Imaginative Captures

Last week Celie and I took Andy Cooperman’s class at the North Country Studio Conference in Bennington, VT. It was so much fun! It’s very exciting to be around a bunch of people who just love to make stuff. The class was called “Imaginative Captures” and it was all about setting stones in different ways – couldn’t be more up my alley! Andy gave us each an eye to make a piece with. During the demo the zipper on my jeans kept opening and I kept messing with it and... the light bulb went off. I used the actual zipper pull from my jeans and fashioned the zipper part from sterling wire. I roller printed the copper sheet with fabric from my apron (actually the fabric that it's photographed on) and heat patina-ed it. It's riveted together with sterling rivets.

Below is the other piece I made in the workshop. We learned how to 'spin set' a faceted gem in a tube. I soldered that tube onto brass sheet that I sawed a shape out of (it looked like a turtle!) The river rock already had a hole in it, I set it in place by pushing the prongs around it.
The class was very inspiring and I look forward to applying some of these techniques to PMC.