Can someone say V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N-S ? I can !!! :)

Aaahhh .. feels good! I'm done school until january 6th and i am not supposed to work so i will be able to relax and rest for that whole time! I will also visit my family in my hometown for some days and of course, make new jewels and paintings for my etsy shop! ;)

Now to come back on the school subject, there's some pictures, at the bottom of the page, of the wax prototypes we're carving in class. They will eventually be casted in plaster to make molds and then reproduced in silver .. :) When i'll have the silver prototypes in my hands i will then be able to make rubber molds which will be used to make as many wax reproductions as i want, to then start all the process over and over again :)






The cat one will be turned in as a brooch/pendant and will eventually be up for sale ! I'm not done carving it yet :)

Quick update!

One day down! three more to go before vacations YAY!!

While waiting patiently i keep going with my school works! This is the bracelet im working on right now:



It opens up with a mechanism of two hinge :) The opened part simply open and close by pulling and pushing back in the little rod :) It is specially filed down so it never get out! Still have work to do it and then get it polished.. might put some ornaments on it and if it's good enough, will be up for sale!

More updates about it later on when finished :)

Hollidays are coming !

YAY! For days of school left for me :)

Vacations are going to feel goooodd ! Until then, still working hard at school ! Yesterday, we went to Montreal to see some tools, gems, gold/silver merchants to get some contacts and some cards to order later on when needed :) It was great to make a first contact with them.

We then had the opportunity to go to a huge Art exposition where tons of people were showing off what they make for a living. People working glass, people working leather, jewelers of course ! People making lamps .. paintings, wood carving and more ! It was a huge exposition. I took a few second to ask a lady how much it cost to have a stand there ( 2000$ for the smaller spot ) and she also told me that it was way worthing it as you make a few exposition like that and you have your $ for the year. I was kind of amazed about that o_O .. it's crazy to think you can live a whole year with only 2 or 3 expositions... wow !

Oh well ! It was quite a cold, but, interesting day :)

Let's keep going

Wow time is going by fast.. !

Feels like i started class just a few weeks ago but its already december! :)

So, let's keep updating !

After all the welding part of my training i learn how to make tubes and rings from this method. Here's a couple rings i made in that class:

Once i get those ring polished and cleaned they will be up for sale in my shop so keep an eye open! :)

The following one is a prototype made from wax! Complety hand sculpted :) There's a lot more that i got done and i will post some pictures of them as soon as possible !

welding welding welding!

Well .. Im finally done with the welding part of my training .. sort of :) Just the big basics exercises !

Here's another creation i made during that course ( it's a brooch btw )



It was going to be up for sale once cleaned ( on this pic its still a bit dirty from the welding ), filed down and polished but it already found a buyer ! I will still post a nice pic of the finished result. By the way, i dont know if i said that earlier in my other posts but, that white color is due to the fact we're cleaning our silver pieces into an acid bath. The silver color comes back to normal when the piece is worked out (filed or polished etc ) .. :)

I moved up to another course which is to make tubular items like ring and tubes just by bending and welding them close. I will be posting some pictures as soon as i get some of those projects done :)

One more step

So .. after all the works i've shown in my first post, we moved to another part of our apprenticeship. We've learn how to weld ! Actually, even if i thought that would be pretty boring and difficult, i enjoyed it ! Im also kind of good at it ;)

The first thing we had to do was little character from pieces of silver we had left ! Looking through what i had i came up with this little dead kitteh:

Its white, rather then silver, look, is due to the acidic solution we used to clean our piece :) It will go back to its pretty and shinny silver state once i get it polished. ( Yes i turned it into a pendant :D but no it's not for sale ;) )

After playing around with our little characters, we had to make two different style of bracelets. By the way, if anyone is wondering, yes we are making everything. We start making and ingot that we turn into wire.. that we turn into jump rings or sticks just like in the pictures below. The first bracelet was longer to do as we had to weld every ring one by one so they will never open up. The second one didn't take as much time but it was pretty tricky to do. I had to weld a tiny ring at the end of each sticks and make sure they're well welded so they wont break .. then i had to tie them all by some ovals rings, which are also weld to stay close.


Those two bracelets will also need to be polished and are sadly not going to be sold in my shop as i found some buyers already :)

So far, there's handmade jewels that i made but i might put up for sale some of my school projects ! Keeps an eye up on my shop .. or on my blog for updates about this :)

Well.. that's what i've got done in class ! Our group is moving up quickly and learn pretty fast. I will try to write everyday ( if possible ) just to say how it goes and what i'm doing. I will also post pictures of what im doing in class ! Keep an eye on me world .. You may wear some of my jewelery in a close future :)

The very first steps

I started school August 24th and so far so good !

It's really my passion and i will do whatever i will need to do to reach my goal! :) Why bloggin about it? Well.. i guess that first of all it will be a good way to get known by some people .. hoping there's actually some people who will follow my progress! And also, it always feels good to share up how we feel ! There's so many things going on in this class ! :)

I will be posting up some pictures of my class works also! It's fun to share the feelings and the days but i guess that my followers will want to see what i'm doing!

Sooo... after this little introduction let's talk about the class weeks that went by already. The first week was kind of long as all we did was talking about the ethics of someone working in the jewelry domain. We also talked a lot about security in class as we use and manipulate many things that can be dangerous if not handled properly. We've read for hours about all the tools we were going to use and what they were used for. It was kind of boring ya know .. :)

Then, the second week seemed to be more appealing to us ! We finally got to work !! At first though, it was long and difficult for us, still kind of boring also. Why ? Well, because just like anyone learning anything, we had to start by the begining! So we did basic stuff that we didn't enjoy and that seemed like a pain.. you know where :)

So here's the first projects we had to realise :

This is a brass stick we had to file down from a round shape to a square shape, then we had to file specific shapes in it :

Then we had severals exercises to do to get better skills with the drill and the saw. Here's the most impressive one :

We also had a few exercises to bend wire into some specific shapes:

Then we finally got to make our first real jewel ! We were all so excited ! We Made a little silver ring. It went from this first one to the final result:

See the next post for more of it .. :)

Lets start this blog shall we?

Soooooo ...
Thanks for stoping by my page first of all ( and for following me .. if u do ) :)

I will be writing this blog to share my progress at school and show every little steps i take to realise my dream .. having my own jewelery brand ! I will try to write every day about whats going on and update as much as i can but i sometimes ( often ) forget to do so .. so bare with me please :)

Please feel free to leave me some comments or questions.. i always enjoy receiving feedback or knowing others opinions.