Friday, April 29, 2011

Norwescon aftermath

So the bad news is I didn't sell one damned thing.  The good news is that I made a lot of contacts, and handed out a lot of business cards.  The prints of Fire and Water are also now available in my Artfire studio.  I'm putting stuff into the Student Show at school next week, and I expect to have at least one more element done by then.  From here on out, it's about prepping for ApolloCon in Houston at the end of June.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Norwescon

I blame prep work for Norwescon for my forgetting the Sunday night post.  It's been display-building and mat-cutting all week, and I'll probably be late again this week for recovery from the convention.  There's a good chance I'm going to tweet about the goings on on the @nrs_jewelry feed.  See y'all next week with reports on the convention and how the prints of the elemental creature pieces went over!

Monday, April 11, 2011

Success and failure

This is going to be a short post, since I'm writing at stupid-o'clock AM.  Pictures will be added later.  The great giant news is that I picked up the kiln on Friday.  I've been using it all weekend and it's awesome.

In other news, I attempted to re-make the Green Man enamel piece, and this one self-destructed, too, albeit in a completely different manner.  I've taken the hint , and changed the Earth elemental piece to an ouroborous (snake biting it's own tail.  Symbolizes infinity).  It will likely be done in time for Norwescon, but probably not in time for prints.  I've finished Air, as well, but I'm not particularly happy with it.  There are some perspective/proportion issues that make it look funny, and I'm not particularly inclined to show it at all.

Ok, time for bed now.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

engineering for expanding products

So far, I've been doing my enameling in a very on-the-fly manner, and for most of what I've been doing, that's ok.  But now I'm starting to look at *very* heavy use items like cabinet pulls/knobs, functional buttons and closures, and belts (which take a lot of abuse being banged against counters/etc), so I'm looking at ways to reinforce the enamel and especially protect the edges form cracking.  I've tried making the enamels and bezel-setting them, but bezels are time-consuming to get just right.  It looks like I'm going to be putting wire rims on the borders of my pieces now.  It's a couple of extra steps, but nothing like the pain of getting a bezel-set smooth.

Once I get a handle on the enamel, I can get a handle on the mountings, and I'm looking at systems where I can make the enamels and then set them as knobs, brooches, pendants, or whatever.  I've got some ideas, but they definitely still need testing.