Ring makin'

Sometimes you're really lucky in life.

I'm lucky because 1) I'm good with my hands and 2) I have very good friends who love to share their wisdom of making things with me.

So tonight I had the pleasure of hanging out with one of my dearest buds, DD. DD and I have been trying to organize a jewelry making night for quite some time now, so finally tonight, with the moon not particularly shining brightly over head, and the stars aligned just right, and the schedule prepared just so, in spite of the very scary elements that are rain sleet snow and ice, DD and I were finally able to make jewelry night happen. Tuesday. Who knew?

We had all the ingredients necessary for a good night of crafting, namely the cabernet I brought over. DD has a wonderful little jewelry studio that he created in a loft space above his garage. I'm a craft nerd so I was very much impressed. We began with an introduction to the studio, he showed me all the tools and all of the things we'd be using to make my ring.

This is a picture of my ring after I cut and shaped it. We attempted to solder it the first time but to no avail. I have never used a torch before to do anything, so this was all very exciting to me, even if unsuccessful. At one point, the ring was a pink hot mess that was near collapse, but we were able to bring it back to life and tried once more, and, success!

So after we gave it a good cooking and got the solder to actually melt, we threw it into some sort of chemical bath for a few minutes. When it came out, it looked like this white plastic piece of crap on the ring measurer.

So then I hammered the shit out of it and it turned all beautiful and silvery again. Like most of my art work, I never start things out with a real idea of what its going to look like, so I had no idea that I was going to end up with a hammered metal ring. But this picture shows the ring at its final size, alls I need to do is soften and file the edges, buff, clean, blah blah blah. As you can see on my fingers, I ended up with a lot of fine silver dust all over me. It made me feel very special and expensive. Seriously! I was like a glittering, silvery goddess in there. You couldn't even look at me straight on.

3 hours after the beginning of the process, I had an amazing, beautiful little sterling silver ring, made completely to suit my right ring finger. Right's got a new ring, and she's all sorts of ecstatic.

But I don't want to take too much credit, not because I'm humble or anything, but because DD is an awesome, AWESOME teacher and did a great job explaining the process. DD only began making jewelry this past fall and is very obviously a natural at it. I've seen a lot of the things that he has made and its really very beautiful stuff. Anyone who is willing to go out and create a little sanctuary of a space to make work in is a pretty serious crafter, and the fact that he is really really good at it just makes him tops in my book. Plus, he's a very thorough, patient and skilled teacher, and I'm grateful that he was willing to take me under his wing tonight and help me make a really neat ring.

So lets all lift our glasses, be them coffee mugs, tea cups, wine glasses, tin cups filled with whiskey, vodka tonics, what ever, and toast to DD.