The Teacher's Learning Curve

We got a very thorough training recently on the projects we'll be teaching at this summer's jewelry camps, taught by the experts in San Francisco who flew down for the day!

It was rather enjoyable and humbling to experience the trial-and-error of practicing these techniques.You can sometimes start out a confused, blank slate, and then after a few rounds of practice, suddenly you've made something cute and wearable!  I've photographed some of my own pieces from that day, to show this repetitive learning process, and also show some previews of our camp projects. 

The first wool ball I rolled...

The wool felted ball project is so much fun. It involves compressing these clouds of different-colored fibers until they're really solid and mostly spherical!  Much easier said than done. My first attempt, seen above, was far from round despite my best efforts. Nor do they need to be perfect, but I was definitely going for more roundness. I was little more successful in my second round, and I plan to incorporate these both into jewelry: 

Second wool ball!

Above is my little charm made by stamping and dapping.  This technique definitely requires practice; hand-stamping letters and designs into copper or sterling silver. You can clearly see the two initials on the sides, but there WAS a letter 'F' in the middle, which all but disappeared after I rounded the flat disc with a dapping block and hammer.  Same with the pattern of leaves, they disappeared.  I like this pendant anyway, and I know how to improve next time and keep my letters clear!

One of my favorite projects in copper etching, as seen above.  We use a metal-etchant solution to carve basically any pattern, lettering or design into copper pieces, and I've practiced this one alot before our training last week.  This piece was everything you'd hope for as a result: a nice, clearly defined pattern, achieved by a few hints and tips that I certainly didn't know my first time doing this one!

So, I just wanted to illustrate the learning process that we teachers go through ourselves, before the knowledge reaches our students.  See you in camp!