Rose Rake Challenge

Here's some pics of my Rose Rake Challenge piece from the Chatty Metalsmiths thread on Etsy. It has a small cobaltian calcite druzy stone. Obviously it isn't set yet! Neither is the ring oxidized to bring out the forms. The 2 sides of the ring are competing forms, with the leaf-like side having holes and the rake side with straighter lines. The druzy sits in an odd shaped cup between the 2. I had thought to do the rake side with square wire, but it didn't turn out that way! Hope you at least get an idea of the piece. Druzy is impractical for rings, but I enjoyed playing with something different.


Here are some of the other responses to the Rose/Rake challenge.

Addendum: here's the finished ring as I posted to the challenge page earlier this week:

Flower Power

Here's the next finished Lucky Penny ring, Flower Power! lol. The date on it is 1968. Kate suggested 1969 as Woodstock's year, and suitable for a Flower Power ring, but I'd already picked out a 1968. The stone is a 3 mm blue topaz.


Which brings up a funny point. As I stated before, I started picking up change I'd find in my walks for lottery tickets. Then I started admiring the varying road textures of the coins, and began making jewelry with them. The end result is, a growing mound of unrecycled road change. The only coins I use for lottery tickets anymore are quarters and pennies younger than 1983. (the last year of good copper content in pennies.) If I come across a totally unscarred dime, sure I'll recycle it. But, I have lots of great looking dimes, nickels and pennies covering my table top.

Which means, of course, I need to start selling lots or get a life! Eh. Maybe I'll go get a beer instead....

Name It!

This is for entertainment purposes only... an important purpose and reasonably achievable. Well, I'm easily entertained anyway... I promise kudos to anyone that comes up with a name. How about smooches? Usually when I make something the name and the thingy go to the goal line together. Sometimes the name changes, but, whatever. This odd fellow is in the model state *unnamed.* Being a model, he isn't polished or antiqued yet. (No liver of sulfur yet which would bring out the forms.) Here the poor unnamed one is....




Here's a very nice response from itselemental. And thanks to everyone else that looked and made suggestions (in the forums)!
itselemental says:
His (Gollum) one desire was to possess the ring that had enslaved him. He pursued the ring for 76 years after having lost it to Bilbo Baggins.

During his centuries under the Ring's influence, he developed a sort of split personality: "Sméagol" still vaguely remembered things like friendship and love, while "Gollum" was a slave to the ring and would kill anyone who tried to take it. In The Two Towers, Samwise Gamgee named the good personality "Slinker" (for his fawning, eager-to-please demeanor), and the bad personality "Stinker" (for obvious reasons). The two personalities often quarreled when Gollum talked to himself (as Tolkien puts it in The Hobbit, "through never having anyone else to speak to") and had a love/hate relationship, mirroring Gollum's feelings for the Ring and for himself.
(from Wikipedia)

"Gollum's Obsession"
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Well. I'm thinking that's very flattering... but maybe too grand. hmmmmm.....

Sleep Patterns

I don't really know how to meditate. For over a year and a half I somewhat endured commuting from Providence to Boston with the help of meditation CDs. I'd catch the 6 a.m. train, clamp the earphones on, and hallucinate. Or, that's how I like to tell it, anyway. The patterns I saw were repetitive in form, but not exactly, and tended to have two colors predominately. The colors were wonderful... fushia, turquoise, and orangish... purples too. Usually the patterns would have one color and a darker color or tone. And they would evolve into each other.

During that time I went to a (for free) meditation session, and the fellow that was leading it told me that what I was doing was not meditation. And I'm like, how not fun can you be! I only went to a couple of those sessions, because I enjoyed whatever it was I was doing. I found it relaxing and mesmerizing. Even now I use it, particularly in the dentist chair, or when I can't sleep at night.

This ring I'm working on reminds me of those helpful patterns. Its not quite going the way I planned... but. I am having fun.

Tree Ring

Molding this Tree Ring might be a bit of a problem... Jewelry molds are 2 part molds. But. Will see. Thought I'd show off the poor baby as it heads into an uncertain future....