Cinnamon Jewellery

I've never tried doing Zentangle designs, I don't think I'm good enough at drawing if I'm honest, but I do love Zentangle patterns! A jewellery maker friend of mine recently very kindly sent me two Deborah Read zentangle stamps (thanks Jill!) I thought I'd use them for etching and decided to try a different way of suspending the copper sheet in the ferric chloride this time too. I normally stick the copper pieces to packing tape and suspend the tape across my etching dish so the copper is immersed in the etching liquid as shown in the photo below..... This works fine for small pieces but anything larger than about 1.5 inches is too heavy for the tape and pulls it down so it ends up touching the bottom of the dish. It also means the copper pieces start to peel off the tape after about an hour which is not good news if you want to do a deep etch! The answer would be to get a deeper dish and more ferric chloride but I thought I'd try hanging the co...

I think I've found the perfect wire gauge for hoop earrings - 2mm. This is just my opinion and probably many would disagree! But..................I've made hoop earrings from various gauges from 20g/0.8mm (big no there, way too flimsy) to 1.5mm and 2mm definitely feels just right. It forms sturdy feeling hoops that don't bend out of shape but aren't too heavy so are nice and comfortable to wear. I've always loved hoop earrings and I am wearing a pair right now. I've often seen the handmade hoops made from 20g/0.8mm wire with the hammered bottom section and thought they looked cool. These are the one's where you form a loop on one end and the hook on the other end of the wire. I did make a pair a long time ago but soon realised that they were much too flimsy and would easily bend out of shape as you tried to fasten them. I tried the same in 18g/1mm which were a bit sturdier but the 1mm wire was too big for the holes in my ears and actually hurt to wear s...

After a few weeks of concentrating on metalwork making hollow form pendants and earrings I needed a burst of colour so out came the enamel powders and some pretty pre-cut copper flower blanks. Yes I could saw out the flowers myself but I didn't :D I felt like mixing up the colours a bit by sifting a mixture of opaque enamels together and firing at the same time. Previously I would only do one colour and fire it then add another colour, fire, then another colour but mixing the second layer of enamel colours saves time and doesn't do any harm. Mixing two different enamel powders won't result in a new colour as such, eg. mixing red and yellow won't produce orange but a speckled blend of red and yellow. Mixing similar shades is good as the different coloured speckles aren't as obvious so the end colour looks more solid. It gives you more options. The earrings above are a base layer of seafoam then another layer of seafoam mixed with lichen and pea which produced...

I recently finished my first hollow form pendant with a bezel set cabochon and actually remembered to take photos this time (!) so I thought I would share how I did it. I decided to make a fairly small round shaped pendant and set an 8mm turquoise cabochon onto the front. I started by forming the frame or wall of the pendant and made the bezel at the same time. After soldering I shaped the frame on a ring mandrel to round it up. I then cut a small piece of sterling sheet for the back piece so it was about 3mm bigger than the frame all round. I flattened and sanded the sheet so there was good contact between the frame and sheet. Using steel t pins pushed into a fibreboard soldering block I secured the frame to the base so there was good contact all round. You could use binding wire instead of t pins or as it was a small sized piece just pushing down with a soldering pick probably would have worked ok. I just like to have a hand free when I'm soldering if possible ju...

I recently finished my first sterling silver hollow form pendant. In my last post I said how much I love the look of hollow form pieces - the 3D solidness of them despite being hollow. Anyway I still love them after making my first version in silver! I didn't take any photos this time but I promise to do so next time when I'm planning to make another one with a bezel set cab on the front. I used 24g/0.5mm sheet that I etched using nail varnish as the resist to create a dot pattern. I used a small brush for the nail varnish and managed to get it all over my fingers (course I did). I discovered you get a neater, rounder dot (which is so important to me because I'm slightly weird!) if you load the brush so it's almost but not quite dripping, hence the messy fingers. I bought some 5mm 24g/0.5mm strip from Cookson Gold for the frame or walls of the hollow form which is a bit extravagant I suppose as I could cut it myself but it just makes it a bit quicker to do. I fou...

I finished my first "proper" copper hollow form pendant last week. I say proper as I'd made 1.5 practice pendants beforehand to get the feel of doing them. The half was my first attempt and it went ok up to the point where I pierced out the hole in the centre after soldering the first piece of sheet to the frames. After piercing out the hole I then for some reason started to pierce out the rest of it which would have left me with basically the frames again (!) I did realize my mistake quite quickly............. My second attempt went much better apart from quite a few gaps in the solder seam on both sides despite soldering one side FOUR times! Resoldering one area to fill the gap caused some other areas of solder to reflow and the solder to run off completely leaving even more gaps! I quickly decided I needed something to hold the frames and flat sheet together so the join was tighter and ordered some T pins...........  First attempt....... looks ok-ish from thi...

I wanted to do a bit more bezel setting to improve how long it takes me to do. I am getting quicker at it, really! I sometimes "waste" time cleaning/ filing/sanding bezels up then change my mind about what I'm going to do with them and realize I will have to sand them again after another lot of soldering. Oh well :D I thought I'd try decorating one of the bezels by stamping. I wasn't sure if it would work as the bezel wire is pretty thin at 0.3mm so I stamped fairly lightly. I didn't want to risk stamping too heavily and the bezel splitting and I also left a gap where the join was going to be. I think it worked ok with these simple turquoise cabochon earrings . I stamped in the gap I'd left after soldering but not directly over the solder join. I think the stamped effect looks "right" with the turquoise. I'm currently practicing making hollow form pendants in copper and will move onto silver in the next couple of days. I love t...