Charms for Baltimore ACC show

    This will probably be my last post before heading for Baltimore and the ACC show there.  I've been working on charms for the show.  I think I mentioned that they have a special promotion for the jewelers who want to participate by making a "mini-collection" of charms and pieces incorporating charms.  I've made several pieces, and these are the 2 I like best.  The first is a charm bracelet with charms that combine my oxidized silver tubes with gemstones.  #2 is a necklace, just using the tubes. I've also made several loose charms, because I think one of the most interesting things about the promotion is that the show people will create and sell pieces (charm bracelets, necklaces, whatever) that incorporate charms from several artists.  I think that sounds interesting.
      If any of you are in the Baltimore area next weekend (Feb 20-22) come check out the show.  It's at the Baltimore Convention Center, down town.  I'm in booth 501, and I'd love to show you my work.

scaffold with dangles

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that I'm playing around with charms for  the Baltimore ACC show coming up in February.  I'm finding I like them a lot.  My work, being so structural, tends to be relatively inflexible.  Mostly I like that, but it's interesting how adding things that dangle freely softens it up.  This necklace is a good example.  I made a very architectural scaffold-ish piece.  Particularly in the darkened sterling it has the feel of a bridge truss or cell phone tower or something of the sort.  But when you add the tear-drop shaped dangles it changes it completely, especially with the amazonite beads adding color..  It reminds me a bit of the great pieces that the artist Emiko Oke makes, using lego blocks to build Tiffany-esque  necklaces.
  I have just one technical problem with it, and with charms in general.  I find that you can't use open jump rings at the top of a beaded charm.  Eventually it will move in such a way that the thread get up against the opening in the ring, and it will pass through the opening, because it's just thread.  You have to use closed rings.  Ditto for a ring attached to a necklace structure.  In the pieces I've made so far for the charm program I've attached the charms to oxidized silver links that I've made. They have open circles at each end, so I can slip the closed rings at the top of the charms into the open circles and close them up.  But I wanted to attach them to one of my truss structures.  Ideally you'd have a closed ring attached to the necklace and it would interlock with a closed ring on the charm.  But obviously 2 closed rings can't interlock unless you use an open jump ring between them, and I think that's too long a chain of rings.  If I could solder, I could link 2 rings together and then solder them closed, but I don't have the equipment or the skill to do that.  In this piece I used a single closed ring that's sewn at the top to the necklace and at the bottom to the charm, but it doesn't dangle quite as freely as I'd like.  I think what I'm going to do is reattach the charms to the rings, but I'll add a single bead ( here a 3mm oxidized silver ball) at the top of the charm so the thread coming from the charm will pass through that first, and then to the ring.  I think that will let it dangle better.
 

Charms

    I have a new project going.  I'm going to be showing my jewelry at the Baltimore ACC show next February.  They are doing a promotion around charms.  If you want to participate you have to commit to make, at a minimum. certain specified pieces.  For example, a charm bracelet, a necklace with a cluster of charms grouped at the bottom,  some loose charms, etc.  Then they do a certain amount of promotion, not relevant here, around charms.  It seemed ideal for my work, although, I've never made charms as such. 
   Anyway, ever since I signed up, I've been playing with making charms, as they need images of the work next month.  Some of them will be geometric structures made of tubes,  but I wanted to play with ways to mix gemstone beads with the tube structures.  These are what I've come up with so far.
   One thing that is inspiring me is I picture I look at from time to time in an old American Craft magazine from 2011.  It was about the glass school at Pilchuck, in Washington, and it had pictures of work of lots of glass artists who have been associated with Pilchuck over the years.  The one that interested me was a picture of vessels by Dante Marioni.  In it he had set himself some tight parameters. The vessels were all roughly the same size and were all made of clear glass with black glass trim.  But within those limits he had made over 150 vessels, each different from all the others and all interesting.  It sort of made me think of a Chopin etude, which is a piece you use to practice a technique, but that doesn't stop it from being beautiful.
  Anyway, I have lots more charms to make, but this is where I'm headed.