After spending a few weeks in the garden beds getting the weeding and edging and mulching done in between the downpours, humidity and heat, everything’s so amazingly green and lush outside. But rain usually gets me back into the studio, and I’ve been playing with those metals again! I came across a video of a noted jeweler teaching Keum-boo, her specialty, and realized that I’d been edging myself toward this process in my mind’s eye, focusing on silver, oxidization, and gold mixes. One thing led to another and I decided I could teach myself this process with the right equipment.

So, I invested in a little Ultra-lite kiln with the special Keum-boo brass plates, arming myself with agate burnishers, some fine silver (aka “.999FS”) and 24K gold leaf (the only way this works is with the pure stuff), and jumped right in. Traditionally, Keum-boo involves fusing 24k gold leaf/foil onto fine silver (permanently) and then oxidizing the silver, creating a generally dramatic finish. Not one to always follow tradition, I played with several shapes and finishes, including matte finishing the silver and gold, and added some etching on gold to give some pieces a little more depth. It was hard not to do a few pieces in just black and gold, and of course I also had to try adding some stones to some earrings.

Motivated to have some new pieces for the July 3 & 4 Fine Art and Craft Show at Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute where Lily will have a booth, I finished a dozen of these so far, and I just love playing with it. These new pieces relate naturally to pieces I recently did with sterling (aka “.925”), where I used oxidization to paint the pieces half black and added several colored stones (swiss blue topaz, chrome diopside, golden opals and more) to provide a little drama to these delicate pieces. They’ve proven pretty popular to women of all ages – young girls and up; there’s something about the way the silver parts reflect color when you wear them. I confess I have a ‘go to’ pair myself.

So enjoy these for now, you can check them out on the New Items page, and expect more to come…And if you’re in town that weekend, stop over to MWPAI‘s annual Summer Art Fest and check out our booth, Friday & Saturday July 3 & 4, 11:00am – 7:00 pm, and try some on on yourself!