Cinnamon Jewellery

Issue 84 of Making Jewellery magazine came out last week and as a MJ contributor it's my turn to be featured in the Designer Profile section! I had to answer 8 questions asking things such as - What made me take the plunge to start selling my jewellery/What are the challenges of working with enamel and If I wasn't a designer I would be... There's some nice photos of my jewellery too. I look a bit hot and bothered in my photo - for some reason I thought it would be in black and white so didn't worry about editing the rosy cheek thing I had going on before I sent it off :D Copyright © 2015 Cinnamon Jewellery. All rights reserved.

I've had an idea floating around in my head this last week or so to make some enamel earrings using liquid enamel over a black base with an abstract and simple {very!} scratched design.  My previously mixed liquid enamel colours had sat on the shelf for a few months since I last used them and had dried up so I needed to add some distilled water to them and stir like a mad thing to get them mixed and smooth again before I could start. I decided to create a couple of new colours from two existing liquid enamel shades so added some more yellow and green to a boring green colour I had to produce the bright green shade in the middle. I also added more blue and green to another mix to produce the greeny-blue shade on the right. That's the great thing with liquid enamels - you can mix them and create new colours. To begin I enamelled some copper shapes on both sides with an opaque black then applied a layer of liquid enamel. On my first attempt the liquid enamel...

After a frenzy of bangle making recently I had a couple of slow days so I grabbed the chance the make some new stuff. I have a long list of "things to make" but decided to go for a few pairs of hoop earrings with post fitting. I've sold a few pairs recently so they needed replacing. I started with a couple of pairs in silver - a simple hammered pair and a flattened design with embossed pattern... I oxidized both pairs but I think the embossed pair might have looked nicer left shiny... {will do that next time}. They do look lighter in real life than they appear in this photo. I also made a pair of hammered texture hoops in bronze and copper. I'm liking bronze more and more these days. Grappling with the thicker gauges can be a challenge as it's a harder metal than copper but the lovely golden brown tones you get when you oxidize it then clean it up with wire wool are lovely. The more golden brown tones of bronze. The slightly more red tones o...

Up until a couple of weeks ago this was a new one on me....yes having to pay a Customs fee on a returned item, in other words having to pay import VAT on my own item to get it back! I'm totally aware of the Customs charge that has to be paid on items imported into the UK from outside the EU that have a value of more than £15 but when a customer from the US asked if she could return a silver bangle recently as it was too large and she wanted a smaller size of course I said yes that's fine, just send it back and I'll get a smaller size made. She was happy to pay another shipping charge for the replacement so all I had to do was wait for it to arrive... It wasn't until the postman left a card informing me there was a customs charge to pay on something - I wasn't sure what it was at that point and thought maybe I'd forgotten I'd bought something lovely.....then it suddenly dawned on me what it was for. The returned bangle! So after feeling quite annoyed a...

I've been trying out some new designs with my enamel earrings recently by combining a layer of etched copper and a layer of enamel beneath it. The copper layer has pierced out sections which allow the enamel colour to show through as the earrings are worn. I've made just two pairs for now in orange and blue and it's possible the design idea may evolve if I think hard enough about it....... :D I've also made a few new copper bangle designs partly as a result of a custom order for two bangles in sterling silver. Having copper wire meant I could try out what my customer was asking for using a less expensive metal first until a decision was made. This inspired me to make a couple of new designs and an improved version of a recent addition to my bangle-ing enterprises. The first is a hammered copper bangle made from 4mm round wire. I kept the round shape by hammering the texture before the bangle was soldered {which was quite a lot of hammering!} instead of...

I started making copper bangles sort of by accident. I had some thick gauge copper wire and didn't know what to do one night at a jewellery class I was at so decided to experiment. And I haven't looked back. They have proved to be very popular especially with men buying gifts for their copper wedding anniversary -  usually leaving it to the last minute!  So it makes sense to expand on the designs I make which is why I experimented with this loop bangle recently. I cut a length of 2.6mm {10g} round copper wire and annealed it so it would be easier to shape. I guessed the length I would need - I had no idea how long the wire would need to be at this point. I used a bezel mandrel to form the loops starting at the centre point of the wire. I had enough wire to form six loops with some left for the straight section. I annealed the wire again and hammered the curved sections then used a texturing hammer to add some pattern to the loops and the straight wire. ...

I first came across these cool Tucker Tool dies in a Soham Harrison video on YouTube a while ago and immediately loved the decorative balls you could make with them. Then I realized you could only get them from the US and they were a bit hard to get hold of. Monsterslayer.com  seemed to be permanently out of stock and another site I found that stocked them didn't reply to my email asking if they posted to the UK.....so I sort of forgot about it for a while. Then I noticed Monsterslayer.com did have them back in stock and in a moment of over-indulgence ordered one knowing full well the postage was going to be quite high and that I'd have import VAT plus Parcel Force's stupidly high {even higher than Royal Mail's} handling charge on top. So it worked out to be a pretty expensive bit of metal. You may have noticed the scratches on the plate in the photo......it didn't arrive like that - they were caused by me and a ball burr. But more of that later. I ...