7 Days from Launch to Landing

This little spaceship has just landed.  In Boston.  It took 7 days from its launch date in London to reach its destination across the pond.  I feel reassured that I no longer have to warn my US customers that their pieces may take over a month to arrive, like I had to over Christmas after the snow here, and then the snow there.

We may be a long way away from supersonic delivery times yet, but a week to the US makes me really quite happy.


 

Keeping Calm

I have had a few days when I felt like I was in some crazed spin cycle.  And that lovely old wartime poster told me everything I needed to be told.  So to return the favour, I reproduced it in solid silver.  Now I just need to repeat its mantra a hundred times.

It's in the shop - here.

New work

There is a definite foresty/nature theme prevalent in my work - so I was surprised to find out I had not made any butterflies.  That needed quick remedial action.  And here they are.  A new batch of fledgling flutterbies.

 

front

and back

Available to buy from the shop. 

Owlets

Autumn is probably my favourite season, and for me, is all about forests.  One of my earliest memories is of going hunting for wild mushrooms in the forests of the Pyrenees with my grandparents.  I love that it's called "hunting".  Feels dangerous and subterfuginous.   [That'll do for my word of the day.] 

Back to topic, I've noticed all sorts of foresty-themes making the front pages of the design blogs for some time now...   Leaves, acorns, mushrooms, owls, deer (deer antlers anyone?) - could it be that autumn is becoming everyone's favourite season?

In its honour, I have made some baby owl stud earrings in fine silver.  The deer antlers and mushroom projects will have to wait a little while.

Getting Ready - Urchins

Part of my upcoming collection of nature-inspired jewellery - beautiful sea urchins, made entirely from fine silver , with a choice of precious gemstone in the centre.  The one pictured contains a gleaming blue natural zircon.  Stunning.

Getting Ready - The Bee Series

Some handworked fine silver buzzy bees are shortly going to make their way into the shop when it opens - look out for them!

 

A busy bee for your neck

 

Bee babies for your ears

Pebble Brooch

After the peacock fiasco, this was the piece that earnt me the qualification. 

I worked hard to make sure the syringe lines had a form and purpose.  To be honest, I'm not a great fan of the syringe - something to do with my total inability to keep a steady hand whilst also pushing down on the syringe - but I am often amazed at what others can do with it.  So I did want to push myself to showcase some of the possibilities of the syringe in openwork pieces.  The syringe can do more than openwork, but this was the requirement from the certification board.   I had to try really hard for this piece to have well defined lines (I ended up with my arm on a block of rubber, my left hand holding the unsteady right one, and not breathing, ha ha!).   Also this piece is quite small, only about 4 or 5cm square, so you can imagine the fiddliness of the job...   I started by doing a series of pebbles individually, cleaning those up and polishing the edges before choosing the nicest ones and attaching them together with paste.  Attaching the brooch findings is always a bit tricky but I had calculated the shrinkage well in this piece so it all matched up nicely when fired. 

Fine Silver Peacock

I promised a better introduction to the peacock brooch. He was made of silver clay for the body and a more diluted silver clay which is extruded through a syringe which once fired forms fine lines of fine silver wire, for the plumes.   He is quite big at 10x7cm.  This was one of the pieces I submitted for my level II ACS certification, and sadly it didn't make the mark.  The criticism I received was that the tail was too messy, and I have to agree.   The tail actually broke before it was fired, so that made the repair all the more difficult and in the process I lost some of the detail (yes, I had originally syringed individual feathers... so my expletives hit the ceiling when the piece broke and I realised that the repair would make the carefully designed plumage sort of disappear...).  You can't see it so well in the picture, but the tail is actually openwork, which means you can see through it in places, a bit like lace.  

The problem with this piece was confounded by the fact that as soon as you set out, as an artist, to make a respresentation of something recognisable you automatically add another level of difficulty in ensuring that the piece looks like the thing it is meant to look like.  So whilst my melange of feathers did not work as feathers, I wonder whether, had I set out on an abstract piece, the expectation would not be somewhat different.  I'm not even talking about the Art Clay Guild judges, as their requirement is very specific, and this piece would not have passed whether as a peacock or as a Pollock.  However, even for me, as the maker, I find there is something much more unforgiving about a representational piece as the added challenge is to try and achieve a little bit of realism.  

Evidently, a bowl of noodles doth not a peacock's tail make, but I still love this handsome boy.

Saint George (Sant Jordi)

Today is Saint George's day.  Saint George is patron saint of England where we live, and he is patron saint of beautiful Catalunya, the place we will always call home.  In England there are moves to make St George's day an official holiday and a time for celebration in the same way that St Patrick is celebrated across the world by the Irish, sadly we're not quite there yet and poor St George is not revered in England in the same way as in other parts of the world.  In Catalunya (Catalonia to some), it is an important celebration - it is a day for celebrating love, much in the same way that St Valentine's Day is celebrated in other places.  La Diada de Sant Jordi, as the day is known, is marked with the giving of gifts between lovers, traditionally men give women a rose and women give men a book.  Here is my offering, a little homage to Sant Jordi, brave knight who slayed the dragon to save the king's daughter, a beautiful handcrafted silver rose.  Books in silver will be my next challenge.  

