Happy Friday Everyone!  Hope your week was wonderful!  With the temperatures rising, I spent the week inside the nice, coo, comfy studio.  The orange room is taking shape with some new stools and exhaust fan.  Soon we will have a torch or two back there.   The 3rd Annual Laveen Festival of FIne Arts will be taking place May 16-17, 2014 at South Mountain community College Laveen Center.  You can enter two pieces of art for $20.  For more information you can visit:  www.laveenartleague.org Tip of the Week:  Use a mixture of alcohol and boric acid when soldering.  Alcohol and boric acid will prevent fire scale and will keep your metal clean so that your solder will flow better and there will be less clean up from oxidation during heating.  Just dip your metal into the mixture before you heat it up.  Repeat each time you solder. Here is this weeks pictures.  Enjoy! Laura made these super cool earri......

This Ring was made by Michelle, probably a year ago. •Clean lines  Michelle has a very Scandinavian aesthetic to her work that I love. At the same time she manages to make a lot of it rustic. •Tube setting She does a lot of her stone setting by tube setting faceted stones. There aren't too many cabochons in her work portfolio.  This piece is enameled a dark color underneath, with a light blue faceted stone that is tube set on top. Love it! I love what she's been doing lately as well! She gave me a pair of earrings that remind me of one of my favorite  Ikea lamps. I'll have to share those soon with you all because they're just about one of my favorite things. Hopefully she'll be making more. ...