Saturday, February 25, 2012

PJ046 Deep Cabochon Mold


Here are the originals from which the new PJ046 Deep Cabochons mold was made. Note the depth of the cabochon originals.

The bottom 4 mm of each cab is flat sided then the tops begin to curve to create the cabochon.


The mold will be available to order by Wednesday February 29, 2012 at our website, Best Flexible Molds.

Step by step instructions are included with each mold.



This group of cabochons were created rather quickly and easily using the deep cab mold. Shown are Faux Jade, turquoise, agate, mother-of-pearl, opal, wood, pearl powder on black clay, jellyroll swirl and mokume gane.





















Left is the faux agate in a silverplate Amate setting.














Friday, February 24, 2012

New house and a new Mold

We have moved. At least, our stuff is moved and we can find our clothes, the dishes, the sheets and some of the pots and pans.

We are very blessed. We began the move on January 10th. It was pretty out and the weather has stayed nice with a few wet or cold days, but mostly very good weather for a move and for building.

Family came to help load the truck, drive all the way to Maysville (45 miles one way) and unload the truck. We repeated the rent truck, load truck, drive truck and unload truck again the next weekend. Lots of stuff.

The third weekend, Joe rented a van, alone, for the last few things. After unloading the van we drove to Paul's Valley, 12 miles away to the Gordon White Lumber Yard and bought nearly everything that would be needed to build the mold room inside of the very large steel building we call the RV building. Then unloaded the van and drove it back to Moore, picked up the car and drove home. We are just too old to do this!!!!!!!!!!!! We were so sore and tired and wondering why we would move.

The photo to the right shows Sophie's favorite place in our new living room. Sadly, we had to get rid of about 1/4 of all our furniture, no room for it but what remains is plenty for just two people and a fuzzy doggy.

Small town,
Quiet.
Level streets (great for three wheel bicyling)
Chain link fences, no more prison stockade fences.
Low taxes
Really big steel building for the RV and mold room.
Long driveways
Nice neighbors,
Friendly people,
You can see for a long way!!!!!!!!
The grocery store is all the way down town on the highway, seven blocks away.

I am loving it here. I go into a store and see someone whom I recognize. We say hi!

My studio is coming along great. On the left side of the room is a small work table , shelves, printer, keyboard, monitors, computer and two stacks of drawers.


On the right is my work table, also coming along well. Still have boxes in the middle of the room but it is down to two boxes and they will be gone after this weekend. :-)

We had to get clever with this side of the room. There is not much wall space so the work table had to take a minimum amount of space. Enter a 24 inch flush door that was painted with white enamel!

We set up four sets of drawers at a counter height, put the door across the stacks to make a table and drilled holes for wires to go through it. A sheet of black glass is my work area. There are shelves above the work counter and a 4 foot florescent light fixture with day light bulbs in it.


A fifth short stack of drawers has the acrylic paint and sand paper on it. Note the boxes in the room. They are slowly being emptied and taken away.


We've brought out our first new mold here. A deep cabochon mold with openings designed to fit Amate Bezels .





Shown are the bezels with the sculpted deep shapes in them. With eight openings, it should be a popular design as folks have been asking about squares, circles and rectangles.

This new cabochon mold is designed to fit Amate
® Bezels that are 4 mm deep.
The bottom base of each cabochon is 4mm deep with 90° flat sides. The dome of the cabochon rises above the 4 mm base. This allows the cabochon to ‘dome up’ above the sides of the bezel creating a rich, high ‘stone’ insert.

To fit the 4 mm bezels simply fill the mold all the way up.

To fit the 2 mm bezels under-fill the mold by 2mm.

To make flat back cabochons for gluing or beading, under-fill the mold by 4 mm.

Note the illustration.


More to come. The mold room is built and operational and the RV is finally here at the house with us instead of in storage.