I have been busy crafting again! I went on an unofficial hiatus while applying to graduate school. But now I am back, with a vengeance! Olympia's Artswalk is coming up April 21st, which means Craft x NW returns to Washington St. downtown! Which in turn means that I need to hustle to get enough new stuff for my booth!
Working on creating a stronger "brand" has been hard because I just want to create original pieces everytime! BUT I am working toward having a few "lines" of similar designs for both my warmer accessories and my glass pendants.
I've decided to pare down legwarmers to a few set designs that can become "calling cards". As I said this is so hard, I love making new designs and have a fickle habit of picking random favorites at any given time... So you may not see some new local icons on legs around town just yet...
My glass pendants on the other hand have started to carve their own little niche. I have continued making pin-up pendants, started making many more lace pendants and have just started experimenting with natural materials like pressed flowers, moss, bark etc. It's all a big personal journey for me, and who knows in the end I may just continue creating on a whim, simply to satisfy my creative bug!
Any way this is a long, long intro to my post about soldering! So here comes the meat!
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| I start out by choosing the textile/image/specimen for the pendant. |
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| I then cut the micro-thin glass down to the right size using a glass cutter. |
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| Next I frame the piece between the custom cut glass. |
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| After sandwiching the piece I cut a piece of copper wire to fit the perimeter of the glass. |
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| After the pendant is completely wrapped comes the hard (and hard to photograph...) part, soldering. After applying "Flux", a copper conditioning chemical that makes the copper ready to solder onto, I clip the pendant into a "third-hand" contraption that holds the piece while I solder. I carefully solder the piece by melting the silver alloy lead-free solder onto the copper tape. I use pliers and a little juggling to attach the jump rings, clean the flux off and voila. |
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| This |
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| Into This! | Look for more blog posts soon! <3 Trista |
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I have been busy crafting again! I went on an unofficial hiatus while applying to graduate school. But now I am back, with a vengeance! Olympia's Artswalk is coming up April 21st, which means Craft x NW returns to Washington St. downtown! Which in turn means that I need to hustle to get enough new stuff for my booth!
I've decided to pare down legwarmers to a few set designs that can become "calling cards". As I said this is so hard, I love making new designs and have a fickle habit of picking random favorites at any given time... So you may not see some new local icons on legs around town just yet...
My glass pendants on the other hand have started to carve their own little niche. I have continued making pin-up pendants, started making many more lace pendants and have just started experimenting with natural materials like pressed flowers, moss, bark etc. It's all a big personal journey for me, and who knows in the end I may just continue creating on a whim, simply to satisfy my creative bug!
