Leap into the stone setting project

I had no idea you could fold metal on a curve! I learned that you could at the workshop last weekend. I think i have finally figured out what the rest on my stone setting project will look like!!

Experiments

Nice even domes for experimentation with setting a triangular stone.

Im not too sure what kind of composition the set stones are going to go into. I was playing around with bunching up the domes and having them either rivetied or soldered to a forged thinner collar like piece. Not too sure, i'm not sold on any idea so far

Kinetic project

After playing around with the elements of my kinetic project i think i finally found ta good composition.

I think I want to etch a couple of the pieces but not all of them.

Is this going to work... Guess i'll find out!

I want to set a triangular stone inside a dome.

Trying to figure out what size dome the stone will fit into. The tips of the triangle are supposed to just barely fit inside the dome. sounds like some trial and error, oh joy.

Adaptation of Sashiko

In the picture on the left are some traditional sashiko stitches. On the right is my drawings toying with some ideas I having cooking. From the bottom left I think I have devised what will either be a ring band or some encasing element. Using the marriage of metal technique. Still pondering....

Heres some images of how sashiko designs are done traditionally:

Finding supplies is sooooo NOT easy

The only places I could find Undrilled Pearls: 

http://www.ottofrei.com/Undrilled-Pearls/

but they only have off-white ewwww

http://www.ebay.com/

these are 8mm

and these are 5mm

so far they're the only thing I have found that will work... I just wish I could touch them before I buy them! 

I think 8mm might be too big, i'm kind of torn

Side note.... This is my favorite stone: Watermelon Tourmaline 

Kinetic Object

I feel like my mind has been all over when it comes to designing this project. My physical object inspiration was a sandscape. I wanted so badly to incorporate one into a piece but i'm not super sure how that connects to my theme and also not sure if I can make one that A) doesn't leak and B) Looks clean and refined.

My original idea with the sandscape would be that it would be behind a pieced piece of metal, how ever then how will the piece flip around since you dont want metal in the background, so then I was thinking maybe it will have a large boarder and thats where I can put my designs, but it still seemed too straight forward. Its kind of hard to make the sandscape work without using a square or circle. Alas...its just so awesome!!!!

When I was looking into what materials to use in a sandscape I found this pretty cool trouble shooting chart:

http://www.sandscapes.biz/data/instructions.pdf

and apparently they are pretty much just water and sand with the perfect amount of air to allow movement.

The bottom left of the above picture and the top left of the below pictrure is what I was refering to when I said pierced metal would be in front of the sandscape. 

another idea I had was to have different plaque-a-jour pieces that could swivel and depending on how the wearer had then arranged the colors would be different. (Second drawing on left)

and lastly, I toyed with the movement of a spherical object like a pearl in a riveting "caging" like the drawing on the bottom left of the bottom picture.