grinding away

I have been spending the few hours of free time here and there finishing my recently cast pieces. It's a long, arduous process, made even more so by my lack of equipment. I am definitely missing the grinder and the dremel I had at my disposal in college. I'm slowly building up the calluses as well as slowly destroying my recently manicured nails. I'm not giving up on them yet, though!

The most exciting bit of news is that I'm getting a torch set up sooner than I thought! When my order arrives and I have solder boards I will have a small space in my dad's garage for my work bench. This means adding stones to the rings I created with that intention as well as the pendants, and fabricating work! As much as I like casting, I've been feeling extremely limited lately working only in wax. It's a much different mindset to create a sculpture by taking away rather than building up. I like building better. I could never be a stone carver...my mind just can't plan ahead like that.

There are still a lot of things I want to make, not limited to:

1. Wide variety of stacking rings
2. " " bracelets
3. More organic bezels, bezels that are part of the piece instead of just sitting on top of it
4. Bezel set faceted stones using SS tubing
5. soft square rings
6. Incorporating textiles
7. Incorporating copper
8. Earrings! Post earrings, hoop earrings, ear wire earrings. This is more for the business side of things than anything else...as I know that most people like earrings and they are something I could potentially sell relatively cheaply and make fairly easily. Watch me eat my words as I try for hours to solder earring posts on.

Right now I want to play with simple and small and fun. That is likely because the majority of the pieces I'm working on finishing right now are big and bold and I'm recognizing that big and bold is not for most. Before I can really work small, however, these nails need to be significantly shorter. :P