Well, this is my first blog posting, so if you are reading this, please bear with me as I get settled in :)
So, where to start? My name is Tanya, and I live in sunny Southern California with my wonderful hubby and currently his 2 kids are also living with us. I started out making jewelry nearly 4 years ago. The first piece I ever put together was a necklace made with strung glass beads. Soon after, at my friend’s urging, I tried working with metal (sterling silver), and it’s been a love affair ever since. I’ve tried several different jewelry-making techniques, such as stringing, wire wrapping, precious metal clay, and traditional fabrication using metalsmithing techniques – this is by far my favorite technique cuz I get to use lotsa cool tools and I love to torch metal :)
Fabricating rings out of sheet metal is relatively new for me; I’ve only made a couple of pieces in a class setting so far. This evening, I was about to start working on a sterling silver ring at a relative’s request – she had already drawn out some designs that she wanted me to bring to life. But given my limited hands-on experience fabricating rings from sheet metal, I thought I would do a little test run in copper first, to ensure I got the sizing right. Well, I kinda set aside the designs she sent me, and fixated on making a spinner ring. I knew the “theory” behind making one; I just hadn’t executed it yet on the bench. So, off I went and soldered a wide band ring out of 20 ga copper sheet. Then using some sterling silver wire in my “scrap box”, I quickly made a couple of “spinners”. And so next thing you know, I made my first spinner ring, as shown in the above photo. I have not pickled it yet or anything, so it looks a little rough. I tossed it in the pickle pot before sitting down in front of my computer – hopefully I won’t forget it in there! It was fun to make and actually deceptively simple, I think I will be making more in the future.
