(no subject)

[afmetalsmith]

I have been lax about working in the studio this week. It's partly that pollen is giving me a nasty sinus headache and visual fuzziness, and it's partly that we've been dog-sitting what was described as an easy dog to deal with and which has turned out to be so very much not easy! So, yeah.

I have gotten the first coats of enamel on the cloisonne smiley. Since I had a yellow that was a bit too orange, and a couple that are a bit too green, I'm layering them and the overall color is turning out nicely. The flaw in the piece is that the enamels are a bit cloudy where the eutectic solder ran onto the surface, even though I cleaned off all of it (I thought) and depletion gilded it as well. So it looks great at some angles, and not quite as nice at others. Sigh. Next time I'll use IT, which I do not recall as having the same effect.

I have the bail almost done for the plique one, also, but have been a bit stuck on how to hold the bits together for soldering. I have a few ideas, and tomorrow will start playing with binding wire and see what works.

I did some more work cutting the seat for the dark green tourmaline in a tapered bezel ring. It's almost working no, but not quite, and I'm not sure what's hanging it up. I'm going to try to clear out my sinuses and use better magnification and light tomorrow.

I also need to get back to a couple of commissions, and start work on the setting for the cloisonne smiley. It's September now! Gotta get to serious work!

I'm also hoping to get most of my Halloween-type pieces up on Etsy this coming week.

Comments

[afmetalsmith.livejournal.com]

I am not completely sure that the enamels Allcraft carries are the Latham ones. I deduced this from various bits and pieces of knowledge over the years! But I'm pretty sure. It's certainly worth checking out!

That enamel line- Allcraft/?Latham- has some very nice colors in it. Allcraft doesn't have any kind of color sheet, though, and so one orders colors based on evocative naming and so I have very little idea what a color will look like before I get it. And I've been very, very surprised a few times. So it's not my preferred brand. Also Allcraft does not seem to import them with anyregularity, so a color can reportedly be back-ordered for over a year- I'd rather deal with places that can fill my order more promptly, because if I really need a color, I do not want to wait over a year for it!

But that T245 is a very nice color. I'd originally gotten it because there was a light golden brown in Thompson's old leaded line that I just adored, and I was ordering things in that sort of color to try to find a replacement (and have had no luck, unfortunately). So T245 wasn't what I was after, but it is a lovely sunny color and I'm glad to have it. It seems to be pretty well-behaved, too- always a plus!

[medvssa.livejournal.com]

Hmh, as for golden brown, you can try Soyer's 28 or 32 (darker), they sound right what you were looking for :)

[afmetalsmith.livejournal.com]

Cool- thanks! I really would love a work-alike for that wonderful golden brown. I know there's someone here in the US that sells Soyer and I've been meaning to order a few colors from them- I'll add those to the list! Thanks!

[medvssa.livejournal.com]

Hmh, look between the samples I sent you, I don't remember anymore, but maybe there is luck and I sent you some :)