hmpf | Entries tagged with jewellery

From today onwards, when I work on jewellery, I will listen to Star Wars audio books - until I run out of Star Wars audio books. When that event finally arrives, in a few years, I will switch to Doctor Who audio books, which should keep me a happy, geeky goldsmith for another five years or so.

:D

(((((

beccatoria)))))

Current Mood: content

Why is the stuff on etsy.com almost universally more tasteful than the stuff on dawanda.com, even though they're both mainly frequented by hobbyists? Do all the hobby jewellery makers with taste gravitate to etsy? And if so, why?

(Sorry for the multiple short posts today; I'll go back to the workbench now and stop spamming you. :-))

eight months of unemployment, and I'm beginning to make jewellery on an almost-semi-regular basis.

How many more months would it take to turn me into a 'real' goldsmith again? ;-)

Current Mood: amused

would be willing to pay 100 euros for a pair of earrings, I wonder?

Because I don't think I can make them much cheaper without limiting my hourly pay to a non-industrialised-country level.

Current Mood: worried

... the *jewellery* section of my website!

(Seriously, this must be the first update there since the website's inception. Not that I don't have loads of stuff I should post pictures of... it's just that all that stuff is damaged in various ways because I've worn it and treated it carelessly... and I'm too lazy/busy to restore it to its former glory to take pictures of it.)

Well, here you go:

Seriously sucky earrings. *So* many things went wrong with these... and it all shows...

Current Mood: blah

... while surfing the jewellery web in the last couple of weeks or so:

- Every good idea I've had, someone else has had, too.
- The same goes for every bad idea.
- Most jewellery out there I find vaguely uninteresting.
- A fair percentage I find ugly and/or *profoundly* uninteresting.
- A small percentage I find intellectually/artistically interesting but otherwise unappealing.
- A very small percentage I actually like. This is mostly stuff that looks like something I have made, was planning to make, or might have thought of but haven't yet.
- Even some of the stuff I like I find vaguely 'boring' - because it, too, has been done before/is being done all over the place.
- So far I haven't discovered anything that gives me the kind of feeling of desperate inadequacy that the best writing I read gives me. When reading, I often get a painful reaction of "I wish I'd written that/I'll never be able to write like that." Not so with jewellery, even though I am *not* a technically very accomplished goldsmith, thanks to lack of practice and experience.

So, to sum it up:

1.) Originality probably doesn't exist - or if it exists, is such a rare stroke of luck that putting it at the top of your priorities is a recipe for making yourself unhappy.
2.) My ideas are neither better nor worse than those of most other goldsmiths out there.
3.) When it comes to jewellery, I may actually value useability and aesthetic pleasure slightly higher than originality and artistic value.
4.) I think I can actually live with being average, in this area of my life. I have absolutely none of the (unhealthy?) ambition here that I have when writing.

Also:

If I'm completely honest with myself... I don't think I care about university half as much as I care about goldsmithing. Considering I've almost completely abandoned goldsmithing in the last few years, (at least nominally) for the sake of university, that is an alarming thing to realise. (I already knew that I cared about writing far more than I cared about uni, which is also alarming.)

One conclusion to draw from this that I should abandon any idea I still have of doing a Ph.D.

The other conclusion is that I need to find a way to integrate goldsmithing into my life again, and to keep it a part of my life - as I need to keep writing a part of my life; both of which may be difficult or even impossible to accomplish, considering I also need to start earning money reliably and in sufficient amounts very soon now.

Current Mood: thoughtful

... as part of the design process. Or maybe discovering it for the first time, if you consider that I spent the entire three years of my professional training in a state of absolute creative block.

It's fascinating - I had something like half a dozen useable ideas today. (Feels like) more than I've had in as many years.

The significance of the fact that this creative explosion happens at a time when I'm paralysed with the fear of starting my M.A. does not escape me. It confirms my theory that I do my best work - or my best creative work, anyway - when I'm procrastinating from 'something more serious'.

