By chance I’m following the YOJ theme again this week, which is “Complementary Colours”.  Ruby can be found in combination with several other metamorphic stones, namely fuschite and thulite, but my favourite is ruby in zoisite.  I picked up this cab, with its rich wine red and splash of sparkly green, at the Toronto Gem Show last year.

I’m a minimalist where bezel setting stones is concerned.  Time and again,  I have avoided the “frilly” and cage-like settings for which wirework tends to be known in favour of something simpler that lets the stone take centre stage.

There’s something about each stone I buy that has really attracted me.  This is one that begs to be held and stroked.  It has a very calming energy that makes it an excellent touchstone for meditation.  I’ve left the back of the stone open so that it can be closer to the skin when worn.

Ocean Jasper Pendant (2010)
Sterling silver, fine silver, ocean jasper
Constructed, cold-joined
L 5.4 cm x W 3.0

I’m in production mode, building up some stock, and that means digging through my stash of stones.  I came across this ocean jasper, which I bought last year from a fellow member of the International Guild of Wire Jewelry Artists.

I’m not normally an ocean jasper fan, but every time I look at this cab, I see celestial clouds and galaxies.  It draws me in, and I can imagine that I’m looking into the vastness of outer space. This is a really special stone.

Generally, my preference when setting is to leave as much of the surface exposed as possible. I also tend to favour the more substantial, heavier bezels achieved by doing binding wrapping all around the stone.  It would have been easiest with a straight prong setting, but I wanted to add the beads to create some visual interest.  They are structural in that they act almost like prongs, holding the stone, but they also add beautiful decoration.

Corners are challenging to get tight, and I’m happy to have managed a secure fit around these.  I don’t have a lot of experience setting stones with points – most of the time the stones I deal with are round, oval or teardrop shaped.

I’m undecided if I should hang this on a viking knit chain, or on a strand of ocean jasper beads. Thoughts anyone?

All in all, I’m very pleased with how this turned out.  Even my husband, who has a decided bias towards using a torch, likes the setting – very high praise indeed!

More photos:

Okay, so life fell apart for me two months ago, and I’m just starting to recover.  I have not been making much new jewellery, but I am going to still try to keep up with the YOJ postings.

I got this purple jade cabochon through a Bead Box swap several years ago.  Those Bead Boxes were lots of fun:  the idea was to put in things from your stash that you weren’t using and swap them for beads that other people had put in from their stash.  I was the Bead Box Mama who organized the whole shebang for Bead Box North, which traveled around Canada and the Northern US.  It was a lot of work, but every time the box arrived on my doorstep, it was like Christmas Day!  I managed to keep it going for about three years.

Purple is my favourite colour, and I’m always drawn to it.  For this pendant, I wanted to work with the same sort of weaving I did on the Moonrise pendant, but on this smaller cab.  Well… the cab’s shape proved to be quite a challenge:  getting the wire to fit around the pointed ends was very tricky.  After multiple attempts to get a pendant that hung lengthwise, I gave up and set the stone sideways.  It ends up looking a bit like a genie bottle

Other views:

I’m pleased to announce that my newest tutorial, Art Nouveau Bangle, is now available!

This bangle features lovely flowing curves and Celtic elements that were common in the Art Nouveau period.

The project was a big hit with my students at the Haliburton School of the Arts! Once you have the basic technique down, you can easily adapt the design and let your creativity flow to create your own variations!

16 pages, 103 photos, 110 steps, plus design notes
USD $15.00

Level of Difficulty: Advanced

Tools and Materials you’ll need:

Tools:
Flat Nose Pliers
Round Nose Pliers
Flush Cutting Wire Nippers
Permanent Marker
Measuring Tape/Ruler
Bracelet Mandrel
Penknife
1/4″ dia. Masking Tape
Rouge Cloth

Materials:
96″ (240 cm) 20 ga Soft Square Silver wire
69″ (175 cm) 22 ga Half Round Silver wire
22 x 30 mm cabochon

Substitutions:
22 ga Soft Square Silver wire can be substituted for the 20 ga. wire.

