Cinnamon Jewellery

Being a jewellery maker I love watching jewellery making videos, and especially learning new tricks that I can use on a technique I'm familiar with. A video I watched recently was  Further Explorations In Jewelry Enameling: Kiln Fired Liquid Enamel And Sgraffito With Susan Lenart Kazmer . I don't enamel with a kiln but the techniques covered are still relevent for torch enamelling. It's a great video full of new ideas and Susan Lenart Kazmer is a likeable teacher. One of the techniques covered was giving enamel a matt finish using Etchall etching cream. I've seen how lovely enamel jewellery looks with a matt finish and have always been intrigued with it and have thought of trying it myself in the past. The video showed how easy it was to achieve so I went on the cyber hunt for Etchall cream. I found some on ebay for £34 and another etching cream called Armour Etch. I really wanted the Etchall brand so started Googling it until I found some at a much more sensibl...

I've been playing again! I posted recently about trying some of the enamel decals I ordered a while ago and being a bit unimpressed with the results. Well I tried again and ordered some more decals, this time just in simple black designs rather than designs in colours. Previously the coloured decals I tried were a bit of a disappointment due to the colours losing their brightness during printing and fading after firing. I uploaded my designs in PDF format to  Fotoceramic  and they then worked out the cost and sent me a PayPal invoice. I received the decals two days after payment which is pretty good service. Here's one sheet of the decals I ordered... I ordered 6 of each design so I now have nearly 450 decals {Carried away? Me? Never!}  The total cost was £35.05 so they work out at about 8p each. You can create your own designs, use text {which is a great idea} or purchase digital graphics that allow commercial use. So after counter enamelling and fir...

I do seem to have a bit of a poppy thing going on at the moment. My poppy bangle sets are proving to be quite popular - I had several made to order sets and singles to make  last week and I sold the silver poppy studs I made too!  So to carry on the theme because I like the shape I made a couple of pairs of simple enamel poppy earrings too. They are pretty easy to make once the enamelling is done. The balled sterling wire is threaded through the hole in the centre of the poppy then bent at a right angle before being bent up over itself to form a loop at the back that stops the  enamelled poppies from flopping forward when the earrings are worn. The wire is then curved into an ear hook and finished. I made the poppies in minty green and mauve and another concave disc pair in bitter green... I was thrilled to see my new order of decals arrive today. The designs look really sweet and a bit clearer than the last lot so I'm hoping to have another go w...

I love adding designs to things so when I discovered you could combine enamel decals with torch enamelling I had to have a go. I ordered the decals a while ago and after a quick go which left me decidedly underwhelmed with the result I kind of lost interest in it and left the decals in a drawer for a while. I thought I'd better have another go last weekend so dug them out again. I don't have my first attempt but I did discover that colours don't work too well. The bright designs I uploaded to be transformed into decals came back decidedly dull looking which looked equally dull after being fired onto the enamel. Here's part of one sheet of decals ...... The photo is a bit deceptive as the decal sheets have a blue tint to them in real life due to the layer of varnish on top of the enamel decal which burns away during firing which isn't showing up in this photo. The colours are also a lot duller! {Damn you camera for making something look white just when...