Bottle Ring Necklace

I've been working on the challenge from Kitty over the last month or so, trying to make the design in my head into a necklace. I think I'm at least on the right track, although I am not considering the piece finished yet. Remember a while back, I posted this picture, of my in-process test attempts:

I've gone farther now, and changed to working in silver. Here's a photo of the necklace now:

It looks done, but it's not. It's about an inch or so too short, and I haven't decided exactly how I want it to lie yet. Here's a closer view of the necklace parts:

It's fine silver wire, 16 gauge for the large links, and 20 gauge for the links between the rings. Here's a closer-still view of the links:

I love the way the big links came out....they are inspired by an article in Step By Step Wire Jewelry (Summer, 2008; Heartstrings Necklace), and they were really fun to make. I like designs that have a feel of movement or texture to them, so these links were perfect. The things I am stuck on now are adding length and deciding whether the smaller links between the rings are what I want there. I also am considering whether or not the design needs more detail -- dangly bits or other beads worked into the design. On the one hand, I want to make a totally over-the-top necklace full of all kinds of things, lots of texture, noise and interest. On the other hand, I am naturally drawn to simple, clean designs in my own jewelry, so I tend to make those kinds of pieces.

I've let the piece just sit for a while. I'll go back and pick it up again in a day or so, and maybe then it will finish telling me it's story so I can finish making it into what it wants to be. Stay tuned....more to come....

Finally, a picture!

There, I promised a picture of Christine's recycled glass offerings and finally, here it is! As you can see, there are several spacer sets, a pair of chili peppers, a pair of little red and white mushrooms, a floral bead and lots of other things.

I may still make that cha cha bracelet, supplementing with somethings i already have. I've considered tryingto fuse the broken discs together, but the idea of a pot melt is calling to me. Tomorrow is a federal holiday, so the kids will be at school and daycare, but I have the day off. Look out studio, here I come!

Delayed

I got Christine's recycled glass offerings in the mail last week, but my camera needs batteries so sadly, there are none for this post. Yes, I suck. It's an interesting collection which includes some of everything. I am particularly excited about the CIM red discs.

It's definitely a challenge to figure out how to use these components. I'm leaning towards making a cha cha bracelet or doing some kind of funky pot melt. Maybe both. We'll see. I need to clean up the shop so I can do some creating in there.

We have decided on the November challenge and are going with the color theme of red, black and white. It is definitely going to be fun. Stay tuned!

The rings -- again!

Ok, so my final project isn't done. It's not even started. Those gorgeous blue rings are mocking me. I see the finished product in my head, but I can't get my hands to make it all work. I will taunt you all now with a picture of the rings in progress:


They are trying to come together, they really are. I'm almost there. If I can stay away form my torch tonight (HA!), I might get this show more on the road and have something to *really* look at in a few days.

More Bottle Cutter Madness

So my friend Jennie had a project that involved cutting bottles. She contacted me and asked if she could just tie a string soaked in kerosene to the bottle, light it, then douse it in ice water. Whoa! I said. Come to my house and try the bottle cutter first. Jennie loves fire, but she agreed to come by yesterday and give the cutter a shot.

There we were yesterday afternoon in the blistering heat, fumbling around with the bottle cutter. Remember the previous post? Yeah. That. At any rate, we decided that a combination of techniques would work. We scored the bottles on the cutter, then heated the score with a lighter and plunged it into ice water.

Voila! It worked! It worked really well. Sure, we had to do some minor tapping in places where the score wasn't deep enough, but we managed to cut up six bottles. Jennie got her project made, and I am all pumped up with several projects to work on. First of all, I need to send Christine the rest of my glass for the recycled project. I can't wait to see what she does with it!

Check out the cool guitar slides Jennie made!


The first one is the ceramic slide that we based them on. The other three are her blues guitar-playing friend's top three picks from the six we made. Sweet recycling!

Cutter = 0, Bottle = 2

I got my bottle cutter last week but I've been too busy to try it out. Then Saturday we had the remnants of hurricane Hanna blow through which kept me from going out to the studio. Fortunately, my husband was home for a couple of hours this afternoon so I finally got time to hit the studio. Boy, is that place a mess! I need a shop monkey!

I quickly cut a plate and got that going in the kiln. One day I'm going to have projects lined up to go into the kiln so I don't waste precious days with nothing to fire.

Anyway, once I reprogrammed the kiln and got it going, it was time to open the box with the cutter in it. It's a used cutter, but it appears to have all the bits and parts. Assembling it wasn't very intuitive, but eventually I figured it out and there it stood in all it's funky glory.

Fortunately, I have this lovely box of donated bottles to try it out on. The first thing I tried was a beer bottle, it cut really well, but I don't have a very even hand with it yet so the score went off at a crazy angle. I can grind it down to get a decent cup out of so I'm cool with that.

So then I tried it on the remnants of the blue bottle that gave up such cool rings. You can see a picture of them in the last post. I skipped an instruction. Wah!!!! Never skip an instruction. Of course, the score went off the line again. I think I can salvage it. Plus, I have a couple more blue bottles, but still - epic fail. When am I ever going to learn?

Oh well. I'm having fun, and that's the point of the whole excersize.

My first challenge project

Here are the materials for our first challenge from Kitty. Cobalt blue glass rings cut from the neck of a wine bottle. I already know what I will do with them....but as I laid them out on the table to snap the picture, I immediately thought of another different design I could do...so now I don't know which to choose....something involving glass and fiber, or something involving glass and fine silver. Hmmmm.

I will have to mull it over some more. Not tonight, though. Hot, humid market day combined with baby up a lot during the night added to an all day barbecue today makes for a very tired Christine.