Pin Swap

So, for my first pin swap at SNAG, I took Scrabble letters and gave them pinbacks. I sued Expoxy, but I did not mix it right and the backs fell off! oops! On top of the letters, I took paper from an old book. It was a color book written in Italian. I ripped out some pages, rolled them in gel medium to make them stiff. Then, I sprayed them with some spray paint to give them contrast. I did not love them, but I did not hate them. I did trade for a lot of beautiful pins! At first, I was intimidated and nervous to go up to others and ask to trade pins. After a while, it did not seem like a big deal. A few of the girls I spoke to said it was their first time at SNAG as well. I felt silly though because I did not have cards to go with my pins. I made a mental note about that so I have them for next year. Overall, it was a fun experience. People used all sorts of materials. Some used metal, others sewed theirs, used plastic, crayons, toilet paper.....there were a lot of recycled materials used. They all turned out very nice, and I am happy that i participated in the pin swap.

HOUSTON!

Well, as you know the SNAG conference was held in Houston, Texas! It was great! I was going to upload my photos but.........



Our flight got overbooked. We got the boot. Now we are stuck in Houston until Tuesday! .....awesome.

Not excited on that.

See you Wednesday Junior Studio!

so close

Everyday this weekend I came to the studio after work. I was in the studio until midnight or so. Considering my silver was still in sheet form on wednesday, I believe I got pretty far. I am almost finished with it. Now I just need to do the box clasp. I changed a lot of my idea back to the original sketch. I added a hinge and allowed for movement.

more etching...

On Wednesday, I took full advantage of the dental tools and carved into the Ashphaltum. With my topic for this project being Graffiti crews and gangs, I chose to recreate some of the typical symbols you see in graffiti. Clearly, I am no graffiti artist, however I am happy with the turn out.

After letting the silver sit in the Nitric Acid bath, the etch turned out nicely. It was fairly deep and my lines looked decent. I did not photograph the silver in that stage though. Now, the silver has been formed into eight different cylinder shapes. I hope to solder them all together tonight and create well crafted ends to my chain.

ETCHING!

I also started the Etching process on Monday as well. I used Ashphaltum on my silver as the resist. Tonight I will begin carving into it. I have some dental tools I can use, and I may or may not make a stencil of the drawing as well. I drew up some graffiti symbols...typical arrows and bubbly shapes. Then this piece of silver is going to be cut into small rectangles and formed into cylinders. I still have a lot to do!

Project One

For the first project, I decided to do one of the etruscan chains, however, I chose the single loop rather than the double loop. After a few hours of work, I came out with an 18 inch chain. Luckily enough, I only have one break I did not catch right away. The rest all turned out pretty well. Tomorrow I am going to put it through the draw plate.