Breakthrough!

Much to my surprise today, my husband allowed me to spend about 3 hours in the studio by parenting our son without me! It was a glorious time! I spent the first hour dilligently working on the bridle for Morgen Kilbourne and after my son got up from his nap I was able to get in some dremel time. I thought I was ready to start on alicia vogel's breast collar 'Middle" but alas all of the work that i had done to try to get everything even on a piece of paper has been lost. My studio is an absolute mess and among the the stacks of paper are my ideas - but lost because i have no idea which stack and my furious looking yielded nothing : /

Therefore I went to another idea that I had put down on "silver" already. That is a silver western snaffle to build a bridle upon. I'm Hoping that I can use this for my nan donation - hoping that I can have it done in time... Today was an excellent start..

Every time I work in silver I learn more: how hot it gets when I dremel it into a shape I need (and how that sucker will bend when hot!); how shiny it becomes if it's buffed with red jewelers rouge; How it stretches - Which gives me "issues" because the nature of it is to stretch and be bendy when hammered. Even the slightest tear from etching can turn into a big nightmare when I'm hammering. I'm sure that "real" sized silver workers love that silver bends and forms so easily. They have the right kind of tools and probably some education on how to handle such a wonderful metal. I don't have those things but I move forward and try anyway. I use dremel bits; my Sears 1lb $1 hammer and some 2mm foam sheet to bang away on. (with my marble tooling stone underneath) The hard part is not forming the circle. Thats easily done with a "circle"stencil and dremel bits. (ok, not easy but easy compared to everything else involved) The hard part is shaping into what I want and making it "3-d" with the tools I have.

IF course a few years ago I couldn't even work with silver and make it "do" anything I wanted it to do so I've come a long way. Tonight will probably be spent on the "googles", looking for info on how "regular" sized pieces are formed and made..

Photos when the little bits look more presentable..

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!