The Art Crawl is going well - lots of good feedback from the public! It's reassuring when people I've never met seem to respond positively to my designs - not that opinions of friends and family don't do the same. The website has been updated, thanks to my dad. He redid the site as well as shot the photos of the new work. So if you want to go check out the new stuff, head over here.

Tomorrow is the last day of the crawl, and whatever I have left is heading to Etsy!

I located display supplies yesterday! Yay! I'm going to keep it simple, a few neckforms and a box with a lid for the expensive pieces - so sticky fingers won't be as much of an issue. I wish that didn't have to be a concern, but I'd rather not risk it. I just have to find a good neutral grey fabric to cover the table, since I have some pieces that disappear on the black velvet forms.

After the Crawl, I plan on playing with some packaging ideas. One of the perks of living in a good-sized city is the number of local resources for boxes and the like. I'd really like to have a brand, and not just use the same cotton filled cardboard boxes that everyone else has.

Today I got the two pearl rings ready for their final polish. Those will be finished on Wednesday for sure. I have four or five split channel rings (in non-tiny sizes) in the filing and sanding stages. Three bird rings are in the sanding stages. Two bayonet balls are in progress - and those take a lot longer than I expected. It takes about 5 hours to file the inner band so it will fit within the other half. One of the balls is sanded, the other needs to go through the 5 hours of fitting then cutting the bayonet grooves. I think that will be my Saturday project. The pods - of which there were going to be 5 - have decreased in number to 3. They have color schemes that remind me of elemental things, so I have fire, water and earth in progress. So it looks like I will have around 15 metalwork pieces to show. I'm honestly surprised - in a good way.

My goal is to have everything ready for final polish on Tuesday night, so I can be completely finished by Wednesday night. I plan on taking portfolio quality photos of everything Wednesday and Thursday. Then overhauling the website on Friday during the day.

I'm feeling the pressure, but it feels like the senior show...and that's not a bad thing.

Weekend of ruined projects...it got better!

I had a bunch of days in a row where one thing would work, and the next step went horribly wrong. This was quite annoying. Things were melted, solder went everywhere it wasn't supposed to, and I learned that the purple 2-part silicone mold putty from Rio doesn't make great molds. Good thing I bought some green Castaldo putty. I now have three molds that are ready to use!

As a side note, for some reason I am better at mixing the stuff at home than I am at work. I'm thinking it may be the temperature difference, or maybe it's just a matter of having more practice. Either way, I'm very glad to not be screwing up that end of things.

Only 19 days until I have to be ready to display, speaking of which...don't have a display figured out. I guess I'm winging that on the last week. I'm surprisingly not stressed, and have all of my lower end beadwork/enamel pieces finished. I found three enamel panels from school while cleaning and organizing the studio, and figured they were worth putting out there. I'm hoping that the beaded pieces will sell and help me fund the metalsmithing. I really would rather put my focus on metalsmithing, however the beading was kind of a nice relaxing activity. Time will tell. Here are a couple pictures of the enamel and beadwork necklaces:

Vitreous enamel on pierced copper, sterling silver findings, vintage German glass beads, amazonite & apatite

Agate, glass & hematite