This was the week that was ..

not really worth talking about! On the plus side I caught up with some awesome women I had met earlier in the year and I got to hang out with my daughter and 2 little great-nephews. Sadly the week was pretty much downhill from there but I will spare you the Moaning Mona routine. Suffice to say that at the end of it I was undergoing root canal treatment and leave it at that shall we?! I have spent today engaging in a far more pleasant undertaking - I have been in my little studio thrashing out some ideas and actually making something. Not a completely complete something, but something nonetheless. I have shared so little this week I am gonna take you through the process ... Lucky ol' you!

I started out with a spoon, a copper ring cut from some plumbers pipe I found in the shed (please don't tell the ManBeast - I remain hopeful that it wasn't anything terribly important) and a dolls eye. And yes, I did indeed pluck that peeper right out of a dolls head. She was forlorn. A previous owner had given her the haircut from Hell so it was a mercy that I cut her face off. Really. Hhmm - does that sound a little creepy?

Okay so this is stage one - making a bezel cup. After cutting off the handle and bashing the spoon about a bit I soldered on the copper ring and a cool milagro. The milagro has come from Mexico and is made from sandcasted pewter. Now a little clean up is required.

It takes a reasonable amount of elbow grease and tenacity to clean off all that fire-scale. I was reluctant to put it in my pickle pot 'cos it might have contaminated it. That could be bad. So I stuck to steel wool and emery paper. Nice and shiny now and a tube rivet added to the bottom.

Then of course I had to go and make it grubby again - with patina this time which is much easier to tidy up.

And here is the almost-but-not-quite finished piece! I am hunting up a crystal or somesuch to hang off the bottom. For some reason I want to call her "Lady of the Lake Protector". I learned a thing or two making this because I haven't soldered like this before. Creating a semi-proper bezel for the eye is a new trick too! Soldering the milagro was a gamble as I had no idea how it would respond to the heat but it has held up beautifully. I am looking forward to finishing it of as soon as I can. I think it deserves a pretty chunky kinda chain to swing from don't you? I do believe there could be more "eye jewellery" yet to come which means I get to cut more faces off of more dollies and pluck out their sparkly baby blues ... mwhahahaha!