Susanna came back to town at the end of April for some sister craft time. Despite having several days together, we still managed to jam most of it into one day...
We began at the Plucky Maidens Spring Junk Fest where we cruised every aisle, and I scored some awesome vintage ribbon (above), a milk glass tumbler and a bunch of materials for our next destination: a soldering pendants class at Collage.
Collage is a craft store on Alberta Street that offers classes in all sorts of mediums. I love going into their store to check out all the "doodads" but I only end up buying boring stuff like paper and glue. I'm always tempted to buy the little pieces that are used in 3D collages, but I just know that they would sit on my doodad shelf collecting dust, so I keep my hands folded behind my back while I peruse.
We signed up for Beginning Soldering: Glass Pendants. The class started off a bit bumpy with a very surly instructor, and ended poorly when her timing was off so that we all had to scurry to finish our pieces. However, the middle part was fun! We learned something new, and I know that Susanna can fold this skill into her jewelry making and I can add one more experience to my list. Here's what I learned:
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| Cards, paper scraps and washi tape |
Gather all sorts of fun collage "scraps" and start creating little vignettes that fit your glass tile shapes (we had 1x1, 1.5x1.5, 1x2). Use a tiny bit of glue to attach them to the backside of your glass tile. For the flat glass tiles you'll sandwich the graphics between two layers of glass. For the "bubbly" type of glass pendant, the graphics will go behind one glass tile.
Using copper tape, tape around the sides of your glass tiles.
Use this plastic stick thing to smooth down the tape, being careful not to rip it. After going through the whole process I realized how important this step is. The instructor didn't tell us that any mark or crease in the tape would be visible at the end too.
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| My Silly Goose |
Now it's time to begin soldering. We had to coat the copper tape with flux (that's what the silver solder would stick too). Then we heated up the soldering torches, got our silver ready, and started adding little drops of silver to the tape area, attempting to cover the copper smoothly.
Susanna used a paper punch to cut out bird shapes from the flat copper tape and attached one to each side of her glass pendant.
I had my hands full with just trying to get the solder smooth around the edges, so I didn't attempt any special shapes.
The background is black/white washi tape, and the butterfly is paper.
I made a double-sided small pendant with a sly fox graphic on each side. Since this is a 1x1 pendant, I added a silver jump ring at the top and bottom with the thought that I could suspended a smaller pendant/bead from the bottom.
A Cryin' Lion on one side and a Silly Goose on the other.
We finished our day by meeting up with Mike and heading down to the Portland Eat Mobile Food Cart Festival, this year held in an OMSI parking lot. At this point we were tired and hungry, and when we arrived we were greeted with a line stretching for BLOCKS! Susanna and Mike got in line while I trekked up to the front to figure what the hell the line was for. I almost turned back when I saw how long it was, but logic took over and I kept moving ahead - glad I did. I have no IDEA what the line was for, but since we had our tickets we could just walk in. The place was jammed - far more crowded than last year. So naturally the lines were long too. Most moved pretty fast, but some of the carts weren't well prepared so their food wasn't flowing fast.
Our favorites were the waffles and the icecream (lots more icecream carts than last year). We left with plenty of food in our stomaches, but not $18/person worth. Since it was a fundraiser for MercyCorp, I figured that we made a nice donation and left it at that. And since none of us does well with crowds, waiting or disorganization, I don't think we'll return next year.
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| this sums it up |
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