Two Peas In A Pod!

The weekend of November 6th (sorry I am so behind in posting this) I had the blessing of spending time in San Antonio with my amazingly talented, sweet, “Secret Sister” Diane Cook. We met about a year ago after being introduced through another precious friend/mentor Diana Frey. I adored Diane immediately & since we both live in Texas & both love jewelry making, have a lot of things we love in common… our friendship blossomed quickly. I have taken a number of classes from Diane (& she is again published in the new December/January 2010 edition of Belle Armoire Magazine (by Stampington)

& LOVE her style & designs. I am so proud of you my precious friend.

For this weekend we met to take a class by the internationally known artist & teacher Mary Hettmansperger at Wired Design. The first photo is a picture of the piece I made that weekend. I named it Two Peas in a Pod… named for Diane & I!!!!!

The first thing I had to conquer was my FEAR of FIRE & the torch!

Which I did!!!!! When the class started & we were all in the workroom & Mary lit that torch with a HUGE WOOOOOOOSH sound & a flame that shot half way across the table… I started backing up & they all started laughing saying “Oh this is the torch virgin”. Yep! Diane knew I had been leary of the torch I used in Deryn & Diana’s class at ADORN ME & those were tiny. Oh Deryn you would be so proud of me now! And she thought it was time for me to conquer that fear & learn more metal techniques.

Mary had me working on all kinds of things in a very short while. Above you can see Mary & I after class. SHE IS A JEWEL of a teacher. You can go HERE for a short clip of her teaching a technique.

These are a few examples she had in class. We learned to work with the metal to shape, torch & connect different pieces. The cold connections were very interesting.

We also worked on enameling.

Enameling is very interesting. You have to be VERY careful when working with it because you can not breathe ANY particles since they are minutely ground pieces of glass that go on as powders. You then heat them with the torch & when they cool here are some examples of what you get.

I love the piece above. It is achieved by applying the enamel & then the little “bumps” are pieces of thick wire that we made ball up (with that torch) & after punching a hole we inserted the wire (with one ball already on one end) & applied heat to cause the other ball to form & SHRINK into place. SUCH A COOL TECHNIQUE!!!!! Thank you Diane for thinking to include me in this class & asking me to join you for the weekend. Come back for the next post where I will show you a little “field trip” we took to my favorite spot for breakfast in San Antonio & I’ll share a special recipe from there. If you would like to see the post Diane did of this class go HERE!

Hugs!!!!! Charlene