The penguin with the pointy sticks

Simple but effective, perfecting an earring design

Just as with knitwear, as I become more absorbed by jewellery making I'm forever staring at strangers' earrings. Oddly enough, it was a plain silver pair worn by a woman at a knitting group that started me thinking about creating a very simple design caging a coloured bead or gemstone in silver.

In picture above you can see a few of the pairs I've been working on - I've been playing with different ways to contain the stone/bead and different lengths. It's quite therapeutic experimenting with the shapes although I have to contain myself from wanting to wear everything I might make.

Actually, I've been wearing these ones for great reaction. Now I'm happier with the idea and several different colours for myself, I will be starting to sell these and a few other designs very soon. I just have to have more confidence in myself and work out some pricing.

Making Monday: visualising my crafting

For various reasons I've found myself thinking about photo montages to show off my craft interests. It has been interesting looking at all the images I have and trying to define myself through them. I thought I'd share a first attempt.

 

Having a rubber ball with bangles

 

 It may lead to be hanging about in plumbing supply shops, but inspired by something I saw on my recent travels and by various jewellery trends of the moment I've been experimenting with wire and rubber combos for jewellery. These are prototypes and experiments but they are leading to what will be finished pieces shortly.

 

Silver wire and odd earing

 

 Coloured wire coils

 

 

Torc type necklace with pendant...

 

 

From blank page to bangle: a day of silversmithing

 

As part of my plan to try out as many jewellery techniques as I could, I took a Beginner's Silver day at London Jewellery School early this year. During the day we learnt the basics of cutting, annealing, texturing with a hammer and soldering to produce a ring.

While I was very pleased with my end product, I found the day very hard and wondered if these techniques were really for me. But then I had a revelation - I had been walking round, sawing, hammering, etc with a fractured vertebra (I'd previously been told my back was just badly bruised), which may have impacted on my silversmithing experience.

So I signed myself up for the intermediate workshop. This is a major step up because it isn't a case of following along with the tutor - albeit making your own variations - on a single project. This time each of our group of five had to come up with our own project and design, within the constraints of available materials. Then the tutor Melissa Hunt then worked with each of us to identify the techniques we would need and indeed it the idea was feasible.

The one thing I was sure of was that I wanted to make a cuff-style bracelet.

Plus I like spirals, coils and curves - in metal, fabric, etc - and have often used them. Working in wire recently has seen me play with those shapes a lot.

The question was how to bring this elements together. But as I was sketching and thinking I noticed the ring I was wearing, which had a small coil of wire soldered to it.

That helped me with one element - I would use silver wire to make raised coil end pieces for the bracelet.

On the left you can see a test coil in copper as I played with width and shaping.

But then I was stuck. I wanted to reflect these motifs on the body but couldn't see how.

Melissa had the answer. I could try making a series of scrolls in copper wire and use a roller print technique to impress them into the silver. Roller printing involves annealing (softening) the metal and then placing it and a texture between two large rollers to press the design into the piece.

So the first jobs were to cut the sheet metal to length and to test the roller printing idea on a scrap of copper. I need a lot of sawing practice but with a bit of vigorous filing I did produce a neat piece.

As for my test piece:

 There was some distortion but that was useful in working out the settings for the real piece.

Plus it showed that there is no chance of reusing a a copper motif.

So after a spot of gentle scroll rolling it was time for the moment of truth. I attached my motifs to a strip of sellotape and alligned them on the annealled bracelet metal.

Then the moment of truth - the whole thing went into the rollers. I didn't get it quite right at the beginning - so admit that one end of one scroll impression isn't perfect (the pictures avoid this little blemish) - but over all it worked.

Then all that was left was shaping the ends, crating and attaching the ends and shaping the actually bracelet with all the intermediate heating, cooling and cleaning stages.

Plus Melissa had a new challenge for me. We'd orginally talked about soldering the wire motifs to the bracelet but she now reckoned I should consider riveting them instead. This meant working out how to build pins into the centre of my spirals (as in my test copper cols, left) and drilling holes into my piece. 

The drilling worked with a lot of help from Melissa because we had trouble with fine enough drill bits and then it was time to rivet the piece. The drilling is the scary bit - if the pins fit in the holes (and they did) the rest is about good soldering and finishing.

