A few weeks back I finally got a chance to work on a mokume gane billet I fused in February - at a Rio Grande workshop with James Binnion and Chris Ploof. I was anxious to see if it held together and if my billet design was a good one. I'm pretty pleased with the result, and am again eager to tool up for fusing precious mokume. That's my fall project for sure. I absolutely love the color contrast possible with the 22k yellow gold layers. The gray layers are 14k palladium white gold, the silver are sterling silver. This bracelet style is one I've been making in copper, silver and shibuichi for some time now - (see one here on my etsy shop) but this is my first gold one. And for now, this prototype is mine. All mine... :)

This week I've pushed the stack of ring orders to the other side of my desk, and am enjoying planning my fall advanced jewelry class at WCCPL. We'll be playing with the exotic Japanese alloys of shibuichi (a copper/silver alloy) and shakudo (copper/gold), and patinating them with traditional Japanese patinas including rokusho (a secret recipe, imported from Japan). Of course we could alloy these ourselves, but to keep things rolling we'll instead order from Reactive Metals, a wonderfully small and friendly (hi Michelle!) metals supply company in Arizona.
I've got two types of projects planned - one involving marriage of metal, and another using the alloys in bi-metal form. For that unit we'll create volume with shell-forming, fold-forming and anti-clasting, and even carve and etch our creations before applying patinas. I'm looking forward to seeing what my students create! If you are in San Diego and are interested, the class will be Monday afternoons from end of September through mid-December. Register at the WCCPL site.