My Level II Adventures

I have - today - sent off my pieces to be judged by the Art Clay Guild for the Level II Senior Instructor certificate.

They're off and I can't polish them just one last time.   That is probably one very good thing, as my prehnite tree will tell you.   The poor tree was polished until he could shine no more, and then, the "one last time syndrome" that I suffer from made me overpolish the already thin bezel strip and a teeny tiny piece of bezel came flying off and I went from having worked with the tree for many days, to suddenly not being able to enter him in the talent show for his kind.  This tiny missing piece would be unnoticeable to most people, but the judges would spot it right away...

I did swear.  Probably quite a lot.

Do fellow jewellery makers find that every so often, they actually fall a little bit in love with a piece that they have made?  I think I just did with this one.  My default on finishing any piece is that I'm never entirely sure that anyone will like it, so I was definitely surprised by not caring too much if others do or don't like this one, just because I do.  When I realised my tree couldn't go to the ball, i felt really quite sorry for it.

So whilst the others are in the hands of the Guild gods, this little tree is staying right here with me.

A Very Very Special Order

One of my best friends has a very generous auntie who came to me with a special request - to make a family keepsake bracelet for her gorgeous niece, in sterling silver, which was to include fine silver charms of fingerprints and handprints of every member of her family.

This turned out to be quite a duplicitous task that had hubby and auntie plotting visits to other members to take prints, tricky that it was not to have her smaller children blurt out the secret plans.    Some days later, the subterfuge paid out and the bracelet turned out great, and I am honoured that she calls it "the one item she would save in a fire".   This is coming from the girl who only wears real Prada.   Aww.  I'm all puffed up.

A Christmas Present

I was commissioned to make some fine silver cufflinks with the recipient's initials - I made a photopolymer stamp with the agreed design of the letters, and used it to stamp the silver clay to create the recessed look, which was then coated in platinol for a dark patina.  I think they turned out rather spiffing.

Level 1 Art Clay Silver Certification

Seems like aeons ago, though it was only a few months, that I did the Level 1 Art Clay Silver Certification course - set by the Japanese manufacturers of Art Clay, the Aida Chemical Industries Company.  The UK Art Clay Guild oversees the education program in the UK in accordance with the criteria set in Japan and awards its certificates - and I am the proud holder of one! 

For anyone thinking of doing the course - it is hard work, you have to complete seven projects in three days as set by Aida in Japan but I had a brilliant teacher who kept a great pace and knew her subject thoroughly.  The projects are designed to ensure you have a good grounding in the main techniques:  using clay, paste and the syringe, ring-making, firing schedules, adding findings and stones, making hollow forms using cork clay, mirror polishing and several others. 

I found it to be a challenge, but well worth it, so I thoroughly recommend it.  Here are some of the pieces I made:

This (one of a pair of earrings) was made using the syringe over a dried cork ball that burns out in the kiln, leaving a wonderful hollow design.

This was one of my first items, made using clay.  I applied a bark texture with paste and embedded the marquise settings, for the stones to be set later, and the brooch fittings.  The edges of the branch were mirror polished.

This is what I call my Willow Ring.  First we made a ring out of clay - and carefully syringed a design around it.  Rings in silver clay are a little tricky and so a course is absolutely essential to understand how best to work with the material for a solid structure and a good finish.

We made more pieces - I will post these another time.

Seasonal Update

The tree is up at home - thanks to a very eager 3 year old.  Nothing to do with her mum, hoho no.  The shop is still getting stocked up, and I'm so pleased that the orders are pouring in!   A very happy first shop Christmas.  I'm delighted to have been asked to make several custom items...

A guitar pick in fine silver with initials:

Some sapphire raindrop pendants again in fine silver: 

and several others that I must keep under wraps, I'm told.  But I did promise an update on the handprint cufflinks that I made recently, and I hear that they got the oohs and the ahhs that they deserved.

Work in progress

A special order for a very lucky grandad:

I'll show you the finished product when they have been approved by the two willing helpers!

In case you could not tell, they will be a pair of cufflinks with the grandchildren's actual handprint embedded into fine silver.   Ok, actual handprint is a bit of an exaggeration - I follow a process to make their actual handprints into a miniature stamp which can then be pressed into the soft clay.   Clay?!   Indeedy.  If it does not look like silver (let alone 'fine') in the photo, it is only because this is Art Clay Silver, a soft, mouldable material that needs to be fired so that the binder and the water holding on to the silver particles can burn away and those lovely silver particles can sinter to produce a solid silver piece.    It's [almost] magic!