My Town... is a Town of Fine Metal

Here's a wax of my latest ring...

Its a wax I carved... I'll get it casted into silver this week. (For the model... which is then used for a mold and more castings.) I've been trying to make a house ring for a while. This is the sort of conundrum I run into when someone asks about how much time does something take. Its like... how much time it takes to finish something? How much time does it take for something to succeed? or how much time does it take to become a famous wealthy (I'd skip fame for wealth any day) jewelry designer? I like the house shape. It started in some drawings I did a couple of years ago. Last year I made these earrings....

(Which. I'd switch out the earwires were I to list them again.) A couple of months ago I carved one "house ring" which bombed. I never casted it into silver because... well... I liked the idea but it wasn't there. The "house" needed more company for a ring. I'm pretty satisfied with its latest incarnation.... more of a "Town Ring." After a couple of years of thought... earrings... one bombed wax drawings and numerous sketches... I still don't think is all that is because there was something in the first "house ring" that interests me so we'll see. But then... I'm the sort that does not edit out fragmented sentences... the thought... the process.... is always going on....

Self Portrait Thursday.... on Friday

Eh. I'm always a day late and a dollar short. This is a who's sillier looking contest I'm having with Beth. I think she'll win. I of course look totally dignified even with mallet poised. My dust mask is perfectly intact and as yet unsullied, my eyes full of... mmm... detail enhancing lenses, my bench... empty but.... ah... inspiration heavy! You can note the grace in the dangling rubber thingie, Brahms is playing on the dorky headphones (maybe sometimes... like in my dreams), and the perfect I-am-so-in-control glance I spare the camera (from my diligent poising.)

Ah Beth. I'll cede the silly contest to you. *hehehehehehe...*

Rings and Things...

This is an update on some stuff. The two rings are the "Sleep Patterns" ring and the "Cluster Pod" ring. (I went with GirlSavage's name of it.) (I highly recommend visiting Girl's blog... she's got some incredibly cute ferret pictures posted.) The Cluster Pod I'm just going to size on a request basis. Its too much of a mess to clean up after casting to try and sell much of! And I'm still sleeping on the other...

Trash and What You End Up Doing

This mask, of sorts... is probably not finished. I used to make masks... of sorts... and hang them on the wall for respite and reflection and perspective then rework. Now, why I am making a paper mache mask at this moment I only realized the other day. It started with pulling out some stuff I hadn't even looked at in a while and thinking hmmmm. And fixing up an old piece for hanging... drawing a troll... and then came the mask. It took 4 or 5 days of such messing around before I realized... its 'cause I have another jewelry model making job (working for someone else, part time.) This is exactly what I did last time I worked as a jewelry model maker. I did other stuff. I'd come home and just could not sit at the bench. Well. The "vacation" is over tomorrow!

Along the sides of the mask you see those small plastic things? A few years ago I used to go landscape painting in a cemetery nearby. I'm not a very good painter... but landscape painting is a way of going for a walk and looking around really really well. Its nice and fun. This cemetery is beside a river and there is where I collected a bunch of those little bitty plastic things. Some plant up river was dumping, or had dumped, all this trash in the river. In a way the small bits of color looked pretty among the shore line's residue... If you didn't think about the environment, that is. I figured some day I'd find a use for them.

UPDATE! what can I say. The saga goes on... though I'm promising myself no more messing around for a while!

The Good, the Bad, the Hopelessly Brewed.....

I don't watch the New England Patriots games at home.... I have no T.V. and no interest in figuring out on-line possibilities. I watch the games in a bar. To me, the noise of football games and bars do well together. Tonight I was down to my 3rd choice of venue... the Olympics striking out the first (and best) place... the 2nd was closed (?), and the third was a reintroduction to the way bars usually are. One screen showed the struggling Pats (!), and I sat there next to an older guy that had a voice in search of a dysfunctional hearing aide. By the end of the night, need I say, he'd bought me a beer and I gave him my opinion of Cassell (second string QB.)

The first part of the night I tried plugging up my targeted ear as I watched the Bradyless New England Pats.... why should Brady(QB) not being there affect the defense? But then things got down to why I like(d) to watch pre-season football games. Football seems to be a mix of personnel, management, and coaching. Preseason brings out the personnel part of it. You get to see the subs. And usually I have rookies I'm rooting for... though the ones I'm rooting for this year seem to have already made it. Particularly Mayo and Crable. But watching the Bradyless Pats was a beer inducing phenomenon.

Or I used to speak up for preseason games in that way. Now? Right now... nope. I don't want to go to that bar again. Football players aren't getting a game check for the preseason games... though they risk injury in those games. And rumor has it Brady will not play in the preseason. Whether this is due to Brady... or coach Belichick copping an attitude who knows. The owner Kraft is supposedly lobbying for a restructuring of the preseason. So. My guess is Brady's sore foot is Belichick's kicking ass. Or maybe he's saving Brady's shoulder for the season. Or maybe Brady will have a sore foot all season long. LOL! Well. As long as they start kicking some ass!

*you know I bet that's it. Brady will have a sore foot all season long. Belichick got tired of reporting Brady's sore shoulder and wants to expand the possibilities. Or maybe he got a kick out of how reported Brady's ankle was before the Super Bowl. I want to buy the book some day. But those 2 guys? they'll never write it.

Go Pats!

Peace is a Happy Troll

*text will be added when I get around to it. Or not.*

New Pretties

Here's some pretties I made for a client. I wanted to show them off and haven't gotten a flickr account... yet! I just... how many passwords and accounts does one life need? Someday that's how the obituaries will read: Ms Shoeworthy died, known on MySpace as Vapor Shine, Facebook as Ephemeral Lady, on Flickr as 2 D Dame, on the Bloggoshpere as Emma Posting, on Etsy as Hope Listing, and with the Boston Herald Sports Comments Section as Ima Still Mad. The government knew her as Ms Taxable, the banks as Hiya Risk and the assorted job attempts as Better-Luck-Next-Time, LOL! The three active e-mail services knew her as CyberSal, AnnieInternet, and T, respectively. Cause of death was identity overload. Unfortunately there will be no burial... a body was never found.


I'm not real happy with the photos... of course. But they were fun! It is the chinese woman symbol. I carved it out of wax, its been molded and this is a 14k yellow gold casting. The pendant is teeeeeeenie! But cute. Cute can be teenie too.