Rings and Sun Jars

So today finally came! Today was my chance to attend Katharine's This Ring Thing class at Kaimuki Bead It! It was awesome and I had soo much fun! Then again, I enjoy Katharine's classes... Either way, I had a great time and I came out with some pretty neat rings... and a lot of extra material to play with... hehe.

So first up for this post are my two rings.  The first is just a simple flat wire ring with some lettered stamping.

The second is a plain band of the flat silver wire with a sterling silver key charm soldered onto it... It's a "key ring"... hehe.. yah... I went there...

I need to get better lighting when I take my pictures cuz this really ain't cutting it...

Next up is the sun jar I put together a few days ago.  I dismantled one of the garden lights I bought in a six pack and used the "guts".  I sawed through the plastic baseboard, but kept the battery holder intact.  There's even a convenient on/off switch. Sadly, the wiring ran through all layers of the light, so before I could remove all of the casing, i had to desolder the vast majority of the wiring.  Once that was done though, it was a lot of fun to change whatever I wanted. Though, the only thing I really changed was switching out the white LED for a blue one.  Anyway, I won't go into any more detail than that, but the bottle I used was a cheap one I found at Ross. It's not my first... or even 5th choice, but it was all I could find at 8:30 PM on a Thursday...

 List of modifications;
1) Rounded light diffuser.
2) Smaller jar or bigger diffuser.
3) Better spray job on the frosting spray. (you can't see it from this picture, but it's actually really uneven and wavy.

Anyway, that's all for now! I have to work on a gift for my sister and fix up the one for my brother.

busy busy

Let's see, I guess I'll just keep this short, even though it's been a while.  I've been rather busy lately... School's started up again so that's a whole load of things to take care of... on top of that there's work and I keep finding more things to involve myself with. It's been fun though so I'm not complaining.  Aside from all that normal stuff though, I'm very excited that this weekend I'll finally be attending the Bead It class for ring making. I believe it's called "This Ring Thing". I'm not so jazzed about the name, but I get the marketing behind it... Real excited for this one since I get to work with Katharine again! In the mean time though, I've been practicing making a sailor's chain, otherwise known as a pinched loop chain.  I've been practicing the technique in copper to save myself the drain of.. you know... buying silver... It looks ok as copper, but I'm using silver solder so it looks kinda odd.  Oh well, once things get settled, I'll put out this puppy in silver and have me a new bracelet (or necklace. haven't decided yet... Although I guess I could attach it to something... like a pocket watch... and go steam punk with it...)

On the tinkerer/maker side of things, I've been obsessed with fabricating my own sun jars! I found a few instructables and I've been hooked. It took me a while to track down all of the components (and despite how much it chapped my ass, I finally got around to paying for a soldering iron... and desoldering tool... from radioshack... I know, probably not the best I could have done, but hey I'm on a budget and they worked just fine...) I spent the better part of the night getting the last few materials I needed and about 3 hours actually making my first one.  I started with a solar powered garden light I got in a six pack from Lowes, but the things are so darn bulky I had to dismantle about 10 screws and some excess copper and plastic.  I do have some plans for that copper, so don't worry. I don't think I can repurpose the plastic since I had to saw through parts of it, but hey, I tried... Anyway, I had to desolder then resolder about 18 times to get everything out of the case and then make sure all the connections worked alright. Massive pain in my... hand... but it warmed me up for replacing the LED.  I had picked up an assorted pack of yellow, red, green and what may be white LEDs (must test these later as they could end up being blue, purple or shooting out rainbows for all I know...), two UV LEDs, and a single blue LED, so I soldered on the blue one just to see if I could do it. Wouldn't you know it, the damn thing actually worked when I was done.  Of course, I had to test it with an actual battery since the rechargeable one hadn't been left in the sun, but that's a worry for later.  Anyway, I hot glued everything into a frosted (with spray paint glass frost) plastic canister with metal and plastic seal and voila! First home made sun jar! It's drying outside right now so I'll have to check it tomorrow once i let it charge up a bit.  Hopefully I didn't damage the solar panel... Guess we'll just have see.

Anyway, that's about it for the day.  I have so many other things I want to build/make/solder/construct/redesign that my brain feels like it's going to bust!

Next on my list of projects:
-silver rings
-sailor's chain in silver
-figaro style silver bracelet
-assorted colors of sun jars and different colored designs
-steampunk-ing some USB flash drives
AND FINALLY (I know, when the hell am I going to study??? O_o")
-start casting resin!

P.S. Pictures to come once I've got a few more sun jars going (and have them charged...)

Rain and Fire

So this weather has been doing some weird things to my plants.  It was raining so hard the past few days that it made the soil jump out of the pots.  When the weather stabilizes, I'll add more soil to the pots.  Hopefully they aren't in shock or anything.

On the bright side, I splurged a little and bout a few new tools.  I now have a steel and nylon hammering block, a pair of  pretty good quality cutting pliers, a small chasing hammer (ball-peen), a junk pair of flat pliers (for picking up fired objects to quench) and a short length of 12 gauge sterling silver wire.  Let me tell you, even with a discount, that wire was expensive.  I'm all for buying local, but ouch. I got so anxious, I ran home and soldered together a few rings just for fun.  They don't look very good, but it sure took the edge off of my craving to work with metal again.  I showed my friend Matt how the general process works, but I guess coordination with a torch isn't a natural thing for everyone. In my "down time" while we were talking, I tried my hand at "forging" a short piece of silver wire.  Earlier that day, I had talked to Amanda, one of the girls who works at Bead It, and she said I could give it a try if I wanted a thicker banded ring. It was actually pretty fun, but because I was working with such a short length of wire, I slammed my fingers one too many times.  What resulted was a slightly thicker band than I had achieved with my 12 gauge wire, but very very thin.  I would post pictures, but I can't find the charger for my camera, and I don't get very good definition with my phone.

While running around on the internet, I came across Bead Gallery Honolulu, a shop near Ward. I really want to check it out. As much as I love Bead It and the people there, I am dying to make as many connections as I can and of course, find new stuff to play with.  In my browsing, I also came across firemountaingems.com. It has tons of supplies and tools and at really good prices.  It gets even cheaper if you buy massive quantities of stuff, but how many sets of files do I really need? I haven't ordered anything yet, but once Christmas passes, I may go a bit nuts on ordering materials.

New Equipment

Although I should have been studying for my finals, I stopped by Bead It! Kaimuki on the way home from work.  I'm so happy to finally have had the chance to use that 25% off coupon I got in the mail. I picked up a hand torch, bench block, solder block and metal ring mandrel and I ended up only spending $100. I know that's still a lot of money, but still, 25% off is a sweet deal.

The beginning

So I finally caved and started this thing.  This will be the record book of all the things I make and grow. Hopefully I can get things in order soon and take pictures so I can have a base point of all the plants I have growing.