Mastery Continues ... Sort of

Sometime there are those days when nothing seems to go right.  Today was that day.  I spent all day trying to get some pieces done.  Yes, I know I'm practicing.  I know I need to just be patient and work harder on mastering the basics but damn.  Everything I touched turned to crap today.

Here's what mistakes look like.


Lets start with making a ring with three pieces of metal.  A center band and two wire circles.  Sometimes they just don't line up and it just looks a mess.

Photographer & Jeweler - Renee Sosanna Olson

 Next I was working on creating rune rings in sterling silver.  I heated the wires too much and they warped.  Once bent like that they never straighten back up.

Photographer & Jeweler - Renee Sosanna Olson

 Here I used too much solder.  You can see the big glob in the center.  I could probably heat it again and try to fix it but I was afraid I would melt the center wire like I did on the last one.

Photographer & Jeweler - Renee Sosanna Olson

 This one started out really nice.  I had a great stone and the bezel was perfect.  As I was closing the bezel around the stone, the stone shattered.  I had to dig it out and replace it with another stone. As you can see this stone is smaller than the one I had before and the bezel is out of shape at the top.

Photographer & Jeweler - Renee Sosanna Olson

 This one is a little wonky.  You can see the bezel is twisted and is not straight on the ring shank creating the oval leaning to one side.

Photographer & Jeweler - Renee Sosanna Olson

 This one I was making a rune ring and I over heated the center, the pieces blew to the top and bottom creating what appears to be a double line.

Photographer & Jeweler - Renee Sosanna Olson

 Even my wire weaving was bad today.  In this one I used the wrong gauge base wire and created this super chunky rink  It is so heavy.  I need to just cut that wire off and start over.

Photographer & Jeweler - Renee Sosanna Olson

 Finally there's this one.  Yeah it is a mess.  All the wires melted, over heated and then fused in the wrong place.  Over all it was a pretty bad day.

Photographer & Jeweler - Renee Sosanna Olson

I shared this because I know sometimes as an artist I only want to share my best work.  I want people to see the good things.  But in those good things; sometimes bad things happen too.  I have to just take a big deep breath and try again.  I'm going to order some new supplies now as this disaster tapped out my stash.  Hopefully next time I'll have something better to share with you.