Mooching Towards Greatness

My most used design process of late is sitting down with a sheet of silver and my computer, seeing what shapes I can come up with, making a pattern, cutting it out, putting it on the metal, cutting THAT out and away we go. I've been trying new things recently; moving away from slightly more fiddly pieces with lots of joins and stones and into larger, bold shapes. The views of these pieces have been letting me know that I'm headed in the right direction.

I do tend to plan things out ahead of time if they happen to be fiddly, however. This mock up is a plan for an undertaking that may be some time in completion. It's called "Twelve Dancing Princesses" and is based on an illustration by the incomparable Kinuko Craft. I have a slight advantage in the process due to the fact that I have actually already made it once, before I knew what I was doing, especially in relation to soldering. Recently, due to my former ineptitude, I was able to pry almost all of the stones from the former piece and sadly consign rather a lot of silver to my growing pile of scrap that I am at a loss to know what to do with. When I receive my newest batch of silver sheet, I'll start on the second incarnation of this piece.

My husband and I have odd conversations sometimes. The other day he remarked,

"Have you ever wondered if you do really everyday things the same way as everyone else? Like going to the bathroom? Since you can't ASK anyone if you're doing it right, do you ever wonder if everyone else, like, stands on their head or something?"

That he asks questions like this is largely the reason why I married him in the first place.

I feel that way about silversmithing. For fear of someone looking at me like I crawled out from under a pile of silver shavings, I've never really ASKED anyone how to do things, I've just always done what works for me. Are there easier or better ways to do what I do? Probably. But having built my skill by trial and error, I've always been a little hesitant to ask others in my profession about their creative process lest I find that I'm a complete disaster.

I suppose the process isn't as important as the end result.