Gargoyle

I just finished polishing off my little gargoyle friend. He is the jewellery charm replication of a sculpture that a customer brought in. Now he is a wonderful custom gift that is going to be added to a charm bracelet for a lucky lady this Valentine's. It was such a challenge working in such detail on a small scale, but I am happy about the results. When I was nearing the finish of carving the wax I accidentally poked a hole through him, so I had to melt some wax on top to fix his eye for him (which you can see from the black blob on the blue wax). Now all there is left to do is attach him to the bracelet. What an exciting piece to carve, I always love a challenge.

Ankh and Fleur de Lis Part 2

I just finished polishing off another custom band that is the design opposite of the ring I made back in November. This ring was made in part with a new flex shaft tool that I am in love with. I do have all sorts of diamond burs and basic wax burs, but nothing that is really small (less than 2mm wide). My new loves are cylinder square cross cut burs. With a bit of practice and a light touch I fell hard for them. Sigh. The pics are what the ring looked like in wax after I carved it and then the final ring that is cast in 18kt Palladium White Gold. Next week I will update with another custom made piece.

Look Mom, Mokume

Every once in a while since Gillian Batcher has taught me how to make mokume gane I get the urge to try my hand at it. When I realized that my brother's birthday was coming up I knew I should take a chance at it again. I realized that he had never seen any mokume that I had made, so that was double plus bonus as well. I went with one of my favourite metal combinations, sterling silver and nickel silver. Somehow I lucked out and made the exact amount that I needed after creating the pattern on the surface. All I had to do was solder the ends together (eek!) and then clean up the edges and voila! I then searched through some of my scrap bins and discovered a piece of sterling silver and copper mokume that I had made a while ago and decided to throw that together to make a ring. It is a huge sense of accomplishment to see an older piece and the new one to realize that I have become better at developing a great random pattern.

Tim Burton is cool.

I honestly could not contain myself when they finally unveiled the creature behind the window to the TIFF Tim Burton exhibit a few weeks ago. It's one heap of Little Shop of Horrors with equal parts awesome. I get to walk by it daily and it never fails to bring a smile to my face. I jumped on the Burton bandwagon last Saturday and went to a double feature, watching Big Fish (one of my personal faves) and a movie that inspired Tim Burton - The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. It was a day of crying and laughing and particularly enjoying a film that I never would have seen otherwise.

I can't deny that I am a sucker for Tim Burton's aesthetic. Anything with a touch of darkness and has anything to do with "outsiders" has me hook, line and sinker. His work was forefront in my mind when I was playing around with some copper pieces and I suddenly realized I could be making awesomely inspired Tim Burton brooches. So, I present these as my homage.

high gear

Lately I have been kicked in creative high gear. Sometimes this happens, but thankfully not so often because it can get exhausting. Fortunately the fruits of my labour have been plentiful. I have no idea why I am blogging like this. It could quite possibly be that i need coffee. Or maybe some more juice.

Anyways, these gems came about in the last couple weeks and I just finished adding the pinbacks (which I then photo edited out so that they look nicer in the pictures). The wise thing would have been to take the photo before adding pinbacks, but then again I would not have been able to hang them to get the chain to dangle without them... okay scrap that previous thought. All the motifs are inspired by wrought iron work and I have been super obsessed with the hydraulic press lately. I mean come on - turning a flat sheet of metal into a raised form, it's wicked. No hammering involved, you just crank a lever and pressure + rubber = awesome. These guys are made out of copper, which I used a patina on to darken 'em up, various pearls and gem beads, sterling silver ball chain, resin, and flocking.

Next post will be soon. and by soon i mean tomorrow. And more work to post. Very fun work. Okay, I am going to stop with the sentence fragments and get me some coffee.

Bond

Last week I went to the Opening on the "Bond" exhibition at Zilberschmuck Gallery in Toronto. I was happy that my work was accepted to be a part of the show. A while back I mentioned that it was the piece that I was going to get professionally photographed, so I finally decided to include it on my blog. I have also used the photo in my recent application to Metalsmith's call for entry for an exhibition in print. Fingers crossed that it will be included!
I also went along with Rosalyn Woo to celebrate her winning an honourable mention for her piece "leash and collar." Check out her etsy page to see more of her work.

Celebrate good time, come on

This week is pretty exciting. Right now one of my studio mates is behind me cleaning (which I should also be doing) but after polishing my jewellery and cleaning display cases I wanted to do something else. So I decided to blog about the upcoming Party my studio is having as well as an upcoming Holiday Sale.

Check out the above links for more info and join me for some wine on Wednesday and hot chocolate on Friday, cuz I'll be attending both! The Santa add is for the Pop-up Holiday sale in Kensington that I have some work at, there is a Opening for that this coming Friday (yay, hot chocolate!)

I should have posted a while back that I made these small pieces of art to sell at the Pop-up shop in Kensington. They are small paintings with a small copper frame I cut out and added a patina and thread to liven it up. Not to mention the velvet ribbon. How I love velvet ribbon.