Cinnamon Jewellery

I managed to get a couple of pairs of bronze earrings finished last week that I photographed at the weekend and I also had a custom order for some bronze stacking bangles so it definitely has been a bit of a bronze week. The bronze stud earrings above are made by melting bronze wire into pebbles then flattening the pebbles to create off-round and oval organic-looking shapes. After forming them into concave bowl shapes I tidied up the edges then paired them up and soldered them together with a fine silver ball for decoration and contrast. I oxidized these then cleaned them up a fair bit so the dark areas are just in the crevices. I also made some simple oval bronze earrings with an etched pattern and a turquoise jasper bead added to the earwires for a bit of colour. I still find bronze a bit unpredictable compared to copper where liver of sulphur is concerned but I do love the golden brown colour you get when it does behave nicely and oxidize evenly :D I a...

My recent sterling silver bangle-fest where I made quite a lot of silver bangles for hallmarking in various designs made me want to make something similar in copper. I really enjoyed making the stamped silver bangles on the right in this photo... I hadn't done any stamping for a while and it reminded me how much I like doing it. When I say stamping I mean creating patterns from mostly circle and line stamps rather than the inspiring words/phrases/childrens names that are so popular. I can't stamp letters in a straight line and making that style of jewellery has never appealed to me at all. So I stick to making patterns. I also made three copper bangles with a leaf vein texture using leaf skeletons. I used some 4mm {6g} round copper wire which I annealed then ran through the rolling mill a few times to flatten it. After annealing the flattened wire again I ran it through the rolling mill with the leaf skeletons, holding them in place with my fingers as they g...

What was supposed to be a quick half hour trip out in the car yesterday morning to post an order and pop into Tesco turned into an hour and a half and ended with me walking home........ As I turned into the car park at Tesco the car made a very loud bang and there was the smell of burning rubber. After checking under the car and staring at the engine for a bit - I had no idea what I was looking for but it seemed like the right thing to do - I ended up at the garage via a nice roadside recovery van man being asked if I'd gone over a pothole. I hadn't when it happened but all the other potholes that I hadn't managed to avoid in the past had obviously done their worst and cracked the front coil springs. I must have hit a little bump or something and the springs both snapped causing the car body to drop onto the tyres at the front. Luckily the tyres weren't damaged. I was really impressed with the service I received and the speed that everything was fixed and I n...