Cinnamon Jewellery

Last week I have been mostly making.... hoop earrings with post fitting. Strangely I've never made this type of hoop before but it is a style I like to wear myself so I thought it was about time I made some! I've made the hoops in sterling silver, copper and bronze using wire from 2.6mm {10g} up to 3.5mm {7g} and sterling silver earring posts with the pad. I use the posts with the pad attached as I find it easier to solder them to other things that way. The posts sit nicely in a hole in my honeycomb soldering board then I can position the end of the hoop using a third hand on top of the pad part for soldering. I then trim, file and sand the ends to remove any of the pad part that overhangs the end of the hoop. I do have some of the sterling posts without the pad which I have used before but being a bit shaky of hand at times I'm going to need to practice a bit more before using them on the hoops. Bronze wire hoops with swirly texture pattern. Apart from ...

Or should I say more experimenting with Ice Resin! As a continuation to my  blog post  last week I have been at it again and doing some more interesting things with epoxy resin.  My first attempts didn't cure properly, possibly because I didn't measure the two parts accurately enough or it might have been because I didn't mix the acrylic paint properly before adding it to the resin. Anyway, my second attempts which were the swirly abstract shapes you can see in the bottom right photo below did cure I'm glad to say. They are now leaning up against my work shed window and look really pretty with the light shining through them :D  So armed with slightly more but still a fairly small amount of knowledge about resin I tried again on Wednesday. I made a few pairs of copper earrings, one with two little copper bowls soldered to the bottom and two more with pierced out shapes, then added some coloured resin. In my haste to get going with the resi...

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 decided to put my shops on holiday last Saturday for two weeks which obviously means I'm on holiday too! It's nice to have a break from made to order findings and bangles and just have time to potter and to relax and think about all the stuff I need to do without having anything that must to be done by a certain date for posting. I do have lots of things I want to do jewellery and shops/website wise and I am slowly getting round to them. I'm also spending some time doing another thing I enjoy - buying things online! I saw some Ball mason jars on Etsy and just had to have one of them. They were looking so nice as vases, candle containers and painted in pastel colours then sanded for a vintage look that I completely bought into the "I need one but I don't really know why, they're just glass jars...but they're so pretty!" reasoning..... After lots of searching {all part of the fun} I found a UK site called Uberstar.com  where you can buy the mas...

I've had another busy week making rings and bangles for orders {which is great} so sometimes it's nice to just play without having to worry about getting things done for a certain time. I was inspired to make something quick and easy so thought I'd make a couple of no-solder rings seen in One Hour Rings by Helen Driggs . I loved the look of them and the fact they are adjustable {to a point}. They consist of a long triangle shaped piece of metal that is formed around a ring mandrel. I wasn't sure how sturdy they would be but after trying them with 20g/0.8mm sheet I would be quite happy to sell them knowing they will keep their shape well. They become work-hardened pretty quickly as you shape them on the mandrel and I did need to anneal them in order to finish shaping them properly. I used a leaf vein texture for the first one which has to be one of my favourite textures. The second ring was textured using masking tape. It was a bit of an experiment and inv...

After what felt like weeks of making phone calls to gardeners, electricians, shed people and cladding people my new jewellery shed is at last up and running! I moved in a couple of weeks ago and after a few rearrangements of various tools and other stuff it now feels "right" and I'm settling in and getting to work nicely. I previously worked on the dining room table and in the kitchen which was ok but obviously meant I was limited in when I could do certain things like soldering and enamelling. I often wished I had a space of my own but it wasn't until another jewellery maker asked if I was interested in renting space in her studio that I thought seriously about having my own little workspace {I can't bring myself to call it a "studio"- it's a shed} The cost to rent a space in someone else's studio and the restricted access that would mean made me think that I could fit a shed in the backyard if the raised bed was removed...... and so th...