Full Plate = Too Much to Do!

Prepping for my workshops at MCAS2018; just got a really interesting commission for a Talisman brooch; conceiving a class for Craftcast, working title: The ABC's of Metal Clay; trying to make stock for the holidays; and dealing with the normal aches and annoyances of my time of life. Sometimes it feels like too much. And sometimes it feels like a gift. Sometimes it feels like both within the same hour! Sigh.

Through it all - I love what I do! 

Consistency Makes Creativity

I don't know about the title of this post. I'm trying to play off my phrase "Practice Makes Proficient", but I don't think it worked. My goal is to try to become a little more consistent in many areas of my life, work, teaching, making, selling, etc. This morning I got a newsletter from Megan Auman that gave a few links to her Instagram TV chats (what is THAT?), and this one had to do with Consistency in Marketing, and I realize that I'm a woe-begone girl in that aspect of my life.

The last post I wrote for this blog was back in January. Not very consistent. So I'm trying to use alliteration to help me improve.
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• Marketing Monday - not sure exactly what I mean by that. I have a few days to figure it out.
• Toolish Tuesdays - I have a @lorahartclasses account at Instagram now. Did you see it? On Tuesdays I hope to post a new tool, texture, or other tool-ish thing that I use or want to use with metal clay.
• Wordy Wednesday - Today is Wednesday and I'm being wordy here. I hope to write a post every week. We'll see how that pans out.
• Thumthing Thursday - Haven't thought of the alliteration word yet. Ideas? It should probably have to do with cleaning the apartment...
• Fangirl Friday - There is so much great content on Instagram, so much inspiration. I'lll share another Instagramer's post on my @lorahartjewels account.
• Wastrel Weekends - Time for me to relax, re charge, read a book, cuddle with kitties, etc. There will be nothing I HAVE to do on the weekends. Unless I'm teaching.

Eye of the Beholder Bubble Blower won Best of Show for Jewelry!

Megan does Marketing Mornings. She sets aside a half hour at home every morning when she has to do 'something' marketing-ish before she goes to her studio. My morning routine has involved CBS This Morning, feeding the cats and snuggle time, eating breakfast, and sitting on the couch for an hour. Sometimes I complete all these activities at the same time. So adding a short task shouldn't be difficult. Right? Sigh. We'll see.

"I'll love you even more if you share me with your friends"

Discounts and Details

Life is a learning experience, and I graduated with honors last year. Did a couple of shows, made a lot of pretty good jewelry (if I do say so myself), got it up on a website, and best of all - taught some pretty fabulous classes (even my students enjoyed them). It was a year of dreams and goals manifested!

And I'm up for doing it all again in 2018!! Let the insanity -  I mean - the extreme fun and games begin! I'd be honored if you'd join me in The Studiolo - there's something for everyone. And if you register and pay before the end of January - I'll give you 15% off the listed price. How's that for a New Year boost? Register and pay half by the end of January, and you'll get a 10% discount. Just pay the balance by the month before the first day of the class and I'll refund the extra.

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First off - if you've never used metal clay to make jewelry, I need to ask you - WHY? It's fun, the learning curve is short, the tools are affordable, and the payoff is fantastical! If you've made a few simple pendants and earring drops, but want a full education in molding, forming, ring sizing, and more - you're a great candidate for this workshop too. Jump in! With both feet. Although you'd probably find it easier to use your hands.

Sign up for Metal Clay Immersion and I'll teach you all the tricks and skills you need to know! At least the ones that will give you a great basic toolbox of techniques and experience with projects that will form a jumping off place for more intricate projects. Take a look for a complete description of this 3 day workshop.

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Make Your Mark is a workshop that focuses on surface decoration, enabling you to make a wide variety of unique textures with designs and motifs that match your personal aesthetics. Create re useable texture plates, and learn direct-to-clay treatments that will enhance and enrich your metal clay practice. Scroll down the page for the details, dates, and to see a sample of the multi panel bracelet you'll create with your new skills. This is a class for everyone, although it will be a little easier if you have some previous experience.

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Are you an Instagram or Etsy fan girl? Have you explored and discovered cabochon sellers whose work you're dying to use in a metal clay design? OMG, I've bought some AMAZING cabs from those dealers. If you have too, or if you've found other tantalizing treasures you'd love to learn to bezel set on metal clay backings, then Custom Cab Settings For Metal Clay is the workshop for you! If it's got a flat back, you can set it. Learn two different ways to make perfect settings for your stones or found objects. One using metal clay only, the other forming and fusing commercial bezel wire to set in a second firing.