Silver soldering involves painting your joint with borax flux, heating the area with a small blow torch in one hand and adding tiny pieces of silver solder with tweezers.

Then you snip of the excess pins and file down the bumps. This is another worrying moment. My joints held but one of my fellow students managed to file through one of hers and had to start again.

And then there is plenty of polishing and cleaning up to do before a final shine up in the tumbler to produce a pretty piece.

Making life difficult for myself

I'm planning a mini knit-a-long with a friend to take on vintage style short-sleeved Fair Isle jumpers. But being a bit out of practice with colourwork I decided to take on a couple of smaller projects first. But I also decided to go for a spot of self-improvement by learning to hold one colour strand in each hand.

This takes some practice to ensure even tension and I find I have to swap the yarns between my hands a lot because I can only manage some tasks with my left. On reflection a practice swatch with something relatively simple like a traditional star was probably the best way forward - instead these reindeer have been unpicked a few dozen times but at least they don't look too mutant now. But more practice required.

Meanwhile, I console myself with some lace and wire making successes.

Find out about other people's Making Monday.

 

 

DIY souvenirs

It seems that my memories of my first trip to Sicily will be in the form of things that do not yet exist in their final form. 

There will obviously be the online photo album and the new silver charm for my "travellers tale" bracelet just requires a jump ring but this is merely the tip of the iceberg. 

In Cefalu, where we were staying, two things caught my eye; the number of shops featuring beaded and wire jewellery and a little outlet for a traditional weaving and textile business featuring shawls, crocheted items and what from a distance appeared to be skeins of yarn.

So one evening I arranged to meet my very craft tolerant other half in an establishment that purveyed beer and set off for a browse/shop/inspiration-seeking wander. Several jewellery shops later, having being intrigued in particular by what you can create with half a zip (watch this space), I stumbled across one featuring exactly the types of wires and bead/semi-precious stone jewellery I've been learning about. Even better it had a large basket of these:

 

Elasticated bracelets length loops strung with beads and stones which you could just wear as a bangle - or like me have mentally reworked into necklaces and earings by the time you reach the till.

And then I popped into the interesting textile outlet and made a fascinating discovery - in Sicilian terms all we knitters and crocheters have been wasting our time. If you want a scarf, all you do is takes a skein of yarn like so...

 

... tie a couple of strategic knots or add a piece of ribbon and lo, you have a scarf.

Me being me, I'm already unravelling the knots and winding the yarn so I can turn it into a different type of scarf.

Happy memories.

 Meanwhile check out more of this week's Making Monday posts

 

Finding my inner wrapper

Jessica Rose, who runs what seems to be rapidly becoming my home from home, the London Jewellery School, recently told me that she thought I'd really love wire wrapping. She is a great judge of character. I am totally hooked. 

A day's workshop is a big step up from the cocktail ring taster class I'd already attended but that had made me much more confident with the tools and wire.

We worked with square and d-shaped wire - often several strands at a time - and learnt how the make coils and spirals (and even our own earring wires).

We started with rings which were to some extent familiar but with far more techniques. First up was a simpler creation using two lengths of wire and some shorter parts for wraps.

 

But then we moved on to more elaborate creations built from four strands of square wire...

 

What we learnt from manipulating several strands at once we then applied for setting pendants - for which I chose a challenging shape - circles and squares are recommended - and continued to work in the stiffer silver rather than copper wire. But am really pleased with the result.

 

And finally we applied the setting technique to earrings - much fiddlier but a fun challenge.

 

Blinging cocktailtastic

 

Amazing. Two and a half hours at jewellery school, the excellent tution of Hayley, an array of wire and beads and plenty of time to experiment and play - now I have five cocktail rings. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Slaving over a hot kiln

Well it didn't feel like slaving but there was certainly a lot of hovering anxiously by a kiln heated to 800C in the enamelling workshop at the London Jewellery School.

Enamelling, it seems, is not an exact science. Because the firing is quick, the kiln temperature can fluctuate as you repeated open and close it which can vary the time it takes for each layer of enamel to cook. Other variables can be the thickness of your layer, moisture in wet enamelling and even the colour you choose. As a result you stand by the kiln taking nervous quick peeks and repeatedly seeking tutor reassurance until it looks right. So it is warm work.

