The Finishing Touches
Making the glass piece for my jewelry is just one part of the whole process in designing my work. But truly, making the glass piece isn’t really even as straight forward as I may make it seem. To get it to a point where it is ready to be made into something for wear, many of my pieces go through grinding and refining, and regularly go through two fusing cycles. Then come the finishing touches! This is the part where I make something pretty into something functional.
I use so many grinding bits to achieve the looks I’m going for in my glass work. I grind channels around both my pendants and earrings with a jewelers grinding bit, and that’s how the wire stays in place. I drill holes at the tops of my earrings with a diamond Dremel bit, and often do this for pendants too. This gives me a place to loop wire through the glass, and create hanging elements for these piece. I grind groove at the tops and bottoms of other pieces of my fused glass to brace the wire on my diamond wire accent earrings.
"A lot of the things I do though, are not only functional, but add an extra artful touch to my glass work."
-Kimberly
Next time you’re looking at my work, check out all the extras I put into making my pieces more artful, more considered, and unique. Some of these are things that have taken me years and years of my life to perfect, and have them become second nature to me. There are a lot of things in jewelry making that need to be that way, because you do them over and over and over and over. The basic stuff needs to be consistent, like the loops at the tops of my earrings where they hook to the ear wires. Think about it. If these loops aren’t the same size your earrings will hang at different lengths, and that’s not really a good look. For the most part, symmetry is really important in jewelry making.
A lot of the things I do though, are not only functional, but add an extra artful touch to my glass work. Many of my pendants I frame with a German style square wire and add a decorative spiral at the top to hide the bail loop. Believe it or not I learned how to make these wire spirals from a children’s jewelry book in the kids section of the Brooklyn Public Library! This was years ago of course, and I have used them like crazy in my work ever since. They show up at the tops of earrings I make too! These things all take time, and sometimes a lot of time, but these finishing touches bring the work to life, and really do elevate it. My work is not easier, but definitely better now for it!
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