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I'm so excited about this last workshop of the year! I've been working on it for a long time and am now ready to help you discover your inner artist, use your unique voice, and shine a light on all the creativity and inspiration that's been lurking in the background of your mind since you first put crayon to construction paper! Crafting Your Artistic Voice uses a variety of entertaining activities, exploration, and discussion to allow you to re-aquaint yourself with, or completely reinvent the muse that makes your work magical! It may be the last on the list, but it comes first in my heart.

Manifest Your Destiny and join us in The Studiolo in 2018, Bring a friend and I'll buy lunch! xo

Time is Money!

Let's talk about buying findings vs. making everything by hand. Today I wanted to make a type of necklace that required two soldered (closed) jump rings each. I only had 4 closed rings on hand and wanted to make 10 necklaces so I decided to make the jump rings myself. This is not something I do on a regular basis, so I don't own any specialized tools that would have made it easier for me.

The steps to making closed jump rings are:
1. Annealing wire (not everyone does this, but soft wire is easier to wind by hand
2. Winding wire around an appropriately sized mandrel
3. Taping the coil of wire so the cut rings don't drop onto the floor, forcing you to 'assume the position'
4. Sawing or cutting the coil into separate rings
    a. Sawing requires a jig of some sort, a professional one or a notch in your bench pin, or something else clever
    b. If you use a wire snip to cut the rings, one side will be (almost) flat/flush and the other side will be pinched - so you'll need to file or cut the other side
5. Using two pliers to close and align the jump ring closed
6. Placing solder at the seam
    a. I can never find the seam of a properly closed jump ring so I mark on either side of the opening with a Sharpie. The ink will burn away by the time the solder is ready to flow
7. Dropping the soldered jump ring in water to quench it.
8. Repeating with the other jump rings
    a. Obviously you'd want to prep all the jump rings the same way so you can solder them all at the same time.
9. Testing the jump rings to make sure they're really closed
10. Re-soldering those that aren't
    a. I'm only willing to try one more time. Anything more is annoying to me.
11. Pickling to remove the oxidation
12. Stringing on a safety pin to tumble polish or polish by hand
13.. Patinating if desired

That's a lot of steps!!! Although it is a great way to learn how to solder. Great for your assistant that is. If you have one.

Time yourself and figure out how long it takes to do these steps with 1 foot of wire. How many jump rings did you get out of it? Making jump rings is not skilled labor. Pay yourself $10.00 an hour for this task. Including the wire and your labor - how much did it cost to make one jump ring?

Now go look at a few different sites (remember to check 'chain mail' makers) and compare. How much can you buy them for, versus making them yourself? How many different sizes and gauges of jump rings do you like to use? Want to make them all?

In my mind - a jump ring is a jump ring is a jump ring. They're round pieces of wire. Period. There's nothing artistic in a jump ring. Even twisted wire ones (which I like to use and would never in a million years make) are just pretty versions of a plain old jump ring.

I made my coil using about a foot of wire, cut the rings with a wire cutter, realized I had to do all that extra work to make them look nice (instead of poorly made and 'crafty'), dropped them in the recycling jar, and got out some commercially made twisted wire jump rings and soldered them closed myself. 15 out of 20 soldered the first go 'round, 5 needed a second try. Then I strung them on a safety pin and they're happily tumbling as I write this post. (just took 'em out) I had not pickled them, and the tumbler did nothing to remove the oxidation. So now there's a little more I have to do with them. I've just spent all day on jump rings when I could have been making the necklaces. Sheesh!

So - making jump rings myself is definitely not worth my time. Every artist has to make their own decisions about their process. You might think about how much money you have in the bank that you can spend on supplies (some people have more, some have less), how much your time is worth and how annoying you find certain tasks. Then remember that if you don't pay for a commercially made finding up front - you should definitely be charging your customer for the finding that you're making by hand. So is it really cost effective in the long run?

I do like to see hand made clasps and earring wires on handmade work. So the decision on whether to buy those items commercially is totally up to the artist. But jump rings? I don't mind spending a little money to save me annoyance and time.

DIY Sales!