The enamel comes in powder form (as pictured below) and the first lesson is handling it in dry form.

Thankfully we started with counter-enamelling - enamelling the back to add strength and support to your piece.

The first step is to clean your metal blank - we mainly worked in copper, the cheaper option. Professionals use dilute hydrochloric acid but on this occasion we scrubbed the blanks with a wire brush and wahing up liquid followed by the crucial stage of spitting the metal. Saliva is excellent for removing an greasy residue.

To dry enamel you place your blank on the work mat. Then you put a small amount, a spoonful perhaps, of your chosen enamel powder into a small sieve and then gently distribute the powder over the metal by tapping the sieve. You want an even coverage over the whole of the metal including the edges.

This sounds simple but the tricky bit comes when you then try to move the piece to put it in the kiln. You use a pallet knife to lift your piece on to a firing stilt (the spiky devices pictured beside the kiln below) and then put it all into the kiln using a long fork. All without spilling the powder - not that easy as our tutor proved when helping me involved dropping it.

Working on the back of the piece first allowed us to be slightly less nervous and learn about when enamel is properly fired. 

The enamel we used for the backing was also less intimidating. The backing powder is made up from left over powder from dry enamelling all mixed up, creating a mottled grey effect that I actually think is very attractive.

   

For our first project we concentrated on dry powder using opaque enamels and stencil techniques.

Because of my tendency towards always choosing blues and purples, I decided to go for sunflower yellow.

This proved quite alarming when firing the first of the two layers. The enamel turns a strange mustard brown, but as we learnt the colour changes are normal and as the piece cools you, usually, end up with the colour you expect.

Once the second layer of base colour had cooled we moved on to sprinkling a second colour over a stencil of template.

This adds the challenge of removing your stencil cleanly and not smudging the pattern as you place the piece in the kiln. Not sure I was completely successful with this but I like the effect I achieved.

On my second dry powder piece I experimented with "sgrafitto". With this technique you use a sharp tool to scrape patterns in a third contrast layer over your base layer.

With practice you could produce interesting designs. On this occasion I stuck to some simple straight lines. 

 

 We then moved on to wet enamelling. With this you grind your colours with water and then paint them on your base using a quill - or piece of drinking straw - or brush.

There is a certain magic about wet enameling. Not only can you blend colours on the piece but when you have completed a wet layer, you tap the edge and say abracadabra. Well not quite. The tapping with a pallet knife handle for example, evens out the wet layer. Then you put a sheet of kitchen paper over your index finger and gently touch the edge of your piece - amazingly this dries the enamel.

At the kiln you move your piece in and out a couple of times to remove more moisture before firing.

 

With this one I also had a go at adding silver wire and sinking it into the enamel. This involves working on a piece straight out of the kiln - I can certify it is very hot.

Finally we enamelled a silver piece. Silver is a better base for transparent enamels - like the turquoise below - because the colours remain truer. 

The day really gave a taster of what can be done with enamel - again I find myself wondering where I could put a kiln....

 

 

A real Making Monday

There's a line from one of my favourite Van Morrison songs, Coney Island:

"Wouldn't it be great if it was like this all the time?"

And some days you just have that sort of feeling. That not realistic, if only money was no object, simple pleasures sort of day. Today counts as one of those because it was a proper Making Monday. I have reached late August without using a great deal of my annual leave so am  having the odd day off. 

Today was the first and I decided to make it about making. 

So from experimenting with Fimo buttons first thing:

 

To finally dusting off my sewing machine to work on a panelled skirt.

 

And the post blog task of sewing in the ends and crocheting a neck edging on a knitted t-shirt. It's been all about making today.

 

Even lunch with my sister involved me delivering glass pendant I'd made her.

 

Plus I tidied up yesterday's projects:

Cranford mittens

   Some stitch markers

And a recycling project. I have a multi-stranded turquoise on wire  necklace from which one strand broke off. Not wanting to waste it, I had a bit of a play with what's in my findings jar and I now have accompanying bracelet.

 

Wouldn't it be lovely if evey day was about messing about with wire, beads, wool, and whatever else takes your fancy?