Metal Price Calculator

Metal Price Calculator
Originally uploaded by LooseWireStudio

With the cost of silver what it is, I needed a way to figure the price of what I needed. Here's a snippet of my spreadsheet. What you can't see is also a calculator of how many headpins per foot, how many feet needed based on this. And then the price of sheet metal per inch.

I just plug the current price of metal in to the top and the rest is calculated for me. Or I enter amount of feet desired and the cost is there.

It's saved me a lot of time and questions!

If you'd like a copy of this, just drop a comment here or send me an Etsy conversation with your email address. :)

Riveting Abalone

Riveting Abalone
Originally uploaded by LooseWireStudio

Over a year ago, I made this design and decided to make a go of it again. There's a lot of work that goes into this prior to bending the tabs and if one of those babies snapped off, all that work would be for naught. It ends up a unique and sturdy design. One of my favs. :)

Examine Your Etsy Billing Information - Cheap!

This is now available in my shop CHEAP! I began offering it as a PIF, but realized I'd go broke paying .20 with each one. So, it's only a little over a buck!


Instructions for adding your Statement Data to Etsy_Statements_Summarization.xls. From now on, I'll call this the Statements File.
PC Instructions only. I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with Mac. This assumes you have Microsoft Excel 95 or greater.

1. Open your new Statements File,
   
2. Login to Etsy
3. Click on Your Etsy
4. Under the Money section, click on Your Etsy Bill (https://www.etsy.com/billing_main.php)
   
5. Click on the month you wish to begin with. I'll choose Dec 2007
   
6. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the link "Download this entire montly statement as a CSV file".
7. You'll receive a choice to Open or Save. Choose Open.
8. Select OK to any other prompts you may receive until the data opens up in Excel.
9. Now you should be in Excel, with the data viewable.
10. Select all of the data. One way is to hold down the Ctrl key, while pressing A.
11. Copy the data. One way is to hold down the Ctrl key, while pressing C.
12. Now navigate to the new Statements File.
13. Click on the Dec tab.
14. Click on the cell A11 and paste the data. One way is to hold down the Ctrl key, while pressing V.
15. Voila! The data is automatically totaled on the Dec tab and on the Totals Tab.
16. Continue on with the other months.

Hope this makes sense. Thanks and have fun!

Stages of a Hammered Silver Cuff

On a piece of sheet silver, I draw out the design with an ultra fine sharpie. I have some old machinists rulers that I use. Then I lube up my saw blade and get to work. Magnifying lenses are so necessary in this task. The sheet silver is put upon the bench pin and I saw just outside the line drawn. This takes some time. The teeth on the saw blade are so tiny they can't be seen by the naked eye. Well, not mine anyways. :)

After sawing, I take a rough rasp and file down the larger highs and round the corners slightly. I count as I do the corners so they are more uniform. Then I take a finer file and do it all over again. Once more with a diamond file. Then rough sandpaper, then finer and finer grits until the surface is smooth. Looks pretty when done.


Then I move to the bench block and begin hammering the divots. Thousands of them. I always mean to count, but lose track. Hammering does bend the metal and begins to harden it.


When done, I carefully hand bend it a bit to straighten it out. Then I move to my oval bracelet mandrel. It's a heavy hunk of metal. Using my oh-so-cool rawhide mallet, I start to form the shape of the bracelet around the mandrel. At intervals, I make certain the edges are in line. I actually begin at a much smaller size when shaping then, move up to the actual size needed. I've found this is necessary to convince the metal to move.

When done with this, I check the edges for roughness and sand as needed, then steel wool it for a subtle sheen. If a higher shine is desired, a tumble is a good start and then onto rouges. But that's for another post.

Voila! Takes a bit of time, but very satisfying!

Wow! 10,000 Forum Topics I've Posted In. (Etsy)

Friday, December 14th marked 10,000 Forum Topics Posted in for me. Yikes! My first post was 10-7-06 and the first question I tried to answer was 10-13-07.

This milestone has made me pensive about the Forums and Etsy in general. Most of what I love about Etsy is its community. The people here have been kind and helpful. There are so many Etsians that are willing to answer questions. Sometimes it seems a contest to see who can answer first!

I'm amazed at how generous people are with their wisdom - artistic and business. I can't imagine how long it would have taken me to feel as confident as I do without Etsy. When I went to my first craft fair, I found myself better prepared than some others who had been doing fairs for a while. When I needed to purchase jewelry displays, many people divulged their sources for good suppliers.

So, this wisdom that I've learned I try to share with others. I've captured many screens and have a document with the most asked questions, so I'm quickly prepared to help out. In my real-world jobs, I've been called a mediator, a service-oriented person and a troubleshooter. These skills all help me to help others.

Mostly it feels like I'm hangin' with my coworkers, helping the newbies, sharing knowledge, discussing personal or wordly issue or just playing games. :)

Size Difference Between Mini and Medium Earrings

Even I got confused when I tried to visualize the difference between the sizes while looking at my Etsy listings. When I have them in my hand, the variance is quite evident. So, here photo, to clearly show the difference. Mini size on the left, Medium size on the right. :-)

Ah... finally.

I feel whole. Like two pieces of me, apart all of my life, are now fused together. Heh heh. Finally, I began to use "the flame" in these Fine Silver babies.

Fine silver is indeed easier to work with than Sterling. I plan on moving over to Argentium after this. It has the hardness and the tarnish resistance. A bit more work than the fine silver. Fine silver costs more, the sterling mixes take more time - both end up probably equal in the end. We'll see where it falls out. Truth is, it probably won't end up anywhere, as I'll keep on learning and growing as an artist.

But dang, this was fun! :)