Cinnamon Jewellery

At the end of last summer, after an incredibly busy few months jewellery-wise, I decided to take a break and repaint my shed. I'd painted it a pale green colour when I first got it and it was starting to look a bit faded and sad. So I did what I expect most people do and started looking online at what wonderful colour I could repaint it. There are lots of great colours out there by Cuprinol and Ronseal and the DIY stores own brands. I took a long time deciding on a colour then got in the car to go and buy the paint. That's when I discovered that B&Q and Homebase only carry a limited selection of shed paint colours {8 if you're lucky} and if you then find something in stock you do like they quite often don't have it in the size pot you need! So the colour I bought was a bit of "Oh buggar it, that'll have to do". Luckily it turned out to be similar to what I'd originally wanted by the time I'd finished the third coat - yes it took three coat...

Starting today I'm having a Black Friday sale in my Etsy shop ! Everything is 10% off plus free shipping within the UK!  And like a lot of online shops my Black Friday sale extends beyond just the one day and doesn't finish until the 8th December! I recently got a batch of sterling silver bangles and cuff bracelets back from the London assay office and they are listed and ready to go in my Etsy shop. A curved anticlastic silver bangle with leaf vein texture. A silver cuff with leaf vein texture - I am quite fond of that texture :D The popular poppy bangle in bright or oxidized finish.   A cuff and bangle in my current favourite pattern and texture which is lines applied with a jeweller's saw and then using a frosting wheel to add a lovely matt finish to the silver. Shiny silver bangle with leaf vein texture {again}. Matt texture on a flat silver bangle decorated with twisted wire coils. A flat silver bangle with...

A few months ago I started having a strange problem. The solder joins on some of my 2mm bronze wire bangles started to split as I was making them. Three out of five of a set I was making split and I had to start them again.  Bearing in mind I sell a lot of bangles and have made hundreds of them without any solder join problems occuring before I was baffled. I also had a few solder join splitting occurances with 3mm bronze wire and 2mm copper wire. One of the joins on the 2mm bronze wire came open literally as I got the bangle out of the pickle pot and others would start to split when I put pressure on the join either by rounding the bangle on the mandrel or by hammering it on the mandrel. I thought about what I was doing differently..... but I wasn't doing anything differently from how I made all my other bangles! I use wire ranging from 1.8mm up to 5mm in copper, bronze and sterling silver. The process is the same - cut the wire, file the ends flat using a mitre jig, b...

Up to now I've always regarded the wire grooves on my rolling mill as slightly annoying as they take up space on the rollers that I wish was smooth. Then I'd be able to texture wider sheets of metal instead of the measly 4cm I can do now. I've never had any inclination to make my own wire so the grooves are those things that are just "there". That's up til now! I've known for a while you can make square shaped wire using the grooves so thought I'd have a go. I have searched for square copper and bronze wire in the past and only managed to find the thinner gauges in the UK. Being able to make my own in thicker gauges is a real bonus.  I just need to apologise now for the blurry photos. For some reason I decided not to brace my arm/hand on anything when I took most of the photos..... If you move the two rollers close together on the mill you can see the diamond shape gap the  grooves leave. I annealed some bronze wire and fed it...

I wrote a post recently about forming soldering clamps from the Knew Concepts titanium strips I ordered sometime last year. One of the most useful clamps I made was a shape that would help me to solder earring posts onto stud and open hoop earrings... I can position it to hold the post like this for studs.... And like this for soldering posts onto open hoop style earrings.... Previously I was holding the piece of 20g post wire with a pair of tweezers in my right hand and the hoop was held in place using reverse action tweezers in a third hand as it is above. I would hold the torch in my left hand and as the flux heated up and became liquid I would find the post wire would start to move and I'd be forever stopping and trying to get it back in position. The metal for the hoops is only just over 1mm thick in some cases so that also used to make it a bit tricky and swearing would occur quite regularly! Now that I can set it up with the titanium clamp hol...

My blog was recently featured on two shed retail website blogs. The first was  Waltons  who held a Blog Awards 2017 . My blog was entered in the Best Creative/ Shed Worker Blog category and I came second! I got to vote in that category too and did think about voting for myself {!} then decided not to and voted for another great blog about making beautiful stained glass creations. I got a badge to display in my sidebar and three pairs of gardening gloves as a prize which was very nice. I was also contacted by  What Shed?  who included my blog in their  Creative sheds that are very un-shed like  blog feature. The feature covers sheds that are used for a variety of things including various creative pursuits, a recording studio and a home for a huge wargaming collection. An interesting read as it's amazing what goes on inside those wooden things at the bottom of people's gardens. All this shed stuff made me want to see how much my shed has changed since...