Playing With Fire

Silver smithing has some pretty neat aspects. I love watching my metal get red hot under the torch, the solder flow into a seam.

I melted many pieces in my early days, overheating pieces trying to get the solder to flow. It isn’t easy when you don’t know how to get the perfect torch flame size or how far to hold it from your work. SO. MANY. FRUSTRATING. ERRORS. So many almost finished pieces ending up in a big ball of molten silver. But, 8 years after my first torch experience I have mastered it. At least the soldering silver part. I did recently melt 14K gold into a pool on a silver earring because their melting points are different and the gold overheated.

I have just begun toying with gold over the last year or so because the cost compared to silver is astronomical. Not exactly what you want to be learning with but you have to start somewhere.

Speaking of starting somewhere, I had a hard time letting go of my previous site. A girlfriend had built it for me and she was a site building genius, even if she didn’t see herself as one. It was a portfolio site and I have wanted to turn my online presence into e-commerce for a while. She used code and I, being computer illiterate, couldn’t update it.

Up until recently I had been selling at several shops around Toronto and PEC and was content with that, as being a new mom took over a lot of my time ( most of my time) and so I let the online store go for the time being.

Now, with so much being all but shut down and my husband home more due to COVID-19, I saw an opportunity to move my business online. I buckled down, built a site, gave up the site I loved so much and launched my e-commerce store. And even if start up fees for an online store are less than brick and mortar, they exist, and in a time when you don’t know when your next job is coming or when you might get your first sale, it feels a bit like Playing With Fire. Like the early days, melting pieces when they’re almost done, almost perfect. All progress lost. But we have to start somewhere.