures. I soldered and formed a cuff bracelet and then added a little gold for highlights, finishing with a patina and final buffing:

Now it's back to making holiday lists and checking them twice!

: )

Silver Threads & Gold

Yes, it's time to get back to a little metalsmithing! It's drizzly outside and I'm happy to be warm and dry inside my studio, experimenting with some new ideas. I'm taking two classes this quarter with two different teachers, so am learning so many new things. For example, did you know that when the stick you use to pick-solder gets all icky and gooey, you just put the torch to it and then quench it in water a couple of times? Cleans it almost back to new. I used to think I had to replace them when they got bad. 

A couple of weeks ago, we had a great demo on how to attach a domed, circular bottom to a domed top piece with silver, balled wire (instead of soldering). The item we chose to put in the middle was completely up to us, and half the fun. I searched my stash and found this three-piece domed, gold and silver bi-metal creation I had made recently, but hadn't yet figured out what to use it for. The middle of this new pendant seemed the perfect fit. This was seriously fun to make and I'm already thinking about doing another one, domed on each side, but both with an opening, and hanging a pearl or some other pretty bead in the middle.

It's such a pleasure being back in Julia's class again with all my jewelry-making friends. Julia got me started working on these two sterling silver forged bracelets. They began as 6 gauge square wire (6.25" long), then were formed into a circle, soldered, and forged into these shapes. I'm going to make one more because I think they look good as a set of three. The reticulated bracelet that was mentioned previously is still unfinished - just giving myself a little break with that one. (I WILL finish it, I WILL...)


What is this mess of metal, you ask?

A design challenge (per Kristin's instructions)...and a perfect way to get your creative juices flowing. What we have here is one basic shape and three different textures in metal. We cut out about 15 to 20 different size pieces in sterling silver (you could use copper, as well). The challenge is to make something out of it the pieces. Here's one of my ideas in progress, but I'll show you what actually materializes when I figure it out myself. (These pieces are just laying on top of each other -- nothing here is soldered down yet.)

More to come...

Blues, Greens and In Betweens

After receiving about a quart of Liver of Sulphur from Rio Grande, I've gone a little crazy with it. I'm throwing pieces of jewelry into the pot that I had never considered putting a patina on. It's always a surprise to see the results after a dip or two in the heated Liver of Sulphur, followed by a little steel wool scrub. This new pendant was made from one of the Australian Opals I bought in class a couple of weeks ago. The slightly antique look of the silver really brings out the blue of the stone, another unexpected effect.



Below is an example of my attempt to use some of those new skills I learned in the gemstone-setting workshop that took place a few months ago. : ) Practice, practice, practice.



This is Rebecca, the senior student I've been "mentoring" and teaching metalsmithing skills to. She made a lovely Egyptian spiral bracelet and just finished the pendant hanging from her neck. The picture is wacky because the camera was accidentally set on "Manual" by mistake. Whoops!



Here we have a couple photos from our trip to the Georgia Aquarium last week. Ken and Sharon, friends from Michigan, were in town and we acted like tourists with them for a couple of days.





The beginnings of my next project...such pretty stones...what shall I do with them?

Ball of Confusion

This past weekend I took a class on Granulation. Getting those tiny, little spheres to fuse to the silver without melting is not an easy task. There's no random torching here! What you see below is an experiment. The spheres did adhere, but I somehow over-cooked the silver so it now has a mottled appearance. I need to find out what I'm doing wrong here because it happened on both pieces. In November I'll be taking another workshop with the lovely Jean Stark, and will have to be proficient at this by then because I'll be using gold ($835 an ounce today). Overheating will not be an option. But I've been told that if you can fuse silver, gold will be easy. I'm counting on this to be true. :) 

Somewhere in Atlanta with Diamonds

On Thursday afternoon I finished a three-day workshop with Robert Wooding where I learned how to set gemstones. Being the novices we all were, we used brass rings and cubic zirconias to do our experimenting with, and were expected to set approximately 3 to 4 rings every day. I learned far more than I expected to and am thrilled I took the course and can now, actually, set a stone! Amazing! Cabachons are cool and all, but sometimes its exciting to add something more...something dazzling.

Since returning home, I've been stuck with my head in the Stuller catalog, the Fire Mountain Gems catalog, and the Rio Grande Catalog, trying to find some lovely gemstones. Hmmmm...far too many choices!

Here's a good video on Youtube that demonstrates how to set a stone, for anyone interested:

http://www.technorati.com/videos/youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DpDiLpLgBOC4

I'd like to find a good source for gems in the near future. If anyone reading this has a suggestion, shoot me an email (Kathygrz@mac.com) or leave a message below. It would be very much appreciated! : )

Autumn

It's been a beautiful fall day here in Georgia. Sunny and slightly cool with a pleasant breeze blowing the first of the leaves off the trees. It's getting dark outside earlier now, as well, which I'm always ready for. It's a true toss up between fall and spring, but I think this just may be my favorite time of year. What a perfect day to try out Karina's Black Bean & Sweet Potato Enchiladas! I would have never imagined combining sweet potatoes with black beans, so it's a good thing we have people like Karina around whose creativity knows no bounds.




When I first saw this recipe posted on her blog, "Gluten Free Goddess," it looked a little complicated. But it isn't. Once you get all the ingredients together, it's actually very simple...and quite tasty! Next time I will make a bit more of the sauce, though, and add a touch more goat cheese to each enchilada. As Karina suggested, I served this alongside a green salad with some mandarin oranges, and threw some dried cranberries and nuts on the top. This is a great meal for my vegetarian daughter. Can't wait to try it out on her when she's in town. :)

Recently I've been working on a filigree pendant while taking a break from all the pounding on metal involved with Repousse. You truly need to take time off every now and then or your neck/shoulder muscles will begin to scream. Here's a sterling silver pendant with a blue Kyanite stone and a cultured freshwater pearl I just finished. Because it is so small (about the size of a quarter), I've decided to use a purchased chain (oh, such guilt!) instead of trying to make a chain that would be small enough to look right. I truly don't think anyone will mind! :)