Making "Chakra Petals" part 1

I have been having an excellent summer. Things have been great since I moved to Chattanooga in 2009. I like it here so much we nicknamed my place the "Happy House". Since the thought of trying to catch up on my blog really stresses me out which is contrary to happy-house-ness, I am just going to start from now. I also tend to ramble a bit, so I will try to use more pictures and less blahblahblah. So... anyway, I have something to show you!

I am making a Limited Edition series of earrings out of sawn and pierced copper. It will be beautifully enameled. A friend let me borrow her awesome kiln so I have been having fun playing with it (thank you Mary-Helen)! This series will allow me to test and explore colored glass enamels on copper while making some gorgeous new inventory at the same time.

I sketched some shapes and made multiple copies. They have been glued as close together as possible to limit material waste. This is a lot of sawing to do. So much sawing, I wonder if I am a little nutty for tackling it. It's fine, these guys just aren't going to come cheap.

I have a t.v. tray equipped with clamp light and bench pin. I (sort-of) watch movies while I do repetitive work. This is 16 gauge copper. It is thick so it wont warp in the kiln. Here I have sawn the sheet into more manageable sizes.

An artsy shot of the sections. I am making a huge mess on my sofa and rug but that's ok. I have a vacuum. This is the happy house. Messes are good.

All the shapes are cut out. There are seven different styles. Next I drill a small hole in each of the interior shapes. Then I can cut out the insides. I want to save some of the interesting ones for other projects. Waste not.




After two long days of sawing, I ran out of saw blades. I ordered some more, and took the opportunity to order some mass-finishing media for a vibratory tumbler my friend Kimerlen gave me. I sure do not want to file and sand all of these pieces by hand. That's crazy talk. I pray the new equipment will do what I want. I'll let you know. 'Till then, it's back to custom orders for me!