Cinnamon Jewellery

I've been wanting to try anticlastic forming for such a long time now and I've had some of the tools I need to do it for over a year {oops!} Anyway I finally got round to it a couple of weeks ago. {The simplest definition of an anticlastic form is something that curves in opposite ways in two directions. Think of the shape of a saddle where the part that fits the horse curves in one direction and the part you sit on curves in another direction.} Just after Christmas I treated myself to a Durston bangle forming die set... It came with a mallet too but more about that later. Having this spurred me on to having a go so I cut a strip of copper, soldered it and formed it into a round shape. I marked the solder join with a Sharpie as a starting point reference and drew guide lines around the bangle to help guide the mallet strikes. The die set is very easy to use. You secure the steel bar in a vice then slide the die onto the bar. I threaded a broken burr into the...

I am rather fond of a ponytail. I put my hair in a ponytail a lot - when I'm making jewellery, swimming or just need it out of the way. I usually just grab a covered elastic band but sometimes I fancy something a bit nicer to adorn my barnet {"barnet fair" - Cockney rhyming slang for hair}. I have a decorative, plastic ponytail holder with a now very tired and stretched bit of elastic attached to it which I've been trying to replace for ages but haven't managed to find anything when I've been out and about. But through the power of Pinterest and the random journey I embarked on one day - I think it started with me looking at enamel stuff then seeing something pretty and veering way off track until I found myself staring at a page of hair accessories - that I saw an idea for making your own ponytail holder and decided I just had to have a go. I started by straightening the edges on a piece of textured copper I've had hanging around for a coup...

I've been meaning to buy a Sievert torch and propane bottle for absolutely ages after first using one at the jewellery night classes I went to a couple of years ago. It was really my love-hate relationship with my max flame torch that finally made me just get on with it and buy one. Up to now I've managed with a mini butane, a max flame and a plumbers propane/butane torch and they've mostly been fine for soldering and enamelling a range of sizes of metal. Apart from the max flame butane torch. It's a larger version of the mini butane but badly designed with an awkward on off switch arrangement, a bad habit of spitting liquid butane out of it's bottom when you try to fill it, only igniting when it feels like it and a flame {once you manage to light it} that dies within minutes of "filling" the torch. And I have as yet not managed to fill it properly despite holding it and the butane canister at different angles, pumping the butane canister and ...

In my last blog post I wrote about some patterned bronze sheet I'd made using my rolling mill and that I'd then made some new earrings with the results. One of the pairs is made with a leaf vein texture. It's really easy to get a mirror image of the leaf vein texture by sandwiching a skeleton leaf between two sheets of metal which is what I did for these earrings. I then trimmed around the outline of the leaf shape and added a curve to the leaves so they looked a bit more like real leaves.  I used this forming block... I bought this on ebay a while ago and only recently found out it's designed to be a bangle forming block but it can be used to form curves in lots of different shapes. It always makes me think of a child's toy :D It added a nice curve to the leaf shape which is what I was after. I then soldered a jump ring to the top of the earrings and pierced out the centre to form the hanging hole for the earwires. I tidied u...