Another sort-of-throwback... with a (literal) twist! Larkin modified this design so the mushrooms show three different stages of development, and added gills to the largest.
Larkin hand-fabricates these from sterling silver and affixes them to a manually twisted wire frame. They are about the size of a quarter— size may vary slightly because it’s hard to predict exactly how wire twists!
The papillated pretties these were modeled after pop up pretty much everywhere conducive to mushroom growth!
The hood of this jellyfish is tumble polished from a raw moss agate stone found by our family, and can spin on the sculpture to face any direction. Larkin sculpted the tentacles entirely from sheet metal and round wire.
This piece is beautiful displayed by a window, and comes with bubbly loops on top to make hanging easy. We have found banana hangers make convenient displays!
Moon and star stud earrings! ✨🌕 Larkin fabricates each of these individually from sterling silver so no two are perfectly identical.
It is orange jelly fungus season in our neck of the woods and I decided they looked nebular enough to pose with these heavenly bodies. 😉✨🌝
I do not recommend storing the moons amongst a collection of thumbtacks (you know, in case that's where you normally store your studs 👀) because they are almost identical in size.
You may recall that the addition of silver chain to some designs necessitated that Larkin figure out how to polish said chain-- without it snarling and becoming hopelessly tangled in their tumbler.
They started with a copper cage that allowed them to wrap the chains loose enough to allow the metal shot in the tumbler to work its magic but kept them separated and secure. It worked great-- except the copper did transfer sightly to the silver over time.
So Larkin updated the cage to silver, adding a middle platform to help keep different chains separated and holes in the ends to fasten clasps (they need to polish, too, and picking them out of the metal shot can be time-consuming!).
Larkin loves the process of figuring out exactly what impossibly specialized tools they need... and making them!
Larkin let the stone take center stage on the front of this piece! The swooping sterling wires frame the petrified palm root beautifully while leaving the face mostly clear.
The black “sky” has faint swirls of what we believe to be opalized agate inclusions. Larkin topped the front with a custom, handmade bail featuring twinkling stars.
And the back! Not gonna lie, the back transports me straight to Lothlórien! 🧝♂️✨🍃The stone becomes a golden forest at night, with a hand fabricated moon nestled in the branches of a silver tree. That sweet little moon portends a new design to come. 😉
While Larkin prefers to work with stone we find, they came across a slab of Indonesian petrified palm root at a rock show and had to have it. Larkin noticed a small pockmark in the face of the stone that is barely visible with the naked eye-- the stone is so beautiful in its entirety that they included the imperfection rather than cut away the surrounding material. I circled the little divot in red in the final photo.
This piece is entirely hand fabricated from 0.925 sterling silver and stone.
This fun little piece doesn't look like Larkin's usual work but that didn’t stop it from jumping off their workbench the other day!
They have been making little copper bowls to hold works in progress, components, and various other bits and bobs. They were so charmed with the way the edges of the metal crinkled that they just *had* to incorporate tiny metal bowls into something. So this... flower? birds nest complete with eggs? was born!
The leaves and little balls/anthers/eggs are hand-shaped from sterling and Larkin added an across-the-neck style silver chain and handmade clasp to complete the piece.
Your eyes are not deceiving you-- thar's gold in them thar earrings! ✨
Larkin added a verrrrry small, verrrrrry precious bit of gold wire as part of their last supply order.
I went ahead and zoomed right in on the baggie in case you couldn't see it in the full sized image. 😅 In case you're wondering, that is what over💲30 of 14k gold wire looks like. 😳
Larkin decided to go with this tried and true, oft-practiced (in silver), popular design for shaped ribbon earrings to get a feel for the hardness and workability of gold compared to sterling silver. And they said it was practically identical!
An exciting discovery! The in-ear photo shows the same design in sterling.
Larkin would like to start using gold as an accent metal, but investing in all the shapes and gauges they regularly use in their work is a bit out of reach at the moment. So in the meantime, we will have to enjoy the occasional golden glow when it pops up!
This one is kind of a throwback Thursday, with an update!
One of Larkin's market-free winter goals is to re-evaluate older designs, decide which they still want to carry, and stock up for the next market season.
We called these "wire currents" when Larkin first designed them several years ago-- they remind us of swirly river currents or wisps of smoke. Larkin still likes them, but thought they needed a little updating.