Available from my tutorials page and my Etsy Shop.

Over the next couple of days I’ll be posting the work produced by my students in Wire Jewellery 1 and 2, but for this week’s YOJ entry, I’m posting my teaching sample of the AN Cab Bangle.  This project ended up being quite challenging for the students and took an entire day for the class to complete.  That was something I hadn’t anticipated, so there’s going to be a scheduling adjustment for next year’s class.  What really impressed me was that everyone showed a lot of persistence in doing the project, which had a few tricky steps in it.  One lady, Janice, was so determined to do it – despite how much it was frustrating her – that she refused any suggestion by me to modify it to something simpler.  That caused me to joke that she was channeling her inner German:  “I VILL complete zis bracelet!”  The class cracked up laughing.

The next day, Janice came to class proudly showing off the bracelet, which she had attempted again on her own at home.  She said that she’d found the instructions very clear and easy to follow.  She had every right to be proud:  her bracelet had turned out beautifully!

Although it’s supposed to be a calming stone, I’ve always found bloodstone to have a kind of overpowering “in-your-face” energy that’s difficult to deal with.  For the last few weeks, though, I’ve been wearing it while working on my tutorials, and it’s been helpful for keeping my energy levels up and focused.  I love the red spotting on this cab, and the slight yellow cloud overlaying the green.  This was part of a group of cabs I bought when The Nautilus closed 10 years ago.  The Nautilus was *the* place in Toronto to buy rockhounding and lapidary supplies.  Located in the far, far east of the city, I remember it taking an obscenely long time to get there on city transit from where I lived in Little India.  But what a treasure trove!  The owner, Roy MacLeod, was a passionate rockhound and filled his store with all the bits and bobs needed to work with and admire rocks.  Sadly, Roy didn’t live to see the millennium, and the closing of his store left a void that still hasn’t been filled.

In designing the Level II course for Haliburton, I was thinking about what skills would be most useful for the students to learn.  In Level I, they learn the basics:  working with single wires, developing dexterity with tools, etc.  There are very few multi-wire projects.  In Level II all but two of the projects are multi-wire pieces, and the students have to deal with doing steps early on that don’t actually come into full use until much later in the construction. Wire control becomes very important.

One of the things Level II focuses on is settings:  half of the projects deal with some form of stone setting.

I think this is by far the most complex of the projects I’ll be teaching.  Hopefully by the time we get to this point in the course, the students will have enough confidence to tackle it.  If not, it’s easily adapted to something simpler.  I’ll let them decide how energetic they want to be.

This tutorial will be available for purchase and download off my website after I get back from Haliburton.  I’ll post the link when it’s up, along with more photos.

As I was staring down the finish, wondering whether or not all the stress was worth the effort, I developed an earworm – a song that plays over and over in your head and won’t stop.  I kept hearing a Peter Gabriel lyric:  “Don’t Give Up, Please don’t give up…”  My spirit cheerleaders were encouraging me to keep me going, pushing me to work through the pain and the feelings of exhaustion and futility.  I’m very proud of myself for pulling through.  When I dropped the piece off, I commented to the organizer that getting it done was my reward:  if it actually made it into the exhibition, I would consider it a bonus.  (I found out tonight that the piece wasn’t accepted for exhibition, but did make it to the final round in the selection process.)

I’m paying for all the pressure now though:  for days I’ve been alternating between exhaustion, nausea, heartburn, loss of appetite, and gastrointestinal distress.  Throw in a runny nose and lots of sneezing, and we have a recipe for Not Wanting To Do Anything.

Snowflake Obsidian Bangle (2009)
Sterling silver, snowflake obsidian
Constructed, cold joined
20.32 cm dia.

Luckily, I had made the setting for this obsidian a few weeks ago while doing prep for my class in July.  I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it, so I left it sitting on the bench.  Tonight, I whipped off a simple bangle to go with it.  It’s about all I can manage.

I’ll post photos of the competition piece next week when I get it back.