Upcoming designs

I have not posted a lot about the projects I have been working on lately. However I have spent a bit of time looking at new design possibilities.

About a month ago I purchased a Cricut Explorer to create new designs for my jewelry. Essentially this machine will cut out designs on all kinds of materials: paper, card stock, vinyl, and even leather. It probably would even cut metal, but I have not been brave enough to try.

The software has access available to lots of paper projects and designs, even text for projects!

But that is not the reason I bought it. I purchased it so that I could cut out designs to use with my rolling mill. 

Here is the paper part of the project I have been tinkering with.

As you can see, the Cricut machine cut out paw prints and bones from my card stock. I then used this paper with a piece of annealed copper in my rolling mill.

Here is the result:

Ok this is totally cool. But it does have a down side, the paper is a one time use. So in order to make more, I have to cut out more templates. But the Cricut software does allow you to save projects, so you are not re-inventing the wheel every time you need a new template cut.

After cutting more templates out, I decided to try this again with annealed and fire patina silver.

Here is the end result

I am thinking bracelets or maybe necklaces. Do me a favor and drop me a line about which version you like! 

Thanks and have a great week!