Sunday, February 17, 2008






Riveting rivets...






I did a lot of cold connections before I could solder, but I still love them. Especially since they can do connections with materials that wouldn't stand up to the heat involved with soldering. Until I figure out how to use othe people's pictures, I will just have to use mine as examples. I connected this blackened steel to the silver backing with tiny brass escutcheon pins. I couldn't have soldered the blackened steel.


This is another colored steel, but this time I colored rusted steel and did silver tube rivets in the holes in the steel strip. These rivets didn't connect anything, they were just a decorative element. I used the little brass rivets to connect it to the silver back. Instead of connecting it directly to the back, though, I used tiny silver tubes between the two pieces to give it some elevation.

This is another example of using the little silver tubes to raise the top piece above the backing. This way I could slip the shell and twigs between the two pieces and that helped contain the things.

Another thing about rivets is that they can allow two pieces to swivle if you leave a little space between the two layers to be connected. You can use a little piece of paper to act as spacer, then you remove it to allow the swivelling. I don't have any examples of this.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Color in JEWELRY

People think primarily of precious gems when they think of color in jewelry, but there are so many other possibilities.

1.patinas with chemicals, heat (makes copper red)









2.mosaic of glass seed beads.




3.Prismacolor pencils on oxidized metal.




4, Use of found objects such as colored porcelain shards
How many ways can you come up with....

Monday, February 4, 2008

duffydesigns

Actually, the fourth picture is my little Maisy when she was a baby. She is now a year old.

duffydesigns

The pictures are of ways I've "captured" things that people had thought were special. I had written about this and wanted to add the images, but somewhere in the ether it got lost. I will figure this thing out soon, I know. How hard could it be?