It’s funny how life and work takes you on a journey and you don’t know why or where you’ll end up. Over a year ago I started a new job. It was a good job and I appreciated it, but I had a long commute and work required long hours including many evenings and most weekends. I left that job in March 2013. I am revisiting many important things I had steered too far from for too long. My most recent journey has taken me back to the studio after being absent for over a year. Unfortunately, I mean completely absent. I always intend to find the balance between my “real job” and studio time. But jewelry making always takes a back seat to work. Meanwhile, I am still attempting to find the balance. I have a different perspective on how I might find it this time. If I figure it out, I’ll post that, too!

I spent last week cleaning out cobwebs in the studio. I went through drawers searching for sheets of sterling silver, inventoried my beads and looked at every cabochon. I pulled out draft sketches of jewelry designs I have yet to make. I picked through leather and twine. I pulled out batik fabric to see what was ready for use. I cleaned and organized. Now I am inspired and ready to create!

My latest work has focused on the process of “cold connections”. This process allows you to connect metals without the use of heat and solder to fuse the two metals together. Instead, I can make rivets or tubes and use screws or wire to connect the metals together. This technique has opened up my design options for combining my “freestones”  with metals (see Fly Fishing and Jewelry – A Perfect Partnership blog). Did I mention I haven’t been fly fishing in over a year either?

Below are a few examples of my original designs using cold connections:

With any new technique, what usually happens to me (and probably all artists at some point) is I find I need to learn something else to take the design to another level. So I registered for a class a William Holland School of Lapidary Arts in early September on “fold forming” metals (stretching, folding and compressing the metal). My hope is that this will allow me to create designs that are only sketched on paper right now!

I’ll keep you posted…