I can't believe that for my first class with B'sue (and yeah, that's my mom and high time we did this!) I finished this set of jewelry.
Let me tell you all about it:
I stood there and looked at all the parts we had chosen to work with. Brass guitar picks, hands, and some bases and vintage chain. At this point I didn't have a clue where I was going to go with all of these pieces, all I knew is the we needed to embellish them.
The first thing we did was give the necklace base some texture with our texture hammers. Hitting things with a hammer is a good way to start because it wakes you up, and you are so glad when you are finished hitting the piece you can admire your work as well as the fact that you are no longer cringing from loud banging noises!
This is actually the back of my piece but you will see the front soon! We eyeballed the spot for the rivet hole wrong, so as you can see we had to re-drill it. But oh well! Its my first piece. You won't be able to see that from the front.
Once we decided what side we were going to use to build upon, we used the good old center punch and rivet setter. These are tools I am used to packing and selling pretty much every day, but I have almost no experience using them, so now I had a new perspective.
After torching the brass until it was all dark and rusty looking we used some swellegant patina and we finally had some really cool distressed pieces. Even though some of the parts looked finished, I was far from done!
I needed a focal point, something that wouldn't only stand out, but something that could mean something to somebody. Something had a bit of culture to it, as well as went along with the distressed look of the brass.
I looked at some bottle caps and there it was! A unique RT 66 soda bottle cap! I never knew they made such a thing. I liked the bottle cap because it had all of the above things that I wanted to find in a focal point.
Everyone in the states recognizes the 'RT 66" road sign as well as the "get your kicks" folk rock flavoring to it. Furthermore the distressed look of the brass reminded me a bit of a rusty old car, and I really liked the whole route 66 adventure vibe.
In addition to the RT 66 cap we decide to distress a guitar pick blank carried at B'sue Boutiques .
I used the same methods on the guitar pick that I had on the large Y-shaped necklace blank. I also patina'd the hand blank which we also carry. Somehow I didn't find it appropriate to texture the hand blank. Ouch!
We combined the distressed pieces with one of our famous turtle back bezels that are often used in making beer-cap earring, and there it was! An excellent center piece combines with the guitar pick and hand charms at the bottom.
We added some real vintage chain and WOW! I now had a nice starter piece that I could be proud of!
The patina was all made with a Blazer Big Buddy torch. I couldn't believe how easy it was to achieve these rich and earthly colors with just a torch and a little Swellegant Darkening Patina
I made earrings, too.
I thought for this first piece, since B'sue had helped me, we would sign both of our names on the back.
This week, when we have our class she tells me I am going to make this set again and do all the work myself.
Why not?