Here's a sleeping rat dreaming of cheese that I hand-carved in wax at a figurative wax carving class with Kate Wolf in Portland, ME.

This is the first thing I've carved in wax that I'm genuinely excited to cast, and I'm seriously considering getting a mold made and selling pendants 😄

Final tally of my lapidary work from 8 days of classes with Michael Boyd - I focused on the lapidary side, but learned a ton about integrating stone and metal, and excited by all the possibilities this opens up for my own designs 😄

Made these over the past few days in lapidary class and now I'm obsessed with rocks

Spent most of the day cutting and milling the drawers for my jeweler's standing bench, and started gluing. There are 7 drawers on each side and the smallest are only 1.5" high - perfect for making small and narrow things like files and measuring tools easy to find.

Designed drawer stacks to hang under my standing bench, and was making solid progress on them until the template guide bushing came loose, wrecked itself on the router bit, and spun across the floor in a shower of brass shavings. Project on hold until I can get a replacement bushing 😩

Downtown for some errands today and took the opportunity to wander through the Fens - always enjoyable!

Took a class on chasing silver earlier this week - it's not quite finished but I'm happy with how it turned out!

Almost finished this kinetic pendant - just needs patina, polish, and final assembly. The top spiral is mounted on a teeny tiny ball bearing 😁

Finally putting the finishing touches on my custom jeweler's motorized standing bench 🎉

Got over my anxiety about ruining my solid maple bench top and finally routed out a slot for the bench pin bracket... not perfect, but it'll do!

I think my first bluesky selfie is overdue

Work in progress of my first attempt at plique-a-jour translucent enamel

Being extremely indecisive about what size to make the wings on my new jeweler's bench

Not very creative, but soldering basket settings for stud earrings out of 20ga (0.8mm) sterling silver wire is good practice

Today I learned the hard way not to let liquid flux soak into a new, porous ceramic fiberboard and torch solder before letting it dry fully... The resulting steam-powered explosions and flying hot metal were startling 😅

It's a huge mess right now! Planning to paint the walls and put up pegboard to hang all my tools, and once it's kinda organized I'm going to build a bigger jewelers bench using a standing desk frame

I recently moved and now have a much bigger space for my metalsmithing! I'm still setting the studio up, but here's the first piece I made in my new space - reticulated silver with keum-boo (24k gold foil) accents, set in a sterling silver frame