About special orders and being happy because SPRING

As I told you the other day, I've been so lucky on the special-order department lately as I've been getting those kinds of projects that are inspiring and make me try new ways to make my jewelry.

Some weeks ago I received an email from a person I admire asking me to my make a little pendant specially for her friend. She asked me for an ace of spades that, when you turn it over revealed a kind of a secret heart. I thought I could use two different cuts of silver, solder them together and then oxidize one side, polish the other for extra contrast. The one you see in this photo was a trial, I made a second one that came out beautiful.

I was super excited about this order, let me tell you why: Almost nine years ago I came from Mexico to join Alex here in Canada to start a life together. He came here first and was, as always, the one that found all local music that we both like listening to. The first Canadian bands I fall in love with (and still are) thanks to Alex discoveries were Arcade Fire and Stars, at that time with the albums "Funeral" and "Set Yourself on Fire" respectively. To say those two albums marked for me those first years in Canada, and made for our life soundtrack while getting to know this country, our life together, Montreal, the winter, is an understatement. We fell hard for arcade fire and stars. So, when Amy Millan from the band Stars stopped one day at my booth at Puces POP craft fair I was, well, fangirling. And then when Amy asked me to make this necklace for her friend, I was literally jumping, such an honor! And then when Amy told me the recipient was Emily Haines from the band Metric I was pretty much living the dream. And that's the little story of how special this order was for me.

So that experience make me happy and so does Spring and my red bouquet of ranunculus! Like, a couple weeks ago while everybody south shared their spring experiences I was sulking because it was so freaking cold and snowy and all around yucky here in Montreal. I honestly was feeling under the weather. But since a of couple days ago things are getting better for us Motrealers, we had a couple of very sunny days and mild weather, ahh, thank goodness. I feel hopeful again, I can see the light, the end of that tunnel that is Winter.

Thanks so much for reading this :)
Iveth

Hope

Illustration by Yelena Brysenkova

I'm about to launch a very special collection and I am super happy to show it to you but first I want you to know more about it, because this new collection has two very important purposes: one, it intends to make the person who wears it happy, and two, it is created in the hopes of helping some very special people in my life. 

Some weeks ago, an unfortunate event took place in my family, thank goodness it was nothing to be sad about, just angry, because it's anger you first feel when something unjust happen to innocent people and when there's not much you can do about it. I tell you that, putting aside the hardship that is having my family away, I feel very lucky to have left Mexico almost a decade ago. 

So here's what happened: After finding hard to work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week and taking care of two young children, my brother and sister-in-law decided one should stay home with the kids and the other will go to work. Having worked for a company for several years, my sister-in-law was the one whose job seemed more stable and so my brother would stay with the kiddos. Everything went good until a couple weeks ago the company she worked for had a security breach an a fraud was committed among their employees. Without making a proper investigation, they accused my sister-in-law to be responsible of this fraud, threatened her, humiliated her and let her go of the job without any payment. She is a honest, hard working person and by no means she was involved in the situation. As the only source of income of the family was cut short, came lawyer bills to pay to be able to defend themselves and not to mention all the household expenses and the anguish of the situation, they are having a really hard time. As I told you before the first thing I felt was much anger and despair, I was worried, you know and once again disappointed of my own country and the disgusting work practices of so many employers, low ethic lawyers and social injustice everywhere. And as hard as it was to keep that awful feeling out of my head, my mind cleared up and then came hope. Hope because I know that even when the sky is darkest there's always light up there and eventually we'll see it, specially when you have a kind word from the ones you love and strength to carry on and find calm, happiness, stability, security, health, acceptance or what ever you look for. 

The only way I can help them beside being there to talk is to put my hands to work and offer them a little financial support while they find jobs and this problem gets resolved. So I decided to focus in the positive things and make a little collection where the sales of the jewelry will go towards them. My brother's two year old daughter name is Luna, which stands for Moon in Spanish and from there the collection was born in my head. It's all related: the moon, stars, the night, the light. 

I'll launch the collection very soon, I hope you love it! And if you love it enough to purchase a pair of earrings or a necklace, I'll be forever grateful for your kindness and not just me, but a little fun and loving family in northern Mexico :)

Thanks for reading this!

Iveth

A Mountain Necklace

A little while ago I was asked by a lovely customer to make her a couple of Mountain necklaces that were just like my Mountain earrings. And although it's not the first time I thought about making my mountain into a necklace I encounter the same fear about the durability of the delicate dual polishing effect on my Mountains on a pendant which is touched, rubbed and scratched more often than earrings. So we came out with the idea of using layers and oxidization to clearly mark the lines and make the contrasts on this piece to endure. The results were pretty awesome and I'm completely in love with these necklaces!

