Totally Stoked

I follow Beaducation's blog. Lisa Niven Kelly, the founder of Beaducation, wrote the book Stamped Metal Jewelry. The book is supposed to come out July 12th. She's done a couple giveaways on her blog and I just happened to win one of them. My book came today in the mail. It also came with an instructional DVD and they threw in a tape measure too. Can't wait to check out my book and DVD!

I also recently purchased this Wirework book by Dale "Cougar" Armstrong at JoAnn's. She's an amazing jewelry artist. You can buy her books, DVD's, and I believe you can sign up for her classes on the Wire Sculpture website.

Ooh...the colors!

This is probably my favorite one so far.

I think it needs no explanation. So here's some eye candy for you...

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

And this one is sure to shine with this hammered look.

I absolutely love this necklace. I haven't even tapped into the vast amount of things I can do with metal stamping yet. I've just barely started, and so I'm still practicing on copper. I love the look of copper, but thinking about Sterling Silver pendants like The Vintage Pearl has just makes me giddy. And when you layer copper AND sterling silver, my head just starts to spin!

So, the star is complete with a sterling silver jump ring and 18in. sterling silver 1.5mm(tiny) ball chain!

Things I like:

1. I put my initial on it. This may sound silly, but I don't think I have ever had a necklace with my initial on it in my entire life and I always wanted one. But names, dates, and other design stamps work too.

2. The hammered look.

3. I domed the star.

Things I don't like:

1. You see the R? Can you tell my stamp bounced? That is why it is important to have a good hard work surface. My steel block was on my card table that has kind of a padded top.

2. The hammered look. I know I said that I like this part, and I do. But when I started hammering it, I realized that the dimples were too small for what I wanted and liked. Next time I will use my bigger ball pein hammer.

Look what I've been up to!

I've been getting me hands dirty...literally, learning how to do metal stamping. And I'm having a blast. I've been practicing on copper, because Sterling Silver is MUY EXPENSIVO! But I did make one disk out of the nice stuff and it turned out pretty well. On this first one, the O is a little crooked.

I really wanted to put this cute little quote on one, so it's a good thing I practiced with copper first. You see, i accidentally put the L too low, so I decided to just do that sort of thing with the rest of it. Maybe you like it, and some people really do like it that way (a very non-chalant kind of thing), but I'm really into straight lines. I hardly ever make "informal" beaded jewelry as it's called in the jewelry world.

Well, practice makes perfect. This is fun!