Jewelry 1

Monday night was my first night of Jewelry 1 at my hometown's community college. The class runs until July 28th, we meet 3 nights a week for 4 hours, and there are 6 assignments. Like most children I've been drawing, painting, and playing with clay since I was little, but have never worked with metals before - foreign feeling. My class is about half college students, half older adults. My teacher broke her wrist in early March (I think something on a slab roller kicked back on her - ouch!) so she hasn't really done any of the steps she has been demoing in awhile. The first assignment is a pierced project, so I decided on a Celtic knot. We can choose from copper, bronze, or silver so I chose silver - it is so dang expensive! But it is cool that our little scraps from sawing are reusable - I'm going to use those pieces to make a thumbprint necklace for a later assignment. Luckily the textbook was only $17 and my Hobby Lobby supplies were less than $20 - woo hoo! I already had a sketch pad and tracing paper of course. Our teacher gave us 12 saw blades last night, and I only broke 3 so far! Once you go through all 12 you have to buy a second set yourself for $1 something. I hope that by the end of the 8 weeks I don't have arthritic carpel tunnel hands and a hunchback! I'll probably upload some assignment photos in a few weeks! :)