This has been our spring break week, so I have had some extra time at the bench.\u00a0 We were going to try to get in some gem mining in North Carolina.\u00a0 A prospector friend of mine had written to tell me of a rock slide that exposed some excellent ruby specimens, but the kids, money, and stuff started conflicting.\u00a0 So, we stayed close by and I got in extra hours at the shop, which is fine with me.\u00a0 I\u2019d rather be at the bench making some of my many sketches come to life.\u00a0 Since Christmas and a freakish after-Christmas spurt of sales, I haven\u2019t gotten my supply back up, and this was an excellent week to get that done.<\/p>\n

The first thing finished was a labrodorite ring in sterling.\u00a0 It\u2019s not extremely fancy.\u00a0\u00a0 Lora has been on me to come up with a product that is quick and affordable for the people who come to see my work but can\u2019t swing the prices.\u00a0 I was reluctant, but after spending the day watching folks come in after a huge drive, I felt a little more motivated.\u00a0 I left all of the hammer marks on these rings, and I lapped out some high-domed labrodorite and iolite cabs to use in them.\u00a0 I don\u2019t make rings often.\u00a0 The problem with rings is that you have to make them a particular size, and customers all have different finger sizes.\u00a0 So, I made up extra flowers with the bezels all ready to be soldered to the shank, so that when someone comes in with different fingers, I can whip up one before their eyes.\u00a0 They get to watch me hammer out a shank and solder it with my German blowpipe.\u00a0 OK, so I have stooped to gimmicks, LOL.<\/p>\n

\n\t $\"Blosson$ <\/a>\n\t

Blossom Ring in Labrodorite; sterling silver<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have also had a few lapidary mishaps this week.\u00a0 I carved some fire agates sent to me by Mark Anderson and Jessica Dow that they mined and blogged on here<\/a>.\u00a0 The flashes of color and the domes for an optical effect was awesome.\u00a0 I was excited.\u00a0 But, I handed it to my oldest daughter who was assisting me in the studio, and she immediately tripped on the dog on her way to wash off the last pass with cerium oxide.\u00a0 The agate was accelerated to the ground, and pieces went everywhere.\u00a0 So, it goes.\u00a0 Then I was cutting a cab of rhodochrosite for this next ring.\u00a0 It had very cool bands of color, and was reminding me of an Easter egg.\u00a0 But, then it snapped in the dish, while I was drilling the holes to rivet in the rocket.\u00a0 I guessed that it would have snapped when I was riveting in the metal, so I went with a unique slab of this African Tiger Eye.<\/p>\n

This ring was made at a size 7.\u00a0 It has been in my sketchbook for a while, but I was never sure about exactly which stones to use with it.\u00a0 But, I think that the exposed areas of the stone from the top and the sides makes for a cosmic ring.<\/p>\n

\n\t $\"Eye$ <\/a>\n\t
Eye of the Tiger Ring; sterling silver, 22K gold, African tiger eye, and a faceted ruby<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
I had donated a work to the Rotarians to auction.\u00a0 The work was called Serpent in the Flower<\/strong>, and I am reluctant to make copies of my work, unless something significant is changed in the design.\u00a0 So, I made this one at 3\/4th the size, using different stones.\u00a0 I just scaled down the sketch using my scanner and used some Wyoming jade.\u00a0 Wow, this jade was such a pleasure to cut.\u00a0 It is so fibrous yet hard and tough; it molds to a shape very well and takes a polish well.\u00a0 Lora picked up these hand-cut tourmaline beads to add the droplets to the story as well.<\/p>\n
\n\t $\"<b>Serpent$ <\/a>\n\t
Serpent in the Flower Revisited; sterling silver, .999 silver, 22K gold, Shakudo, Wyoming jade, amethyst cab, and faceted rhodolite.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<b>Serpent in the Flower Revisited<\/b>; sterling silver, .999 silver, 22K gold, Shakudo, Wyoming jade, amethyst cab, and faceted rhodolite.<\/p>\n
In all of my work, I try to work in a tension between subconscious sexual symbols; stone in setting, rocket in space, fish in water, or snake in flower.\u00a0 In this design I like the play of colors as well; the violets and greens of the stones and the tourmaline beads.\u00a0\u00a0 Despite what the lore is behind the stones, the color vibrations of these stones is sexy and exotic.\u00a0 And, this works well with the imagery, in my opinion.<\/p>\n
We will try to get to the mine site in North Carolina next weekend.
\nThanks for looking :o)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This has been our spring break week, so I have had some extra time at the bench.\u00a0 We were going to try to get in some gem mining in North Carolina.\u00a0 A prospector friend of mine had written to tell me of a rock slide that exposed some excellent ruby specimens, but the kids, money, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/cosmicfolklore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/cosmicfolklore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/cosmicfolklore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/cosmicfolklore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/cosmicfolklore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/cosmicfolklore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/cosmicfolklore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions\/117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/cosmicfolklore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/cosmicfolklore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/cosmicfolklore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}