Intentional Stones

I'm heading down to the studio feeling lighter and more free. I have some stones to set tonight, but that's the only "must do" for the first time in a long long time. At least there's that.
This is in the nature of a quick post. So I'll share photos on tumblr.
But the plan for the night is set stones, get my vice and forming stake holder attached to the big workbench and maybe the rolling mill, we'll see how I feel about sharing my new workspace with that huge hunk of steel.
I need to sort out some examples of ring shapes for a customer who's visiting tomorrow.

Wow, it feels pretty good to have choices.

Learning from failure

There it is, the end of the opportunity.  I had a larger commission that I just never got done.  It started with success.  Rose quartz became a lovely set of pendant, earrings and a ring:

 

 

Great!

But then, with 6 more stones to go, I started falling apart. 

I can't really say exactly what happened.

Was I being stubborn and not confident in my designs?  Has my desire to traditionally set stones rather than wire wrap them whenever possible doomed me to failure?  Am I just uncomfortable with Sugilite?  I've never worked with it before.

I did get a pretty pair of earrings and a pendant done. 

And I like them.  But the pendant I was working on to match the earrings just never worked out.

Life got full? the design wasn't fully thought out and starting on it wasn't really reasonable? I expected too much from myself?

Clearly I need to limit taking too many pieces at once.  Clearly I need to work on communication about design.  Clearly I need to reign myself in when I get ambitious about artistic design and I'm not sure my skills will match it.  Clearly I need to manage time better.  Clearly I need to work on self discipline, since my time of late is so very precious.

But the clearest part of all is I let someone down.

And I'm really sorry.

-Simbelmynë