Cinnamon Jewellery

For someone who's loved silver forever I seem to have an awful lot of scrap 9ct gold! Some of it is from gold chains and a ring I had when I was younger and some of it I was given by my Mum as she wasn't a big gold jewellery person either. She preferred wearing my early bead creations bless her! There's also a couple of scrap pebbles from previous projects. I started by melting it into as large a pebble as I could manage with my torch. I ended up with a slightly saggy looking black lump. As I thought gold wasn't supposed to oxidize I decided to look up exactly what 9ct gold contains and found out it's made up of 37.5% pure gold and the rest is made up of silver, copper and zinc. That's explains the oxidation........ This is the 9ct gold after pickling - still a bit grubby and you can see some of the copper on the surface. I then ran it through the rolling mill, annealing several times as I did so. This is the result. It sta...

Here's an infographic courtesy of Cooksongold that should be very useful to budding solderers! It covers the basics you need to follow to solder succesfully but the most important thing to bear in mind is, like anything, soldering gets easier the more you do it! Copyright © 2016 Cinnamon Jewellery. All rights reserved.

Several months ago I swore off using texture cards with my rolling mill after some pretty unimpressive results with copper and silver sheet. The last lot of patterns I bought were from a different supplier than usual and left me feeling that using the cards wasn't a good idea anymore - the imprinted patterns were so faint.  Then a friend told me that Tracey from Rolling Mill Resource  on Etsy had a GoFundMe page as she needed to raise funds for a new laser cutter machine. In return for pledging a certain amount of money she was offering double the value in texture cards - so $50 would buy you $100 worth of texture cards. Ooh, very tempting, especially as she was promising lots of fab new designs. So I gave in to temptation and paid $50 {about £35} then waited a few weeks until Tracey had her new laser cutter and had listed her new designs. I then spend ages choosing my designs.  And here they are...  Aren't they lovely? I chose a lot of the smaller c...

I wrote a blog post a while ago where I practised making a mini synclastic bangle  using a pair of synclastic pliers and dapping punches. I thought it was about time I made a proper sized bangle! If you're wondering what on earth a "synclastic" shape is it's where the surface curves towards the same side in all directions or in the case of my bangle rather than having a flat profile when viewed in cross-section it's domed. Or if you still don't understand it...just look at the photo :D I started with a strip of copper that I'd added a stripe pattern to... Once it was soldered and the join tidied up I rounded it on the bracelet mandrel and sanded both sides to get them flat. I cut the strips of copper sheet myself so they are inevitably a bit wonky to start with but it's easy to sort out once the bangle is soldered. I decided to make a medium size bangle and cut the length longer than normal to allow for the decrease in the ins...

I had a break recently and took the opportunity, once I'd caught up with lots of other things, to make some new stuff. I wrote a post a while ago about making metal wrap beads  in copper with the thought of doing a sterling silver version and that's one of the things I did in my break. I had the idea of having a set of three bangles with three beads on just one of the bangles and the other two plain with a hammered finish. Then I decided it would look a bit more contemporary {to me anyway!} to have just one bead on each of the three bangles. I started with some silver sheet I put through the rolling mill until it was about 0.25mm thick. I used the wrap bead template I made myself...... ...and cut three lengths for the beads. I used the smaller size this time. I made three bangles using 3.25mm copper wire that I textured with a hammer. I then flowed some solder onto the the silver sheet on the side that would later become the inside of the bead. Then I...