People always ask me - How or where do you sell your jewelry? Well, I'm primarily a teacher. I used to do two fine craft shows a year in Los Angeles, but since I moved to Richmond, taking part in shows took a back seat. Most of them are outside, and I just don't want to set up a tent or sit in the rain anymore. And the holiday shows in town are not really my market. And I haven't had a shopping cart of any kind for years. My website had also fallen into disrepair so I finally decided to do something about my online presence.

I started doing a tiny bit of research and decided that I wanted to use Square. Little did I know that SquareSpace and SquareUp are two entirely different platforms! When did I discover that little bit of information? Why, after my SquareSpace site was done of course (except for the shopping cart). And why did that make a big difference for me? Because I wanted to continue to use my Square account for the banking portion of my shopping cart. SquareSpace uses Stripe as their e-commerce provider (which has a pay as you go option, but it looks like that's in addition to the SquareSpace per transaction fee).

I have to say, both SquareSpace and SquareUp were super easy to use, set up, personalize, etc. Especially for someone like me who thinks they have no computer skills other than surfing Pinterest or commenting on FaceBook. I don't even know everything about Word or this blogging site.

Here's what I found out:

SquareSpace
• There's a small monthly fee for the website, made smaller if you actually pay yearly.
• There's also a small per transaction fee.
• You can use a custom Domain
• Options for pages, drop downs, slideshows, galleries, blogs, and other fabulous options are pretty close to endless
• There are many templates to choose from
• The ability to simply drag and drop images into all of these options is super user friendly
• I never got around to setting up the commerce section so I can't speak to anything that concerns that
• If you scroll to the bottom of any of the website pages, you can take a tour of others who have used SquareSpace to set up a website (I find this very helpful)
• There are tutorials on YouTube created by 'real people' to help you along your path
• They have 24 hr. live help if you get in trouble

SquareUp
• There is absolutely no fee at all for the website
• There is a small per transaction fee
• You can use a custom Domain
• Options are limited! Text fonts, placement, photo options, etc. are set in stone. Like it or leave it
• There are only four, very similar, templates to choose from
• The ability to upload photos is super easy and user friendly
• No one has purchased anything yet so I don't really know exactly how the commerce section goes, but it sure looks pretty!
• There is very little information or help to set it up (I'll help if you need it)
• It's super easy to create your site with any template, then use the Store Editor to test out other templates to see which one suits your needs best.
• SquareUp is partners with Weebly and three other e-commerce providers if you want a more inclusive website. I hear Weebly is also super easy to use - but haven't tried it.
• This is a scroll only website. No separate pages. No link options. No anything fancy.

I'm not good at promoting my work for sale. If someone asks me, now I can direct them to my web store. But mostly I'm a teacher, so I wanted to include some information about my classes for potential students. Because SquareUp doesn't offer any way to include separate text pages (except an 'About' section) I used the 'Events' option (instead of  'Goods or Services') to add text.  The dropdown options fall under the 'Shop' link, and you can have as many as you want - I have one for my jewelry, one for classes, one to list my blogs.  'About' and 'Contact' have their own links.  I also wanted to have an area for testimonials, so I created a jpg image in Photoshop and was able to plug it into one of the permanent image sections of my template. At some point I also want to use a custom font to superimpose "Lora Hart Jewels" over the photo of the lover's eye brooch, but I need someone with Illustrator to help me out with that. (Photoshop is too pixillated)

You might want to have a  number of sections for 'Bracelets', 'Necklaces', 'Earrings', etc. Someday I might want to add a new section for specific workshops so students can pay online. If you don't mind the scrolling, and like the simple, but clean and modern, template - SquareUp might be a good platform to start with. Even if you already have an Etsy site, It wouldn't hurt to have another place to direct your customers.

My website can be found at www.lorahart.com (for those creating a custom domain - it took a full two days for mine to become functional. The SquareUp URL worked perfectly until then).

Come and test it out, and tell me what you think. Thanks for reading, and good luck setting up a fabulous website of your own.

Anatomy of a Pendant, Stone Setting

I'm primarily a self taught cabochon stone setter. I learned the basics in a class early in the millennium, and have set enough 'regular' cabs that I think I can do almost any cab I find. But jewelry making will always teach you that there's more to learn.

The raw setting. Curliques broke, so
I added leaves. The bezel was attached in
a second firing.

