{"id":25,"date":"2008-12-12T11:41:18","date_gmt":"2008-12-12T16:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cosmicfolklore.userblogs.ganoksin.coms\/?p=25"},"modified":"2008-12-12T11:41:18","modified_gmt":"2008-12-12T16:41:18","slug":"cold-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/cosmicfolklore\/2008\/12\/12\/cold-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"Cold Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

W<\/span><\/strong>e have often heard the term, “when hell freezes over;” well, here in the deep South it has.\u00a0 And, it befits the occasion that I should have finished up four weeks worth of labor on this piece the very night that the devil has to wear a jacket.<\/p>\n

S<\/span><\/strong>team casting<\/a> was used to make the center section.\u00a0 I was wanting to utilize the ease of carving into the wax as opposed to carving the metal directly, as I often do.\u00a0 But, by carving the wax, I can get greater depth of 3-dimensions in my designs.\u00a0 The rest of this piece was hand fabricated.<\/p>\n

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\nCold Journey:<\/strong><\/em> sterling silver, copper, 14k gold, methyst Sage Agate, white USA topaz.<\/p>\n

W<\/span><\/strong>hen this agate is slabbed it looks like a snowscape with banks of snow and dead grasses sticking out of the snow peaks.\u00a0 But, I resisted the urge to use the picturesque qualities of this agate, and I was thrilled with the way it looks when I cut these into tubes.\u00a0 But, my greatest challenge here was setting these tubes.\u00a0 I soldered on the copper structures to hold the stones, and I twisted the top ones.\u00a0 This way I could push the smaller tapered ends through and then twist them back so that the stone could slip into its cup holder bottom.\u00a0 The first (right) went in like a charm, but the left one was a bugger.\u00a0 I had to re-cut that one four times before I got it to work without breaking.<\/p>\n

T<\/span><\/strong>he topaz in the center was faceted by a good friend of mine in Oklahoma,Byron McCurtain<\/a>.\u00a0 I have been setting on a parcel of these beautiful stones, but was not sure where to use such a brilliant but colorless stone in my work.\u00a0 My plan was to use one of my North Carolina rubies, but as I pulled together my materials for this one, I realized that this one was going to have a very cold color scheme, and the white USA topaz fit in very well.\u00a0 The 20g piece of 14k gold serves as fulcrum for the piece; whereas, a ruby would have over powered the other colors and left the gold almost unnoticed.<\/p>\n

I<\/span><\/strong>t was just by luck that I was able to put the final polish on this one last night as snow started to fall from the southern skies.\u00a0 And, this morning I had to trade my normal sandals in for a pair of shoes, brrr, it is very cold.\u00a0 I even had to dig an old coat out of storage.\u00a0 The stores all closed, the schools were closed, and the national guard was called in to keep order as the snow dissolved seconds before it hit the ground.\u00a0 We are just not very prepared down here to deal with this phenomena of snow.\u00a0 And, I am not sure we shut everything down out of fear or celebration :o)\u00a0 So, here is my tribute to snow in hell.\u00a0 May the force be with you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"