Everywhere the wires touch are now reinforced with solder, and the ends that had been cut wire previously are balled for a slightly more "finished" look. The feel is very much the same, but Larkin is pleased with the updates and feels like the result is a sturdier design. For the sake of completeness, this picture with the spring flowers🌼🌞 is the older version:
It's always fun seeing piles of treasures when Larkin is doing batchwork. :)
At some point I may need to stop calling Larkin-- who turned 19 over the holidays!-- baby 😅
There was a ton of learning involved in making this piece. Larkin still gets nervous drilling holes through stone to attach elements with rivets because there is always a chance the stone they painstakingly chose for a particular project will break during the drilling process. This time, Larkin drilled the holes after the cab was completely polished. They got lucky! Next time, they will drill holes *before* completing stonework on the cabochon.
The hinge and clasp are also new elements for Larkin. The hinge is a hollow tube that the wire on the ivy vine passes through, complete with notches cut into the metal back that the wires fit into when it closes for a complete seal.
Larkin designed the tension spring clasp (I made up that term, anyone know what it’s actually called?!) that closes securely with a very satisfying quiet "snick."
Larkin fabricated the back of the locket by shaping sheet metal into a dome that almost perfectly mirrors the arch of the stone cabochon, then adding a bezel for a bit more depth to accommodate treasures. The seal is secure enough that a piece of paper will easily stay put in the locket, but there is enough space for other more three dimensional trinkets like tiny stones or a small lock of hair. Larkin filled it with faceted garnets and happily carried it around the house shaking it like a tiny, precious baby rattle. 🤣
Which brings us to the stone front! The applegate jade stone was found by our family and is not a true jade, but a serpentine more closely related to bowenite. Larkin cut this door from a particularly gemmy specimen-- when backlit, the whole piece glows a glorious yellow-green. In natural light, the stone is a mottled deep green, almost black color. The black and silvery inclusions are magnetite-- how cool is a translucent green stone that attracts a magnet?!
This piece is entirely made from stone, sterling silver, and silver solder-- no glues to break down and come unstuck over time. Larkin is not ready for this sweet little piece to leave their goblin grasp quite yet-- but they do plan on making another. ;)
One of Larkin's favorite recent discoveries is finger gloves! These are mostly designed to protect fingers from the heat that develops from friction as metal is worked. They are thin and Larkin can pull them firmly down over their itsy bitsy child-sized fingers (not gonna lie-- it's hard finding protective equipment in their size!) so they maintain finger dexterity. Added bonus: they will shred before fingertips if those rotary tools end up where they shouldn't. ;)
More stone-belled jellyfish! All of these pretties have hand cut cabochon bells except for the ones featuring Oregon sunstone which have tumbled stones-- we weren't sure how we would like the look, but it turns out they're pretty perfectly diaphanous just like their wild counterparts.
I'll be playing catch up with posts in the next couple of weeks-- Larkin has been hard at work, but for various reasons (holidays, illness, surprise kitten rehabilitation) I haven't been keeping their page up to date. Sometimes it's not ideal when your Master Of (social media) Marketing (MOM) is also your all-too-human mom. ;)
Larkin's next market is this weekend at the Talent Elementary School! Talent Artisans & Growers curates a super sweet market with lots of amazing artists.
Having a kid embarking on this wild world of artisan craftsmanship has really brought home how important it is to support small businesses. Larkin is 18 now. These next few years will determine whether Larkin has a career or a hobby in lapidary and metalworking-- I know their creativity has positively exploded with the unfettered time and passion they've poured into their work in the last few years.
Supporting artisan businesses is supporting individual dreams, bringing a little more beauty into our world, and investing in local economy.
No more hard sell. 😉 We won't be jumping on all the seasonal buzzword sale days-- Larkin is too busy creating! Thank you for being here. Know that your comments, shares, and purchases never fail to light up Larkin's face. Happy Thanksgiving to all who are celebrating this week!
Larkin has been playing with oak leaf designs and made a small batch of these which are slightly quicker to make than their previous designs.
Larkin shaped these silver and copper oak leaf clothing pins using leaves from the forest floor around our southern Oregon home as models. Some contain bug bites or are slightly oddly formed— each is unique, just like their organic counterparts!
Both copper and silver leaf backs are finished with a hand-shaped silver pin fastener, so they can be worn on any fabric. These could adorn a favorite hat, shoulder bag, jacket lapel, t-shirt, anything! Larkin also modified their fasteners slightly-- these all have twisted wire pins, making them more rigid than ever.
Specialty metal working tools are such a niche market that prices tend to be high for fairly simple tools. This weekend, Emile (Larkin's dad) spent some time on his make-shift front porch workbench making Larkin a couple new specialty tools. Tool steel is shaped, polished, hardened, tempered, then touch-up polished to that mirror gleam Larkin needs for jewelry work.
This way Larkin can request exactly the size/shape of tool they want-- these are two repousse tools (used to "chase"/shove metal into shape). And yes, Larkin could totally make these on their own... these are little gifts from Emile allowing them to spend more time on the parts of creation they love.