Today my lesson came in the form of a faceted 'slice' of quartz. I learned this past weekend that clear quartz is what is known as 'rock crystal', but I'll still call it clear quartz. I chose a particular width of bezel wire because the stone was very tall. And when I looked at it, pre set in the bezel cup (resting on a piece of dental floss, so I could easily remove it), it looked perfect. But the minute I started to push the wire over, I realized my mistake.

See all the ruffles at the top of the stone?
Too much metal. Would have been easier
with lower bezel wire.

Bezel wire only needs to be pushed over 3% of the stone at the widest part of the shoulder to be secure. With the rather severe slope of my quartz slice, I could have used wire 2/3 shorter! And then I realized how much the facets impacted the setting. I've set faceted slices before, but they were very low profile, and the bezel wire was the shortest I could find commercially. Using shorter wire with the facets would have meant that the wire didn't need to be fit around as many angles as it did at the higher profile.

The custom jump ring stone riser

Another of the main reasons using shorter wire would have been a better choice is that I set an antique tintype photograph under the quartz, and the higher bezel meant that it covered too much of the already dark image, making it even harder to see. A lower bezel would have allowed more light to enter the stone and illuminate the image. Next time. I have 3 more stones that I want to use in a similar way.

Then, I started to set a companion stone. One of the shorter faceted slices I referred to above. But since I wanted the shorter stone to compliment the taller one - I wanted to raise it in it's setting. So this time although I used the shortest/narrowest bezel wire, it was still too tall - but did I want to sand it down? No! Instead I bent a piece of wire into a jump ring that fit perfectly within the bezel. I used 16g fine silver, so that it wouldn't oxidize as much as sterling would have and then hammered it slightly to flatten the area where the stone would sit, so it would rest evenly. That worked perfectly!

The finished pendant. With a custom Fragment Chain.
Small blue natural faceted sapphire, faceted clear quartz slice,
Faceted light blue sapphire slice.

The pendant is really beautiful (if I do say so myself), and I don't know if the high bezel will be noticed, but I'll know. And that's ok. It's how we learn. Every time we do something new, we learn something. That's how we improve. I like being my own evaluator. I'm honest about what works, and honest about what didn't, and I don't call myself names when I did something 'wrong', and I make mental notes about how to do it 'right' the next time. So this whole thing was a win-win. I made a pretty thing, and I learned while doing it. Can't wait to get started on the next one!

Tools used to push over the too tall bezel:
• I start all stone settings by using wood - a chopstick or similar. All tools will slip, and wood will do no damage. If one is really worried about scratching the stone while setting, you can put blue painters tape over the stone to protect it.
• I found a highly polished hammer setting tool that I must have bought in a class one time. It is softly rectangular and has lovely rounded edges. Worked well for a while.
• Then I switched to a bezel rocker, straight from the vendor - never used it before - sharp edges that might scratch my work. I was careful and it worked perfectly to lay down the rest of the 'ruffles'.
• There was some scratching. It's inevitable. So I went to a pumice wheel on my flex shaft machine to polish the marks away. Thank you to whoever suggested that in whatever FB group you posted it in! It's a miracle! Smooths away shallow scratches, no need for sandpaper. Love!
• The pumice smooths the scratches, but lightly dulls the finish. So I switched out the pumice tool for the light green 3M Radial Disk.
• The final touch was to go around the very edge of the bezel wire with a round ball burnisher, not only to create a bright shine, but to flatten the edge into a kind of frame around the stone. It's a really nice effect. I think I also learned to do that from a FB comment. I love Facebook. :)

The Ultimate DIY

I'm telling you, there is just nothing more satisfying than looking at a photograph of something, and figuring out how to do it yourself. Which I did with this little, forged, finding. Did I say it was a friction fit, forged, finding? And it works!! It may not be very pretty right now - it's my first after all. But when I make 10 more, the last 5 are sure to be pretty fabulous!

It took one and a half inches of 16g sterling wire, and is just a touch
over a 1/2" long. If I could do it so can you. Try it!
Original by Donna Veverka. 

I don't like shepherd's hook type closures on a bracelet because I'm always afraid they'll come undone during the day. But to keep my pieces well priced, I don't want to make a box clasp either (not that I know how to). And I don't want to put a commercial finding on my handmade work. So I was looking around to see what other maker's use and came upon this one's Mama. Then I set about to figure it out, which wasn't really that difficult. While I got the beginning proportions wrong, the rest of the clasp was formed pretty easily.

I like it! And can say that I made it myself!!