Sun Bracelet

I've been making sun jewelry for a very long time but I think that this is the first sun that I have put in a cuff bracelet. Just finished it before we went up to the fair in Chico to sell our work on Dec. 14th and 15th. It didn't sell there but a lot of other pieces did. It will find a home on a wrist next year I am sure. Most of the bracelet is silver but inside of the silver ring on top is a layer of heat colored copper, the sun form is silver and the dome on top is 14k gold.

Bead Obsession

Back about 20 years
ago or so when I first
got into making cold connected mixed metal beads, it became an interesting obsession for a while. I remember once that I could hardly make any other jewelry form for 5 or 6 weeks which is unusual for me. I would walk around with 10 or 12 beads on a chain and show them to anyone who stopped to look. The first ones were just a bead on a chain like the one at the upper left in the collage here, but soon I started looking for other ways to use them because I liked making them so much. And also they started selling quite well at art fairs that I was participating in. I have sold hundreds of them at this point. I started putting them in earrings, bracelets, as parts of more complex pendants, even a couple of rings and anything else that I could think of. It was truly play time for me. These pictured are just a few of the pieces that I did. I still make a few beads now but not like before although, who knows, the obsession might strike again at any time.

Puffy Heart Pendants

These are two sided pendants, front on the left, back on the right. One could wear them either way though. I made a template out of plexiglass in the shape of the hearts on the left and then, using the hydraulic press raised it into a puffy shape. The textures are from pattern plates that I stamp on nickel silver and then roller print on copper. I sometimes enjoy creating a design on the back of pendants, you could wear it that way but sometimes it is just a private aspect of the pendant that the wearer can just show to special people. I did a series of about 5 or 6 of these a few years ago and just ran across the plexiglass template so am thinking of making another and seeing how I can change it some. Mixtures of silver, copper, gold and brass with fresh water pearls.

Sun, moon , star

It's sometimes fun to mix stars & moons with the suns that we often make. Here are some examples of that. Pieces made by both Carlie and Jima.

The Jeweled Sun

At some time around 60 plus years ago I started drawing flames and suns on the margins of notebook paper in boring junior high school classes back in Lawton, Oklahoma. This led me in two directions, towards doodling and drawing and painting art which I still do today and also to making a great variety of sun designs in jewelry pieces which I have done for almost 50 years. To the right is a collage with a small selection of jewels incorporating the sun motif in the design. This is still going on and I expect it will as long as I continue to make jewelry which will probably be as long as I am alive. Most of these pieces were made entirely by me but the long hinged pendant with the lapis at the bottom and the abalone shell at the top & the pair of earrings were a joint project of Carlie and I for which I made sun shaped cutouts for the top and Carlie incorporated them into her design. I'm currently working on the latest couple of pieces in the ongoing series of sun designs.

Collaborative Jewels

During the many decades we've been making jewelry we have mostly each done our own designs and finished pieces although at the idea level we collaborate a lot and inspire each other and share ideas and techniques. But 20 or so years ago we got into doing a series of collaborative pieces where each of us did part of the design and construction. Often one of us would make a piece that was to be part of a jewel and the other one of us would then figure out how to add other parts to make a finished piece. We played with this method for a number of years, never a lot of pieces but an ongoing game.

In this piece to the left I made the semi circular piece at the top with cut out and riveted pieces backed by a stamped silver background. Carlie incorporated that piece into a necklace that was part of a series of large pieces she was doing at the time. This piece is copper, silver, brass and yellow & rose gold. A large piece of lapis that I polished is at the bottom. Also fresh water pearls on the sides of the hinge mechanism.





At the right is a piece that I just finished.
2 or 3 years ago Carlie was making some butterfly forms into pendants. The basic butterfly form of this one she made but wasn't happy with, it had a couple of glitches so she put it in a box of probable rejects. I saw it at the time and found it interesting so took it and put it one of my many boxes of possibilities. As I've been working, getting ready for our Sacramento show coming up next weekend I was looking through some of these boxes and ran across it and decided to see if I could turn it into a finished piece of jewelry. Here is the result. I added the center piece and put black onyx and a copper disc and gold ball on it, added a bail at the top and lines representing feelers and added a garnet hanging from the bottom. I think it turned out kind of nice.

Solder Inlay and Flap Set Pendant

For 15 years or so I taught various jewelry workshops at the Mendocino Art Center near where I live. For a number of years I also hosted a weekly open studio where I assisted people who came with jewelry making and design instruction and did demonstrations of techniques. The copper dome in this piece was an example of solder inlay, where I stamped deep patterns in the copper, flowed silver solder over the surface and then filed and sanded it until only the solder in the stamped depression remained. The center of this one got messed up and I was going to reject it when one of the students said I should cut it out and do something else in the center. I worked on it that week and brought the finished piece back to the next open studio. I heated the copper to build a layer of oxidation to bring out the contrast in colors. I created flaps by sawing around the edge of the back silver piece and bent them up to hold the copper dome and created of sawed shape with gold circles riveted on it to inset in the center. I was pleased with the result as was a customer who purchased it at the next art show that I sold my work at. This points out one of the things I miss now that I have retired from teaching, how absolute jewelry making beginners can often have interesting ideas that are useful. I've been making jewels for over 50 years now but often found that one of these beginners without preconceived notions could look at a situation and have an idea about how to do something that was better than the way I had been doing it for many years. I learned to listen and often adopted new ways of doing things because of this.