I know I shouldn't keep saying this, but... I have a new favorite hair clip!😅 I've waxed poetic before about how functional, comfortable, and lovely this style of clip is, but Larkin's designs just keep getting better. 💞
Larkin fabricated this two-piece clip from solid sterling, using just a bit of copper to really make the cattail heads pop. Both pieces are slightly bent so the clasp lays flat against the head and is comfortable even when leaning back against a head-rest.
They are designed to be placed with the concave faces together, then the stick is twisted 180 degrees to tighten the clasp and fasten the decoration securely in the hair. The frame is hammered, work-hardening the silver so the fit will remain snug over time. The pin has been rolled through a mill to achieve the same result.
This size is pretty versatile, and suitable for most hair textures and types (even if you have the kind of straight, silky hair that this style of clip usually slips out of!). If your hair is especially thin you may want to use this in conjunction with an additional hair tie. If your hair is super thick it may tie back only part of your hair.
Larkin says this design is repeatable, and I'm hoping one makes an appearance under our solstice tree this year. ;)
One of Larkin's favorite things about market is the other vendors! Josie from TerraSol Organics has gotten our whole family hooked on her pea sprouts! They dress up a sandwich like nobody's business and are an amazing addition to salads.
At the end of just about every market, Josie shows up like a beneficent sprout angel and bestows her treasure upon Larkin.
Unfortunately, Josie doesn't wear much jewelry, which is traditionally how Larkin gives thanks. But! She's a crocheter! And she had a problem with her pinky curling too tightly and hurting while she crocheted. So Larkin made her a silver finger splint that keeps her pinky at a comfortable angle while she works. She has been using it ever since, thus securing our inside connection to beautiful, crunchy sproutlings.
A regular brought Larkin this "chakra crystal" (7 different stones glued together and polished into the shape of a crystal) that had originally come with a glue-on bail. The bail had fallen off and they requested Larkin come up with a cage design that would hold it more securely.
Not one for simple cages, Larkin wrapped it in a silver leafing vine that holds the stone firmly in place and topped it with a secure bail. Et Voila!
In other news, tomorrow is Larkin's last Rogue Valley Growers & Crafters Market of the season! They will have many new items there that we haven't had a chance to photograph and list yet, so come on by for first pick of some of this season's pretties!
Right before Larkin's last market (because of course), our rock tumbler's power cord failed in a pretty spectacular circuit-blowing way. Larkin uses it as a polishing tumbler for finished products, so had a whole slew of things they were hoping to polish before market.
Our local Buy Nothing Group came to the rescue! Larkin was able to borrow a tumbler from a neighbor for a few days to complete the necessary polishing-- I can't recommend joining/starting a local Buy Nothing Group enough! It's a wonderful way to help real people in real time.
Once crunch time had past, and the borrowed tumbler was returned, Larkin set about repairing our tumbler. It turns out a lot of their jewelry skills translate pretty well to electronics! With a few pointers from their electronically-minded dad, Larkin was able to splice a new cord onto the old one and the tumbler is chugging along like a champ again.
Larkin did have to switch mind-sets a little. They were a bit horrified at how much solder they were supposed to use to make a solid connection-- a little different from their usual dainty jewelry work. ;)
Seasonally appropriate throwback Thursday! This piece from the summer of 2020 (which puts Larkin at 15) is still probably the largest pendant Larkin has made. They were going for copper dragon wings on the sodalite cab, but we agreed the overall impression of this piece was more like a bat. 🦇🧙♀️🎃
Zoinks, y'all. Larkin's latest sculpture is a doozy.
Larkin modeled this oak seedling from real sprouts and leaves from the forest floor every step of the way! Leaves reflect the asymmetries, insect nibbles, and general chaos of nature.
Larkin centered the base around a copper acorn that has lost its cap and is sprouting a slender silver seedling. The acorn is surrounded and supported by hand-shaped copper leaves, still sporting the bright colors and dull finish of the final torch-work.
Larkin snapped a quick photo showing most of the leaves with their real-life models, before they were soldered together to form the base.
The seedling itself is brightly polished sterling silver, rising sturdy but tremulous on a slim stem. When the surface it rests on is bumped, the leaves shiver fetchingly as if captured in a brisk breeze. You have to look pretty closely to catch all the details Larkin incorporated into the sprout, from future growing tips to the way the leaves organically split from the stem.
If you have never closely examined an oak seedling, you may not realize that their first three leaves have a very different shape than their mature leaves. Seeing the contrast in this piece of the mature copper leaves beneath with the shiny new silver growth above is extremely striking… some would even say transcendent. (okay, "some" is Larkin's grandpa 🤣)
What a beauty!