It's Coming Along...Slowly

I'm making some progress on Reloj. But it's coming along slowly. Way too slow for me, but I guess I'll have to live with it. I have the most recent version posted here; you can check my Flickr page for additional views.

Notice from the last photo that I took the tusks out...they just wouldn't work right for me. Plus, I couldn't get the wraps exactly the way I wanted them, so I figure I'll save them for something else. My collection of beads will always have room for them! I also plan to restring the amber strand...it's a little too long right now.

Finally, I'm going to make some coiled beaded jump rings to connect the three strands together on the sides. It will add some more wire to the piece, balancing out the large amount of beads I have in the strands.

In other news, I bought a rock tumbler this week, and it arrived today. I opened the box and it smells like it came straight from the factory. Not that this is a bad thing, but you can tell it's made in some huge machine shop from the smell.

I figured I'd be able to throw my earrings in there today (see 'em all? Aren't they cute? And there's even some Halloween-themed ones in there, just in time for the season), and have them ready to put in my Etsy shop on Monday. No such luck. It turns out you have to do an initial run of the tumbler, and you also need stainless steel jewelry shot. My supplier gave me the polishing grit for rocks/gems, but I failed to do my homework in this area. So, it's ordered and on its way. Hopefully I can use it this week. The other funny thing I noticed about the directions is that it calls the water, polishing grit, and other materials inside the barrel a "slurry." I think this is a nice word for "sludge." This should be interesting. And oh yeah, the tumbler is from Chicago Electric. From the reviews I read, it's a decent tumbler to start out with (mine holds 3 lbs and was about $50, with shipping). The only problem is that the belts come off a lot, but luckily my supplier sent an extra one, which I thought was nice. Anyway, more updates to come soon, hopefully one of them being a "Finally, I'm Open" announcement.

Wire rocks,

Chelsea