Michon Jewelry Blog

New Works In Progress

Posted by Leah on Oct 8, 2008

Thought I’d share some progress photos from the new jewelry series I’m working on…the finished pieces may or may not resemble these photos at all! It’s a very experimental series for me and I’m having a blast working out the process.

This first one (above) is closest to being finished. It is made from fine silver, which is 99.9% pure silver.

The next one (above) is a combination of argentium and fine silver. Interesting things happen when fusing metals with different melting points, I discovered.

The third piece is fine silver, fused a bit more than the first one. I’ll be adding more metal and probably some pearls to this piece.

And the last one, fine silver and argentium silver. It looks kind of cool, but as you can see, I didn’t do much shaping with it, and that’s because I’m not sure I can. In experimenting with fusing two different types of silver, the results aren’t as predictable as when I use all argentium or all fine silver. In this case, some areas became hollow (and I think I even have a geeky explanation for why it happened, but that’s a whole other long post) and the resulting shell is very fragile.

Hopefully I’ll have time to work on this series more in the next week or so, and I’ll post any pieces that I’m happy with.

Making Silver Circles

Posted by Leah on Aug 24, 2008

A lot of the jewelry designs I have in mind include silver circles - so I made a whole bunch in various sizes. The process I used is very similar to how band rings are made from wire. I start by cutting wire to the length I need, and filing the ends til they are smooth. Then I form the wire into a kind of oval with the ends touching each other.

If I was using regular sterling silver, my next step would be to solder the rings - but I prefer fusing to soldering, so I used Argentium sterling silver. I line the rings up on my firebrick and fuse them closed with a propane torch. I like this method because it is less toxic than soldering - no flux, no pickle, only the propane gas and the metal itself. Also, there is less clean-up involved. My rings look pretty good right after fusing, and just need to be reshaped into circles.

I reshape them using a ring mandrel and a mallet, one at a time, then polish them a bit, and they are ready to be used in my jewelry designs (or worn as rings - many of them are big enough to fit an average woman’s ring finger, though normally I’d use thicker wire for a finger ring). Some will be textured, others left smooth, and they’ll become parts of earrings and necklaces.

Sculpting with Fire

Posted by Leah on Jul 3, 2008

One of my favorite techniques, which I hadn’t played with in a while, is using a torch to sculpt fine silver into interesting, organic sculptures. I used the torch a little bit making my Random Knot earrings recently, and it gave me the idea to make some fire-sculpted earrings.

The result is this pair. The earwires are argentium silver, and the dangles are fine silver. I started with wire, loosely sculpted it by hand, then used the torch to melt and drip the metal. I love this effect - it is unpredictable, so it’s always kind of a rush to try making something, knowing that if I keep the torch on it for a second too long I could end up with a silver puddle instead of an interesting sculpted piece.

New Rings

Posted by Leah on Jun 21, 2008

I made a couple of argentium silver rings recently. I can’t decide if I should send them to Exhibit One in Oklahoma, take them to ProArts in Oakland, CA, or list them for sale in my etsy shop…

New Camera

Posted by Leah on Jan 14, 2008

My old digital camera (a Sony Cybershot that I had for almost 4 years) broke, and since I’m running a business that operates partly online, I really needed to replace it quickly. I liked the old one a lot - it was easy to use, and took pretty good pictures of my jewelry, as well as my husband’s artwork, and was a great point-and-shoot for vacations, holidays, and pics of my pregnant belly over the last seven months.

Well - I replaced it with a Nikon D40, and I have to say, I never knew taking pictures could be this easy. It is a DSLR, so it has all kinds of manual controls that I could use if I knew more about photography, but what I love about it is that, set to automatic, and with the lens set to autofocus, it does a really good job on its own. I haven’t had time to really play with it and see what it can do, but here are a few jewelry pictures I shot over the weekend.

This one is a resin pendant I made a while ago. Resin can be tough to photograph, because it is so shiny there tends to be glare. For this shot, I just put the pendant on a background outside & snapped a few shots. I think it looks pretty good.

This is a close-up of an earring I made recently. I have always had trouble getting decent pictures of earrings for some reason, but I think this one isn’t bad. I think better lighting would have improved the shot, but it’s better than most of my previous attempts using the old camera.

I didn’t edit these at all, except to crop out the excess background. Oh yeah - both pieces are for sale in my etsy store.

