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(l-r) Antje, Raili, Mindaugus, Katrin going gaga over Antje's new neckpiece...
yes, that's pink silicon, with fake diamonds and a chain of beautiful green hemimorphite beads. From my bro's experience, I know that in Stratocaster world that colour is known as "foam green"
ooh la la, I love it.
but just a little bit different.
I posted images of these in progress so here are the finished pieces
I'm a bit proud of the catch so I thought I'd share the detail with you...
and a couple of other things that have been appearing on my bench...
bye for now
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Here are a few more matryoshka rings...
I figure it's better to pass through Aussie customs with 200 matryoshka onion rings than 20 whole matryoshkas!
and here's another neck piece
this one is made from a 'red indian' doll. (I'm aware that that's the incorrect term).
And this is something I will miss when I leave...
electric rolling mills. sigh.
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Yes, I've been catching up. And don't be fooled by the date change, it's set to Australian time! 6 posts here and 2 over at Garage Sailor
All you jewellers out there might be interested in this.
This is the stamp of the Eesti Kunstiakadeemia or the Estonian Academy of Art. All the student work is stamped with this stamp. This was not my experience at art school in Australia.
Also... Hallmarking can only be done by a licensed hallmarker! So unless you sit the rigorous test to become a hallmarker, in Estonia you are not allowed to stamp your work with a 925 or carat stamp! You get in trouble if you do. You can go to prison. You can send your work to get tested by the hallmarker and then stamped but if you're like me and you fly by the seat of your pants at the last minute, I'd never, ever be organised enough to get this done. This practice seems a bit archaic to me but maybe it's common. I'd love to hear from jewellers from other countries (I know you're out there reading this, I see it in my stat-counter) as to what the practice is elsewhere.
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The jewellery department organised a workshop in printing photos on metal. It's the same process as when you print photos on watercolour paper by painting emulsion on the paper
That is the first time I've developed a photo! It's fun, but complicated, although I'm sure it gets easier. The stripey effect is because we used the dooverwacky to determine the appropriate exposure time.
We had some trouble with putting the emulsion on the metal as a paintbrush leaves a nice effect on paper but it doesn't look any good on metal. So we tried dobbing it on but that left bubbles...
That was my one and only attempt (on silver) but you can see that the process has possibilities. When I get back I'm gonna hassle my photographer friends to help me get it right. Some of the students experimented further and on different materials and got patchy results but I think that was because all the chemicals were starting to turn bad (what do they say about people who blame their tools?) You can see some successful examples here, they're the two images that look like bottles in the middle row.
Anyway, the resulting surface appears pretty strong but I reckon it would work best on fine silver as I'm not sure whether the emulsion would protect the metal from tarnishing. The detail is pretty amazing too.
you can read the text printed on the window and see the individual branches on the tree! That image is 55 x 37 mm
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