Work Is Never Done

Here's a photo I took this morning that shows some of the ceramic pendants I've been making. I may not have time to convert them all into necklaces by next week, but it occurs to me that I can still display them. I'm going to be demonstrating how they are made, so it would make sense to have a lot of them.

I spent the day today making five more necklaces like the ones shown in yesterday's entry. I was going to stay and work for another several hours, but I'm out of ideas for now. It's nice though to be "forced" to sit here with strands of beads and come up with various combinations to make necklaces. There are several that I never would have come up with if I had been restricted to certain strands and a sort of ancient, ethnic look. I have created some that are sort of tribal looking and some that are much more polished looking, and some that are fairly contemporary with a suggestion of the Mediterraean.

Some time ago, Jon agreed to construct a vertical tank for my etching plates. It will make the process much easier for me. He finished awhile back and has been testing it by adding water to it, to make sure it doesn't leak. When I was etching copper bracelets, I discovered that as long as the piece is in the ferric chloride in a vertical or slightly more than vertical position, the copper being etched away will drop down into the tank.

In the past, I've been forced to place the copper piece face down in the solution and put little balls of masking tape at various points to keep it from sitting directly on the bottom. That worked well as long as the etched lines had enough open places between them to attach the masking tape. But if I wanted to etch something with an overall pattern, there was no place to put the tape. One person told me she glues styrofoam to the back of the plate and that causes it to float on the surface of the etching solution. I've been saving my foam, but that seem rather complicated as well. I'd have to find some good glue.

After the opening of the museum next week, I'll go back to enameling and etching. One thing I've been doing is putting clear enamel over pieces of etched copper. It drops down into the lines. Also, if I don't sprinkle the enamel on too thickly, some of the copper begins to oxidize, creating patches of gree coloring which I like. So many things to try.