www.cakewrecks.blogspot.com makes me wanna wiggle.

SPIKE rocks.

WOOO!

Manic Metals jewelry is being featured on SPIKE's webpage for the poular and fun 'Turn Down the Suck' rings. Apparently it's been up since the 23rd of October, but I just saw it! Thanks whoever put it there!

See it here: http://www.spike.com/blog/guitar-amp-ring-goes/69915

Also, I voted today.

I am so excited I think I am gonna go into the corner and explode now.

Quickie Studio Tour

Ack! This is my first update with any real substance and it has been forever and a day since my first post. Sorry about the delay in updating for those of you that were waiting. I am taking you on a small and selective studio tour in pictures today - I hope you enjoy seeing where I make stuff.

I finally took some pictures of the work area - nothing fancy, but it is functional. The picture above is of my bench area - it was built into this room when we bought the house so I just use it as it is, though I would like to eventually shell out on a real workbench. The walls all have this pegboard on them and I hang most of my tools off of it, other stuff I have shelves for. The small plastic cups I use for works in progress - I usually make more than one thing at a time because there are lulls in the process, and it keeps me more focused to spend that time that I would be sitting and waiting on making another something. I like the cups because they are reusable, stackable, and easy to get to what you want, unlike storage in bags or whatever. I have been using the same cups since I graduated from college (for the second time), nearly 5 years ago now.

This is my 'clean' area. The place where all of the cleaner aspects of work get done - my office stuff and finishing touches, adding beads and such. This is the orange bin wall - I needed a way to store small things (parts, beads, clock bits, silver findings, etc.) so I went online and searched for craft and hobby storage - big mistake. If you ever need bins like this it is far cheaper to go to a hardware type store and buy them there as the markup on 'craft and hobby' storage is INSANE. I bought these from Sears of all places for $9.99 a piece, which is cheap considering they each have 36 nice sized little drawers. They are wall mountable and they also stand on their own on a flat surface. Very handy. I thought I would hate the bright 'caution' orange (the same color as roadwork signs' but I find them cheerful and happy, but that may be because I'm nuts - who knows.

This dude is my mascot. When we first moved into this house my husband bought him for me - for those of you that don't know he is Jack Skellington from the Tim Burton movie 'Nightmare Before Christmas'. He is a very substantial doorknocker and he was on the front door for a while, but we had to replace the door because it was seriously broken and he was homeless for a while. I finally found a home for him - he now watches over me while I solder, and he seems okay with that.

I hope you enjoyed the small tour, I will probably post more about my work area again at another time, with different pictures, maybe my solder station, but right now I need to get back to work!

Hello, and welcome to the first post of the Manic Metals blog. This will be a tool for many things - getting to know me and my work, learning techniques in metalsmithing or anything else I fancy posting on, maybe some background stuff. I will try to keep this blog completely centered around my work and some metalsmithing info, and will try and update at least once a week.

So here goes.

My name is Kim and I run a small etsy store called Manic Metals. You can find my work for purchase there, as well as info on my design processes and why and how I do what I do. If interested you can truck on over there and check out my wares:
http://www.manicmetals.com


Well, that's pretty much it for now, though I think I will have some pretty interesting stuff come up in the next few weeks.

Thanks for stopping by!