Still traveling the Road of Life...

A while back I made a traffic light pendant but did not add any patina at all to the metal before filling it with red, yellow and green tinted resin. I felt that the result was just slightly washed out looking. This is kind of embarrassing, but I made this second pendant just a few weeks after, and it's been sitting in my pending projects pile ever since then. Sometimes I have a little trouble remaining focused on my projects... Anyway, I finally got around to completing it. As you can see, I decided to add the patina. I also mixed the resin to darker shades of red, yellow and green (the green did not photograph well, but it's close to an emerald green). I'm pretty happy with it, although, having the usual "grass is always greener" mentality, I can now see the usefulness of the version without the patina, too. I've ordered a few components to make a full necklace with a Road of Life theme, which should be fun.

I've actually been wondering if this pendant is masculine enough looking to make something for a guy from it. I was flipping through a few old beading magazines in my stash over the weekend and one of them had a "For Him" section. I have to admit, the piece that was displayed was nothing any man of my acquaintance would actually wear (except possibly the Short One, and he just likes shiny stuff). It got me thinking about men's jewelry. I feel that a few pieces I make might be suitable for men's jewelry, in that "shark tooth pendant" kind of way. I think it presents an interesting challenge, and I love a challenge when it comes to this stuff. So, you may be seeing my efforts in that direction over the next month or two. (Plus, I feel it gives me a head start to try to design something cool enough that the Short One might wear as a teenager. I'd like to do that, although, who knows what kids will be into by then. Now that's a scary thought, eh?)

I just took a kiln-load of silver out and am preparing to buff them. I'm trying to modify my fortune cookie fortune bezel so it doesn't use so much silver (my first versions took a HUGE amount of silver - they are extremely heavy and expensive, as a result). I'm also working on a couple new projects. I won't have anything finished for these in the next week or two, but they might be good for a work-in-progress photo later this week. More on this later...

I hope everyone had a good weekend! Thanks for visiting.