Wednesday, Dec. 07, 2011 - 6:27 a.m.

Mr. Hash has an entire pinboard of jewelry mechanisms-- mostly pin backs. I feel that I might be doing mine wrong now. Most of them-- the bendy kind-- have a loop built in on the bendy side. I suppose to keep it from weakening the metal over time. I didn't think the metal on a pin would get flexed all that much, so I haven't been doing it, but if it's the done thing among actual trained jewelers, maybe it's a practice I should adopt.

I've been very drawn to large designs lately. It's not good. No one buys things that size. People want pretty, and small. I dunno. I'm enjoying the designs, though. Maybe I'll follow it. (But see aforementioned discussion of what to do with unsold jewelry.). I want to get back into using color, my dyed papers. I do just love them, garish or not. And if you think about it, if the colors alone make them a bit much for some people, why the hell shouldn't they also be big. People who want bold are not afraid of making a statement. So I've been cutting them into the same sorts of pebble-like shapes that I do for the handmade paper pieces, but much bigger. Arrange them in groups to make a pile. That's where I've stopped. I haven't done anything else. But I might make gigantic, multicolor pebble clusters. If I do, I will call them the "Bolder" collection. Get it? Bolder/boulder? Hah hah.

It's a problem, though-- I've been looking at all this contemporary jewelry, with its organic forms, awkwardness, grace, lines-- and while it's all interesting, most of it is not beautiful in the traditional sense, and not cute at all, not evern a little bit. But my customers want beautiful, or at least cute. So I can't get too sidetracked by this tomfoolery.

What else. Ah, yes, the big news! I can letter on resin. I'm so excited about this, I begin to go into contortions just thinking about it. I'm not sure my calligraphy will be equal to the potential awesomeness, but oh well. At least you can just wipe it off if it goes awry. Anyhow, yeah-- you put a schmear of resin on your plastic wrap-covered work surface. Let it set up. Letter on it. You have letters on clearness, which you can then put more resin on, (and letter more on, making layered lettered awesomeness) and then fuse to resin-covered paper of any sort. Or just build up the resin so you have letters encased in clear gemstone. They can start on the paper and go right off the edge.

Anyway, yes, just trying to ride this wave. You don't ask where it goes (the shore, always), you just stay on as long as you can and have as much fun as you can while you're up there. And don't let the board hit you on the head! You'll drown or the sharks will eat you. Or both.

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