bracelets

hand forged sterling components, Murano glass

Hand forged sterling, Murano glass

A little bit of this and that....

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Jo Really Rocks Jewelry

Rosalita models necklaces

In memory of my beautiful Frankie, 9/30/02-3/2/11

back in business

After a week away for Joe and Kate's wedding, another week of chaos as I emptied my work room while Mike put in new windows, painted, put together my new workbench and sanded the floors; a wonderful weekend visit from the newlyweds; a frantic search for a missing knurled nut, the tiny piece on my tumbler that enables it to do its spinning job, I've finally got things in order. Sort of. Replaced nut, thank you UPS, uncovered design notebook and best of all uncovered all the pieces I had been working on. A way over the top copper "charm" bracelet, all the charms are freeform dangles I made from copper sheet metal, tubing, wire of various gauges while listening to the Flaming Lips. Over and over and over. Not quite done with bracelet, I still need to make the clasp and give it a tumble but I'm feeling good. I moved an old chair into my room and sat back to take it all in. Nice. Akira, your old black room is now pale buttery yellow.

A little explanation

My jewelry creations began with a love of rocks. Next came the thought: why keep a pile of rocks in my pocket if I could wear them around my neck in a fashion that pleased me. One day I woke up thinking that I wanted to make every component, every finding for each piece of jewelry, from the clasps to the ear wires to the chains. Give me any metal, any gauge, shape or size, and I would create something with it. What an optimist. I started ordering copper, brass, sterling, in wire, sheets, rods, tubes. I bought a metal puncher so I could punch out my own disks from the sheeting. I got a dapper to dome the pieces I pierced and sawed into abstract shapes. A tube bender I found was a great discovery. The UPS guy got to be my friend. I checked out every book on metalsmithing from the library I could find. We've got a great online library system here. I ordered so many books that a little message popped up telling me I was over my limit. So I sneaked into the bedroom, took my husband's library card and continued checking out books under his name. An obsession of sorts. Definitely should have mentioned what I did when he came home about a week later with a pile of over 30 books.