Cinnamon Jewellery

I've been playing with my enamel colours again and creating my own "blends". It's fun sitting at the table with my different colours and mixing them up to make new ones. Enamels don't really mix to make new colours but you can achieve some really pretty speckly effects. Using the same colour groups work better than mixing colours opposite each other on the colour wheel. I found this out when I mixed some purple and lavender enamels with a bright green hoping I'd get a nice purple/green mix but it just looked grey when it was fired. If you looked closely you could see the individual colours but the overall effect was dull but luckily the beauty of enamelling is you can fix it with another layer (within reason!) What I have learned with mixing colours is if it looks dull in the pot it will still look dull when it's fired........... :D The hoops above are enamelled in a mix of different greens with some transparent turquoise layered on top on the bott...

Going to jewellery classes has made me want to conquer my still slight anxiety about soldering. I don't know why I'm anxious about it - the worst that can happen is you melt something (done that), get solder where you don't want it (done that too) or the soldered parts come apart when you quench (yes, done that too). So I thought I'd do something easy and make a few pairs of stud earrings. I started simple with some flat discs in copper and silver that I textured using wire and my Bigshot then hammered in areas. I use the posts with the pads as I don't think my hand is steady enough to hold just a post in position while I solder it in place, in fact I know it isn't! I flow some solder onto the pad first then solder into place to make things easier. Then I made two pairs of concave disc studs with a fine silver ball soldered in the centre. I like this design and the fine silver forms a smoother rounder ball than sterling. I textured the discs...