Adventures in Handmade Jewelry

There must be a torch! UPDATE - this baby is sold! Gone. Woo hoo! Spent a few hours at the bench today. For a while now I've been wanting to fire up my torch and see if I could still wield it with any skill at all. Before I went on hiatus I had just begun fine silver fusing and found I really liked it. But I was hesitant. I hate wasting wire and I hate disappointing myself. I finally got my butt in gear and here's the result! Amazonite & fine silver bracelet I'm sort of amazed at how well it turned out. Oh sure, I have a few goofed links, but not as many as I feared. With each dud I learned what I did wrong and fixed it though, so it wasn't a total waste. The ones I used are nearly all perfect. One or two have a bit thicker side to them, but not so awful that I pitched them. That's the beauty of handmade, right? It's the thing we're all going for. At least what I'm going for. Quality pieces, even fine pieces, but without that assembly lin...

You know that feeling when you know you've done something good? Maybe your best? It's really too bad that most of us, women especially, feel like we should be ashamed of feeling proud of ourselves or our work. Like it isn't "seemly" or "ladylike" or even just plain polite. But it is, darn it. It's a positive emotion. It feels good. Why shouldn't we let ourselves indulge in it when we deserve it? Men don't seem to have a problem with feeling like they're the best. Recently, I think it was on Lindy West, I saw a t-shirt that read something like "Please give me the confidence of a mediocre white man". And how. So I'm going to toot my own horn a bit.  There.  I love this piece. I love that I made it. I love the bright, 16 gauge sterling silver, the smooth little washer beads (which are REALLY hard to find), my hand hammered clasp. I love the blue lampwork beads. It's all I can do to keep from licking...