July 15th, 2009
With the first brooch finished, I asked Colin to take some photo’s of it this morning as I needed some decent shots of the brooch for the Heriot-Toun website. I wanted to show it off in all it’s glory and my little camera just isn’t up to the job. So we took quite a few images from different angles as well a few of me wearing it and I’m really happy with the images.
July 14th, 2009
I have had no end of bother with my electronic bits and pieces. The soldering didn’t work so I ordered some air dry clay and moulded one dome to do as a test. I plunged the electronics through and positioned them the way I wanted them and then left it to dry out over night, hoping that the clay would shrink slightly and hold the electronics in place. The results were far from satisfactory so it was back to sitting and thinking.
July 2nd, 2009
Today I set about finishing off the bases for all three brooches, which meant soldering the bezels of the two larger brooches onto copper bases. Things get trickier the larger the area requiring to be soldered and the largest base took three attempts to get it complete. Luckily the medium sized brooch was an absolute doddle to solder and worked first time, so I didn’t need to stress too much this morning.
June 29th, 2009
I’ve been working away on ideas for the 7 Sails project and have been toying with the idea of creating three little sculptures or three brooches. Working with copper and my electronic components I want to create 3D swarming princesses as depicted in the painting by Sarah Roberts. I’m still not sure whether they’re going to be sculptures or brooches yet and I’m at a stage where I can still play around with ideas and see what happens.
June 22nd, 2009
I’ve made some progress with my rainbow button bracelet at last. I’ve filed down each of the button holders around the edges – I still need to file the bezel bits down to suit the height each of the individual buttons, but will do that last.
I made a load of jump rings for the first time which was fun. I wound my silver wire around a knitting needle and then used a saw on the coil to cut each jump ring off one by one. I then made the edges meet and gave them a bit of ‘memory’ tension in the process. These were then soldered and hammered flat – which was great fun!
June 15th, 2009
I’ve been selected to participate in phase 5 of the 7 Sails project set up by artist Pat Law at Heriot Toun Studio. I’m the 5th artist in an eventual chain of seven and the artists who have so far come before me in this chain are Sarah Roberts, a visual artist from England; Jerker Fahlstrom, a story teller from Sweden; Su Grierson, a visual artist from Scotland; and Karine Polwart, a singer/songwriter from Scotland.
June 15th, 2009
I’ve been working on this on and off for a while. Never really had a good block of time to get it really going and I’ve had all the separate pieces sitting on my workbench gathering dust. So I decided to finish work at 5pm tonight and get all the soldering done.
Had a bit of difficulty with that as I had to get used to my torch and the strength of the flame as I’ve not used it for ages and also not used it to make jewellery before either – it’s main use in the past has been for melting plastic onto my images.
June 7th, 2009
Here’s an update on how I’m getting on with the learning…
Both Dot and I have been too busy to have any more one to one sessions for ages, so I’ve been going it alone for a while. I’ve been doing lots of reading and lots of research and I’ve also been watching loads of video tutorials online. I got myself a small jewellery bench the other week from IKEA.
May 7th, 2009
Back in February I mentioned I was applying for the 2008-2009 Craft Artists Awards and I’ve been so busy with work that I haven’t mentioned it since. I got a letter in March saying that I had been awarded £500 – so was chuffed to bits.
Again I’ve been too busy to actually do anything with the money. One thing I have been doing though is learning silversmithing/metalwork. My application was based around the fact that I’m doing a skills exchange with one of my web design clients – Dot Sim – in that I create her a new fabby dabby website which she can update herself and she teaches me basic metalwork/silversmithing techniques in return.
January 31st, 2009
We’ll soon be holding regular film nights in our mini cinema and so I’ve taken on the task of making some bean bags. I’ve been collecting vintage fabric and thinking up patterns and tonight have made my first prototype to test out my pattern. I love it!
July 10th, 2008
Ok so I’m a keen recycler. I try to reduce the amount of packaging that comes through my door and generally only allow items that can be recycled. Well the other day we got some garden furniture and although it was wrapped in sturdy cardboard [OK] it was secured with strong plastic strips [not OK]. So I set myself the task to come with some ideas of what to make with them…so they got plonked onto my studio floor and I’ve been tripping over them ever since!
July 9th, 2008
I got hold of about 50m of ric rac recently and didn’t know what to do with it and so did a search online for ideas and came across this tutorial at madewithlovebyhannah. The site is full of amazing stuff using really lovely fabrics and embroidery – a true inspiration!
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