Ring Bling

I had so much fun with this month's theme for the PCAGOE challenge! The theme is Rings. For me, these were like eating a bag of chips... you can't stop at one! As a matter of fact I made 10 of them, but only 5 are ready for prime-time.

I first made one out of a solid piece of cured polymer, with inclusions, that I had cut into slices and slabs. I took one of the slabs and drilled a hole in it. Because of the inclusions that I had used in the polymer, it needed much reinforcement, and that is one of the ones on which I'm still working... 

But, I decided to use one of the slices from that piece of cured polymer for one of my rings. There are iridescent inclusions in this polymer, and the way it was mixed left some funky holes and swirls in the natural form. I made a ring shank out of a blend of translucent & 14k gold Premo in a triune type shape (which is actually quite comfortable to wear), and attached the inclusion slice to the shank with bonding agent. Unfortunately, because it was a rainy day here and my sunlight was limited, the photos are not the best. But if you click on the individual photo, you'll see a larger size of the image, where you can view the wonderful swirls and holes that happened with this inclusion technique. My gears are spinning with the cool result of this inclusion technique. Here's the result:

When I knew that the first idea (of the cured slab ring) was going to take more time and patience, I decided that I wanted to make some gems out of polymer, which I would "set" in a polymer ring setting. I then got the idea to use wire to secure the gem. The first iteration of this was this faux opal bead (made with Premo's opal clay) that I set in a polymer ring setting (again on a triune shaped shank) and secured with wire which makes a decorative pattern:

The second iteration skipped the polymer gem and used a faceted acrylic button, again nesting on a polymer setting and secured and bedecked with wire in the shape of a star that runs across the "gem".  The wire got a bit messy on this, I need to figure out a way to make the wire less wonky, perhaps this will entail using a thicker gauge wire... This one is on a super comfy hexagon shaped ring shank, which I embedded with a strand of the wire:

The third iteration of this idea saw me hand cutting/sanding a faceted a polymer gem, which was then set in between a simple textured band of polymer using wire that also adds a decorative element. I think this may be my favorite of this grouping of rings:

The final ring came together quite quickly, as I had a one-off button that I had made in a lovely shade of robin's egg blue. I embedded some wire in the hexagonal ring shank and had the two ends coming out at the point to secure the button. I twisted the wire down next to the button and added a decorative focal to cover it up. I also antiqued the nooks and crannies with some gold acrylic paint and some burnt sienna in the center. I love this one just for it's colors and design simplicity:

I'm thinking that the last 2 will become part of my collection... I like the others a lot, but they're a little chunky for my personal style. What do you think of my funky rings? Leave me a comment and tell me which one(s) is your favorite! I'd love to hear your thoughts!

I plan to head back to the studio soon to finish up those other 5 rings that are still waiting to be finished. These are so addictive, I will likely do a whole lot more! I have another blog post coming soon too, on some fabulous items that I was lucky enough to win this past month... Look for that post after the voting reminder post for this month's challenge. Voting for this challenge opens on March 1st and will run through to March 7th at midnight EST. As usual, I'll post a reminder here when voting is open!

Labor of Love

My latest piece was truly a labor of love.  I wonder if I jinxed myself in the post about my last piece, when I said it just went together without a hitch.  Not so with this one.  The May challenge for my guild is the theme of bowls.  Immediately I knew 2 things, I wanted to make a yarn bowl and I wanted it to have a different design, perhaps 2 levels that were separated by space.  I made some sketches and came up with a design and shape that made me swoon.  I decided to use hammered metal spirals to support the upper level of the bowl.  While this idea was fun, it proved a challenge.  In hindsight I would have made the bowl and drilled holes into it for the metal supports.  I had actually considered doing this, but was wary of how thick I'd have to make it for drilling and was worried that I would drill through the bowl, so instead I tried to build the bowl around the metal supports.

I began by making a first layer of the basic shapes I needed to create the look I wanted.  I used a glass vase to form my shape.  After the first cure I wanted to sand down any bumpies, and in doing so cracked the top piece right in half.  I guess it wasn't cured well enough, as that should not have happened.  Super glue to the rescue and onto the second layer for strength.  This layer went off without a hitch.  Next up, was to build the hammered metal spirals -  I shaped these with my round nose pliers and hammered them on my anvil, and during that process I once missed and hit my thumb with the hammer.  Did I mention that this piece was a labor of love? ;)

After a few choice words and successfully forming and hammering all of the spirals I glued them to my pieces, which was a feat in and of itself!  Once I had them glued, I had to create another base layer to bring the clay to the same level as the metal.  In this next curing the cracks started.  I had 3 cracks from where the metal was straining while the piece rested on the vase for support.  I patched up the cracks, added another layer and back into the oven for another cure.  This time the cracks were healed, but I still wanted one more layer.  Imagine my disgust after the additional layer was cured and I pulled the piece out to find 3 cracks in the same general area as before!  One more patching and a layer of black lpc fixed that issue.

Next I gave it a good sanding all over to eliminate the bumps and fingerprint marks, then another layer of lpc for one more full polymer coating.  I wanted a surface treatment on the bowl that was just as unique as the shape, so I opted for a version of what I call impasto polymer technique, which I did in the Premo Bright Green pearl color, straight from the pack because I love that color so much. 

One final curing to harden the surface treatment, as I held my breath and watched over like a mother hen for fear of more cracking.  It survived with no issue! YAY!  I gave it a nice coating of a polymer gloss sealer for extra protection.  The interior bottom of the bowl, I forgot to mention, is a slab of mokume gane polymer done in black, silver, wasabi pearl and white.  You can get a glimpse of that here:

As I said, the idea for this was to be a yarn bowl, and the 2 layers askew were meant as a place for the knitting needles to rest as seen here:

And the yarn is meant to feed through the metal spiral like this:

Yes indeed, this one was a labor of love.  Lots of work went into it and while it is not perfect, I do love this piece.  The design of it is very "me" and I was so pleased with how the surface treatment turned out considering that part was totally unplanned.  I love it when pieces come together with something that just "happens"! :)  If I ever revisit this project again, I will definitely make the base parts full thickness first and then drill the holes for the wire support, that's the lesson for this one.  But overall I'm quite pleased!  What do you think of my funky bowl?  Have you ever had a project that kept giving you problems all through construction but you stuck with it and it turned out as good as you had originally hoped? Tell me about it in the comments!