Now, let me tell you something: I'm not usually fond of custom works BUT before you let your mind wander on that, I gotta tell you that when the right custom request comes along, I absolutely love making it possible for my costumers! What I love to make are their visions of my own work, you know? like what their own minds and fancy get when they see what I do and when they admire my style. Whenever that connection happens between my customer and my work, I cherish it and enjoy so much to hear about their vision + trying to make it possible.

Been very lucky lately in the custom request department: I also got a request by one of the singers I admire the most to make a necklace for another amazing singer I admire, it was awesome! I'll share some photos of that work soon.

What do you think of the Mountain necklace? are you loving it? would you like it to make and appearance on my shop? Thanks!!

Iveth

Making of: The Refuge Necklace

Last December we were so lucky to receive two of our best friends from Mexico who came to spend the holidays with us. Alty and Riki -my friends- are some of the most amazing, creative people I know and while they were here, Riki offered to make a little video of me while I was busy at work, making one of my most beloved pieces of jewelry: The Refuge Necklace.

I'm very happy he did this for me, as it's the first time I have an actual video of my process, of me working on the jewelry and such a lovely video it is! I hope you enjoy visiting my studio and see how things are in The Angry Weather HQ's for a day :)

The making of: The Refuge Neclace from ricardo meade on Vimeo.

Did you like it? I'd love to know if you have any questions regarding the process of making the Refuge necklace! And if you want to see more of Riki's work, come visit his Vimeo channel here!

Thank you so much Riki! Muchas gracias!

Iveth

Tools of the trade.

Yesterday I went to buy tools and supplies and among the things I got: wax carving tools, wax files and wax blocks. I'm so excited to start working with wax and can't wait to see where it takes me. I've never worked with wax before so I'm also nervous! I'll sure need to take some classes but for the moment, I'm going to play around and experiment.  

I'll keep you posted on my progress! 

The Making of Two Very Special Rings

Hello there!

I hope you all are doing really great. Today I want to show you some process photos. I always have a hard time taking process photos as when I'm working, my hands are usually very disgusting with dust and nasty compounds and I feel terrible to touch my camera, and other times, I just simply forget because I'm just too busy making the jewelry!

But today is very special because I wanted to document the making of my little brother and sister-in-law's wedding rings, which I feel so lucky to be making! To be honest, many of the steps to complete these rings are missing from the photos but I documented the most important of them!!

So here we go!

After minding some measures for size sake, I proceeded to cut the band using a hand saw. I used sterling silver sheet to make my model ring.

When the band is cut. I file off the irregularities of the piece of metal and then anneal it: this is a process in which I heat the metal with fire, then dip it in cold water and then gave it a warm acid bath to make it softer and malleable. Then it can be formed to make a ring using special pliers.

When the ends of the band can perfectly touch one another, I'm ready to solder! I skip the solder step because I was very concentrated soldering the ring, but here you can see the ring just after being solder and bathed in warm acid to get rid of the flux and dirtiness. Can you see those markings on the surface on the band? that's where the two ends are soldered together and when the piece is finished you won't be able to tell where the ends were soldered together! 

At this point the ring is out of shape.

We need to form it using a mandrel and a wooden hammer to make it round and pretty.

Ta dah! it's round. But really ugly still!

It needs some major sanding now: inside of it, on the edges and of course the outer surface. 

When the ring is all sanded and neat, I proceeded to add the details and make it special: I wanted to add texture to the piece and at the same time wanted it look neat and clean, so I came out with the idea of using thread to add this texture. I wrapped the thread in the middle of the band. I also used thread because it kind of makes me think of the link that unites things, two people together: so let's say it represents love. 

When the model piece in ready, I took it with a specialist to have a mold done and also a reproduction in silver, so I can see and correct any faults or details that I don't like before committing to gold! When the silver reproduction is made, it comes really rough and need lots of love to make it pretty.

Here you can see both pieces together: the original model with the black thread and my silver trial. Here I had sanded and mildly polished the silver piece to have an idea of how is going to look my final piece.

This is still the silver piece! I haven't finished the final rings and I'll show them to you after I give them to my brother and sister-in-law on their wedding day! But you now have a pretty good idea of how they'll look like :D

I hope you enjoyed this little taste of what I do :) Thanks so much for reading it!

Iveth