Turquoise and crazy lace agate - yum.

Here's a photograph of my table when I caught it unawares friday morning. I always think that, just perhaps, it will have miraculously cleaned itself during the night. Looking at it now, it actually looks spotless compared to how I left it last night. If I were good, I would keep back ten minutes at the end of each session to pick up for the next day ... 


nah.

So, from this table came these.

I'm quite liking the third one.

Here's a little of how I did it.


I make the bezel collar first with my new found love - plain bezel sheet. (I know, I'm slow to the party).

Then I trace around it and sketch out my design. This way I can keep putting the stone back on the drawing to give me a better feel for how it will look.

Love the sketching bit.


Now, this stuff is really handy as once I've finished my sketch I can then trace it onto this clear contact paper. I got mine from Hobby Lobby. I'm not sure if this link will work but on their site they call it magic cover. If you google magic cover it comes up with all that shelf covering vinyl stuff - that's not it, although, this is clearly handy if you need to cover a shelf. The stuff I'm talking about is a clear, sticky on one side, film and comes in a huge roll. (It probably comes in sheets but I couldn't find any at the time I needed it so now I have enough to share with everyone in the whole world.)

I then simply stick the tracing onto the silver sheet and saw around it.

Be warned. If you forget to take the film off and start to solder stuff onto it, you have to cough badly and squeeze your eyes shut tight as there will be lots of not good fumes. (Not that I've done that.)


Next I soldered the bezel collar onto the base plate - sans sticky film stuff.

Probably way too much solder here but I forgive myself as I'm still trying to perfect this skill.

This is the bale that I thought I wanted to put on it, and I still like it, but, just to keep things fresh, I mixed it up a bit and changed my mind.

Then I got excited and forgot to take photographs of how I variegated the bezel to fit around the awkwardness of the stone and added the little balls. Sorry.


But I did put it on one of my favourite chains and remembered to photograph it at the end, if that helps any.

The other two are still waiting for their chains.


So those three were made on friday and yesterday I made these.

I'm not a hundred percent sure about the big one, but, on the whole I think my bezels are getting better, so I'm happy with that. That big round stone is gorgeous. It's Australian Crazy Lace Agate. Beautiful


sunday notes:
yesterday i finally got around to cleaning the bathroom, so then I just had to have a bath. it's like when you've just cleaned the litter tray and the cats simply have to use it. drives me nuts but now i get it. the draw is impossible to resist. 
today i'm probably going back out to the studio. sometimes i just get too into it all to stay away.