Which, frankly, dooms me as an artist, or at least as an independent artist. Because I'll apparently always need something to procrastinate *from* - as soon as art becomes 'the main thing' in my life, I get horrendously blocked. (Not that making a living from selling my jewellery is very likely to work, anyway.)

And if I'm not *very* lucky, it may well happen that whatever job I end up in to make myself procrastinate creatively will take up so much of my time and energy that it will effectively remove the opportunity for creative procrastination.

("Marry a rich man," my mother jokes. But that, of course, would kill my creativity completely. Though I suppose I could then take a part-time job, or do some volunteering, and be creative in my still copious spare time. Yes, I think I like that plan. ;-))

*

Your jewellery link for the day: Giampaolo Babetto. One of the people who defined modern jewellery. Half the students at my former school still copy him. *g*

Current Mood: creative

Apparently.

At least in *my* workshop.

I just discovered that I have three pairs of almost-but-not-quite finished earrings lying around. Two of which I had completely forgotten about. One was supposed to be a gift. (I'm a bad gift giver, OBVIOUSLY. *ashamed*) The other, I think, was for a friend of my parents. I'll have to call her tomorrow and ask if she's still interested... (Actually... I dimly remember selling her a pair, so it's possible that this is a leftover 'first try', and I sold her the better second pair. In which case I'd have a pair of silver/gold/pearl earrings looking for a new home. Any takers? ;-))

Current Mood: ashamed

I had a dream two nights ago (two days ago). I was on my way to work, with a taxi driver. At some point we stopped in an area where there were lots and lots of artist's studios. I went into one, randomly, struck up a conversation with the guy inside; I didn't want to leave. But the taxi driver kept tugging my arm, telling me I had to go to work.

So, eventually, I left. And went to work. Which was my current job at the library, with some bizarre dream features but mostly recognisable. I felt a great sense of loss.

That's an amazingly clear dream, going by my subconscious's standards.

*

He picked the chain up; one end chuckled and flickered down the stone. He turned with it to catch the orange glimmer.
Prisms.
Some of them, anyway.
Others were round.
He ran the chain across his hand. Some of the round ones were transparent. Where they crossed the spaces between his fingers, the light distorted. He lifted the chain to gaze through one of the lenses. But it was opaque. Tilting it, he saw pass, dim and inches distant in the circle, his own eye, quivering in the quivering glass."
- Samuel R. Delany: Dhalgren

*

I'm meeting my old teacher tomorrow. This may be the worst possible time in my life I could pick to get started again. Still...

Well, asking a few simple technical questions isn't exactly getting started again. But I worked some today, and became aware I'm beginning to forget essential steps of the most basic processes. If I wait much longer, I may have to start again at zero... if I ever start again, that is.

My hands are horribly weak. I should do something about that. Half an hour of filing something, per day?

*

My clutter problem? Seems to be common among metalworkers. Maybe I'd get more work done if I adopted this kind of setup? *g*

Current Mood: pensive

One thing I have to try to take up again, at some unspecified future date, is singing. I really like singing. I used to be at least decent at it. When I was a kid one of my teachers thought I was more than decent at it, but that was twenty years or more ago. But, the real point is, it makes me happy. I'm not particularly ambitious about it, so it looks like something that could just be nice and relaxing, without giving me another thing to angst about.

Some day. When I find a nice choir ensemble or something.

*

This was brought on by this vid, a very nice Firefly vid by

shati, about River, set to the Suzanne Vega song Small Blue Thing. Not only is that song perfect for River; it's also entirely in a register I can still sing. Higher and lower registers are too difficult for my poor, untrained voice nowadays, so I get into trouble with most songs I want to sing - I usually have to stop, or shift registers in mid-song, because it will either go to high or too low for me at some point. So I've been singing that song practically all day.

*

I looked through some of my old art portfolios a couple of days ago. This caused the art and jewellery muses to start working overtime - very inopportune at the moment! I can't go and make jewellery now, let alone start painting again!

I really need to scan some of that old stuff and put some of it up on my website or somewhere.