Ring by Mistake

So many little things to do, so little time.

Today I will complete a large order commission by setting a million little rhinestones into bumble bee pins for a corporate account, a task I am not looking forward to but someone has to do it. I will also spend some time preparing a casting batch for tomorrows Lost Wax Casting Class, it is their last casting batch and everything has to turn out. In today's batch we have reproductions of a really cool ring made by Charlene Serdan, a mistake that turned out to be a masterpiece. Charlene was carving her very first ring and cut a little too close into the ring as student often do and the result was fabulous! It looks like a log, but better, there is no way you could plan something like this. We made a rubber mould for reproductions in her last class and will add them to this casting batch, perhaps she will sell the copies ;) Take a look at Charlenes bead work at www.cserdan.etsy.com.

Burnout

Where do I begin...

Last night I did my first organic burnout here in our Lost Wax Casting class at The Devil's Workshop. 2 out of 3 were successful, I had my doubts about the one that didn't work out before we began, it was too delicate. One of the successful ones was a piece of bark that Colleen (casting student) will turn into a wedding band for her father, now that it is silver she will forge it so the ends meet and solder it together, I am looking forward to seeing the finished results. I heard that all you have to do when burning out organic material instead of traditional lost wax casting is to hold it at that 1300 degree temperature longer so that all the organic material disappears, but after several hours there was still ash in the mould. I decided to let it cool and then put the vacuum to it (probably not recommended) but it worked like a charm. The moulds came clean! I will be trying it again today with a few pine cones for Monica (casting student) who wants to get make a birthday gift for her mother in law to be by Friday. I’m looking forward to creating some new pieces with this technique.