May 19th, 2010

A while ago I bought a large sheet of copper for a specific project and only used a small part of it. It’s been sitting in my studio gathering dust ever since. I’ve been thinking for a while what to with it as I don’t like the way that copper stains the skin, so wasn’t sure about making jewellery out of it. Then as I began experimenting with oxidising silver recently, someone suggested trying the same with copper…so here are my first experiments.

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April 28th, 2010

I blogged or tweeted recently about working on some new sea glass rings – progress has been a little slow on these as I’ve not been able to get into my studio due to other commitments of late, so here are some images of the initial stages for my next four rings.

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April 14th, 2010

I’ve been looking for some biodegradable grip seal bags for a while – something I can use to package my badges up for sale and keep a clear conscience as previously I have been using non-degradable grip seal bags that I bought years ago that needed to be used up. I found a good supplier online at last and ordered a box of 1000. The order arrived this morning and I’ve been itching to finish work and start printing out labels and start sorting my badges out into packs of 4.

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March 31st, 2010

More of an idea in process than work in progress this week. I’ve had an idea to make small versions of my sea glass pendants and turn them into rings for quite a while now, just not had the time to have a play. But because I’ve been itching to try the idea out for so long, I just had to get into the studio and do it and here is the result…

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March 24th, 2010

I recently fixed a pair of earrings for my friend Claire and they gave me an idea of how I could approach making my vintage button earrings. Claire’s earring were so simple – just a piece of silver wire, curved and bent in half, with balled silver on one end that held a cut glass bead in place. After sketching out lots of ideas I decided to try a similar technique for my vintage button earrings.

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March 17th, 2010

I started on this little brooch idea a few weeks ago and it’s been in limbo ever since as I’ve been busy with other things, but I hope to get the first one finished by the end of the week. I intend to make 5 little brooches  – all from the  teaspoon bowls from a set of teaspoons I acquired recently. The spoon handles were soldered onto the bowls in such a way that they were very easy to remove with a little heat, which left the bowl shape intact.

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November 8th, 2009

I devoted some time today to finishing off my initial leaf pendant that I started last week and make an additional two. I could have made another three as I have three more spoon heads from this set, but decided to leave those until next week and concentrate on other things.

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November 5th, 2009

This morning, in between my day job jobs, I’ve been working on a little autumnal leaf pendant. I’ve been ignoring the spoon heads that were discarded when making my spoon rings for far too long and decided to have a think of what to do with them the other day. I knew I wanted to cut something out of them, whether this was a letter initial, or intricate pattern os something simple, but nothing really stuck in my mind too long.

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October 15th, 2009

I’ve been busy making lots of things for my up and coming craft fairs in November and one idea I wanted to try was to make a cluster ring to match the cluster necklaces and earring I’ve been making – more on those later.

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September 20th, 2009

Well I started my Silver Jewellery Creation course on Friday and the first thing I wanted to do was make a ring from one of the sterling silver teaspoons I bought in Edinburgh last week.

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August 16th, 2009

Following on from my ring making frenzy, I decided to make a bangle for a friend of mine. I realised that if I formed the swirl on the ring in the opposite direction, it would look like an ‘S’ and that just happens to be my friends initial…

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August 15th, 2009

I decided to make rings today – follow a few tutorials in a book that I borrowed from the library and get comfortable with working with different thicknesses of wire and have a good old play and see what I come up with. It was tons of fun and I want to make more, but I’m running out of fingers.

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August 6th, 2009

We’re going to Ireland at the weekend and it just happens to be Eileen’s [Colin's mum] Birthday. So I decided it would be nice to make her a brooch from some of my vintage buttons.

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