Rings for Days...

When I was younger, I thought nothing of staying up for days to complete projects.  Once absorbed, I could function with no sleep and produce copious amounts of work.  As I discovered today, those days are over.  Today my head felt like a tender soft-cooked egg.  Even though I was locked away in my studio making things, it felt like I had been partying all night and had indulged in ample amounts of alcohol.  Can someone be hungover from too much work?

On a positive note, I did manage to make a lot of cool rings!  I'm quite pleased with my yield!  And while I'm not eager to torture myself again, it is tempting after looking at all the things I made!

This is a variation on the coin rings I've been making lately.  In the other versions, I've been bezel-setting the coins in silver.  I like the contrast, but it does take a lot longer to make them.  This one is all bronze and features my honeybee coin.  I've soldered the ring shank directly to the back of the coin.  I wear it around and see how well it holds up.

While I was at Bead&Button, I picked up this glass eye from Wayne Robbins of Mountain Robbins.  I bezel-set it in a tall setting on top of a THICK ring shank.  (It was a chore to wrangle it... even with annealing it frequently!)  The nice thing about the thick band is that it is able to stamped without too much distortion.  It also is extra sturdy and the stamping doesn't compromise the strength.  (With thinner pieces, this can happen.  Especially if has letters like "l" or numbers like "1" that are long and go across the width of the band.  This can create a weak spot in thinner gauges of metal.)  Since the band was nice and thick, I decided to hammer a message in.  It says, "i see you"!  How apt, right?

I've been working on my bezel-setting and did these amber cabochons.  I'm getting pretty fast!  (At least I think so!)  I hammered the bands to give them a little extra texture and work-harden the shapes.

I've been wanting to create some stacker rings.  So, I created these sterling silver rings with bezel-set garnets.  They're simple and can be worn on their own, or they can be worn with other stacker rings.

A few years ago, Cynthia gave me a baggie of rose-cut sapphires.  They're so tiny!  At the time, I was a bit puzzled what to do with them.  I held on to them and made these tiny rings.  Eureka!  This is the first time I've worked with such tiny stones.  I think they turned out pretty nice!

Even though I can't stay up all night and all day to work on projects anymore, I am excited about all the possibilities that are opening up!  I can see all sorts of projects developing and that almost makes up for coming to terms with my earthly limitations.