Ceramics... A Jeweler's Best Friend!

Usually being self-taught has served Larkin extremely well-- their work doesn't look like that of many other artists and they aren't plagued by pesky but-that-isn't-how-it's-SUPPOSED-to-be-done thoughts when they get the urge to try something new and potentially crazy. 😆

The one exception to this rule that comes to mind is TOOLS. Talking to other metalworkers sometimes helps Larkin discover tools that make their life much easier!

The most recent example of this is ceramic polishing shot. Larkin has been using stainless steel shot to give items their final shine all along, and that has been super helpful-- throw metal in the rock tumbler for an hour or two and come back to perfectly polished gleaming beauties! ✨ But they were doing all the harder work (sanding off burrs and rounding edges after cutting, polishing off oxidation on high spots to add dimensionality, etc.) by hand.

Lady J Arts to the rescue! Larkin was chatting with Jessica at a market, and she shared that ceramic shot will make short work of some of those tedious tasks Larkin had been doing by hand! With a couple of different grits, Larkin has been creating some designs that would have been prohibitively time-consuming before-- and their fingernails are looking a little less... demolished. 😅

Hooray for trade... what's the opposite of secrets? Generously shared bits of experience! ✨🎉

Silver Water Droplet Sculpture

Have you ever watched a small stream of water hit a puddle? It forms a sort of cup-shaped splash in the center of concentric waves. Larkin fabricated this little sculpture to capture that moment in sterling silver!

To make the slow-motion-liquid-flowy-goodness of the water drip and cup-shaped splash, Larkin melted silver in a crucible and carefully poured it into a bucket of water. It took *a lot* of pours (each one setting off all of our fire alarms 😅) before they succeeded in getting the shapes they were hoping for.

They finished off the piece by mounting it on hand fabricated concentric circles of silver, just like the ripples in a pond.

This photo of actual water by Nadezhda Vasilieva shows the effect Larkin was going for. 💧💦

Cat Tails Revisited!

These cat tails are another design Larkin has tweaked slightly-- making the seed heads contrasting copper really makes them pop! I always think Larkin's cat tails conjure up memories of halcyon summer days by the pond-- such a lovely, flowing design.

Larkin spent the last of their post-holiday/pre-market-season break visiting a friend at university in Canada and returned just a couple of days before the opening market of the Rogue Valley Growers & Crafters Market! As in years past, Larkin will be there on the first Tuesday of every month. Remember they have a fabulous new location this year at ScienceWorks in Ashland!

Sprouting Plume Agate

Larkin cut these two cabochons from the same slab of plume agate. The “inside” edges are the raw outside surface of the original stone.

Larkin positioned a three dimensional silver leafing vine creeping between the two stones, mirroring the vining feel with the swooping wires on the frame.

Squiggly root tendrils hold the stones securely in place on the back of the piece. That sweetly spiraling little vine between the two pieces of stone feels like a testament to nature’s triumph against overwhelming odds! 🌱🍃

There are some air pocks along the plume lines, accentuating the organic feel of the stone. The stone is partially translucent and will pick up a glow of color from what it it worn against. For example (third photo), if you put it on your orange cat it will pick up a distinctive orange tinge. 🤣😻

A lot of technical skill went into this piece! Setting two cabochons securely without touching is a trick-- and they DO NOT BUDGE. I tried. 😅 There are also a bajillion (at least) connection points where wire is soldered to the wrapped frame, and each of those points is an opportunity for disaster to strike, requiring a do-over from the very beginning.

This piece is honking big (follow along for more technical jargon 😅)-- much larger than most of Larkin's work!

Fidget Ring

Larkin's younger brother, Finn, had a fidget ring on his holiday wish list this year and Larkin took that as a challenge!

They started with a thick band then fit a thinner, hammered band loosely around it. They added concavity to the thick band to hold the thinner band securely in place. The thinner band is loose enough that it spins freely. They added a knobble and clasp to the thin band as one more fidgetable element.

As a use-tester, I can vouch for both the comfort and the satisfying fidgety goodness of the finished ring!

Kinetic Silver Drop Spindle

Larkin has been crafting ever since they had the dexterity to pinch two fingers together! It is somehow fitting that they created this silver homage to another beloved craft. 🥰

This is a sweet little kinetic sculpture that all spinners will recognize! Modeled from a drop spindle, Larkin created the pendant to hang naturally at full extension and collapse when gently pressed against a hard surface to produce a two-ply “yarn”! 🧶🐑

Spindle comes on a cord and can be worn as a necklace or hung as a decoration!

Silver Splats

The first of these silver splats was a happy accident when Larkin got some metal too hot and it dripped onto their soldering block. The rest happened quite rapidly when Larkin got excitedly splat-happy and started spilling molten metal for funsies.

When Larkin first showed them to me, I saw lichen, but I think they could make amazing sea foam/spray and who knows what else, too! I'm guessing we'll see a design incorporating silver splats in the not-too-distant future... 🌊🍻🦠🗯

Generational Mushrooms

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!

Moss Agate Jellyfish

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

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.

Build The Tools You Need

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!

Palm Root Nightscape

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.

Metal Abstraction

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.

Eureka!

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!

Wire currents

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. :)

Baby's First Locket

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. ;)

Finger Gloves

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. ;)

A Feather In Their Cap

Larkin had a request from a fellow local maker to recreate a feather in silver. The feather is meaningful because it is from their family geese, and they wanted Larkin to capture the shape without the flaws and frays of the model.

Jellyfish Swarm

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. ;)

On Shopping Small

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!