Here’s a link to the camera on Amazon: Nikon D40 6.1MP Digital SLR Camera Kit with 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor Lens

New jewelry headed to Oklahoma

Posted by Leah on Dec 30, 2007

I just sent off a few new pieces to Exhibit One Gallery in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Here is one of the necklaces, a one of a kind piece that will be for sale there in January:

It is made from Argentium sterling silver, a type of sterling silver formulated to resist tarnishing longer than regular sterling silver. It is accented with natural colored freshwater pearls, one on a handmade fine silver head pin, and a pale pink rose quartz.

Fused Pendant - Finished or Not?

Posted by Leah on Sep 7, 2007

I just can’t decide if this fused piece is finished or not. It is scraps of Argentium sterling silver with a freshwater pearl dangle. I actually did the fusing months ago, and wasn’t sure what to do with the resulting piece of metal. Yesterday at my studio, I decided to drill two holes - one to add a bail and one to add a pearl dangle - and this is the result. I can’t decide if I love it or hate it.

What I like about it: the industrial look of the metal in contrast with the pearl, the texture of fused metal, the fact that the sheet was a scrap leftover from a pierced piece I made and the wire bits and granules were also recycled from other projects.

What I’m not sure about: I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I feel that the piece could be a lot stronger with some very minor modifications - if only I could decide what those modifications were.

Jewelry 101: Making Headpins

Posted by Leah on Aug 8, 2007

I enjoy making my own silver head pins by melting a ball of metal at the end of a piece of wire. It’s fairly easy to do, and enables you to always have the length you need in the gauge you need for a project.

I use a slightly different technique depending on which type of silver I’m using - sterling, fine, or Argentium. Whichever metal you use, you will need a torch. I use a propane torch, but butane torches also work, although for thicker wire it can be hard to get the flame of the butane torch big/hot enough. Other options are acetylene/oxygen and oxygen/propane, but butane and propane torches are cheap & available at the hardware store.

Using fine silver is the easiest, because you don’t need flux or pickle, just a torch and some tweezers to hold the wire. A heat-resistant surface to let your headpins cool is desirable, and always be safe and use proper ventilation and eye protection when using a torch. Cut a piece of wire slightly longer than you want your headpin to be - maybe 1/2 inch longer. Hold one end of the wire with the tweezers, with the other end of the wire pointing down. Point the torch flame at the end of the wire that is away from your tweezers, and watch a little ball of metal appear! The longer you keep the torch there, the bigger the ball will be - but if it gets too big, it might fall off, so be careful.

I like to use Argentium silver for making headpins. With Argentium, I use basically the same process, except I used the tiniest little bit of flux on the wire end where I’m making the ball. If you use too much flux, you’ll have flux residue, which has to be removed, but if you use just enough, you’ll end up with a nice looking head pin that doesn’t require clean-up at all. If the wire above the ball gets slightly discolored, quickly passing the flame over the discolored part will usually turn the wire silver again.

With regular sterling silver, there is always some clean-up involved, unless you are going for the oxidized (black metal) look. I don’t bother with flux, and start by following the same process as for fine silver. You end up with a head pin that has a very blackened end. This can be cleaned up by soaking in pickle, or by using an abrasive to polish off the oxidation. I like to use a piece of a green kitchen scrubber sponge to polish off most of the oxidation, leaving a slightly rough look. If I want my headpins to be perfectly shiny, I don’t usually use sterling, since it’s easier to get nice shiny head pins with fine silver or Argentium, but if you want clean and shiny sterling head pins, use pickle to remove oxidation, and then toss the finished head pins in a tumbler with stainless steel shot and water for a few minutes.

You can also make head pins by bending the end of a piece of wire into a nice looking shape, such as a spiral. All you need for this method are some pliers and a little practice bending the wire into the shape you want without marking it. When I make head pins this way, I like to lightly hammer the shape I’ve made to harden the wire a little bit.

New Pendant

Posted by Leah on Jun 6, 2007

I’ve been working on a new pendant style, which is based on knots. I start by making a knot with wire, then permanently fuse the ends of the wire together, creating a knot that can’t be untied. This is the first finished knot pendant, and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

Recent events have reminded me how impermanent every aspect of life can be. One thing that I explore through my jewelry work is the contrast between the durability of metal and the open, airy, delicate look of many of my metal designs. I like to keep some negative space in my jewelry, using wire in a way that mimics vines, seaweed, or a curled lock of hair - delicate, impermanent, movable states that I try to capture with the wire, the same way a photograph preserves a moment in time. Some things are beautiful because they are temporary and fluid, like water. This is what inspires many of my wire jewelry designs.

If I can evoke movement in my designs, they feel more beautiful. I’m inspired by the state an object is in while it is moving or changing, the moment when something about it is perfect because in a few seconds it will have changed forever.