Made from scratch

Being a few weeks into my Jewellery Design & Making course at the art college in Plymouth, I thought it was about time I showed off my only (half finished) piece. The first five weeks have been all about techniques, so we've been looking at soldering, wire work, using a rolling mill to create texture and a few other things.

The rolling mill was great fun, and I found that it was a great way to combine my love of hand drawn type with jewellery - you can basically emboss designs on to metal using a paper template, so cutting words out of paper and rolling them between sheets of metal works really well. My friends Ami and Jonny had just had their first ever little person, so I was playing around with her name, Beau. This was just a little experiment (hope you like it Ami & JK, shame I didn't get it made into anything more finished).

Using paper and the rolling mill again I made this little fella for my Gran. When it's finished it'll be a brooch - she loves owls, barn owls in particular, so I can't wait to get it finished and give it to her! I think she'll be chuffed.

March is jewellery month

Of all the things left to me by Annie, the one thing I treasure most is her set of mahogany drawers. She salvaged them from a skip in the 70's, and filled them with things that didn't have another home. The drawers are still full of the things she put in them - dental floss, buttons, allen keys, nag champa, paintbrushes being a few of the bits and bobs. I've claimed a couple of the drawers, but they're mostly still a bit of a shrine to my lovely mum.






















After having a good old rummage through the drawers the other day, I decided to make some earrings using some of the bits and bobs that I found. First up is a pair made from vintage buttons, and the second are made from whatever I could find...

The take over has begun

I'm scared by how busy I've been recently! It doesn't come naturally to me - anyone who knows me knows that I'm pretty lazy, I like my bed, and I would love nothing more than to spend all day in my PJs. The new job has really taken off in the last month though, I haven't had a spare second to myself! So the creativity has suffered...
I have, however, started an evening class in jewellery design and making, and I'm loving it! I promise I will post some pictures of the things I have made so far in the next couple of days...

I'm mainly concentrating on hand-drawn type and incorporating it into jewellery. Something I got into over christmas (with a little inspiration from Liv Bargman and a book on Polish papercutting) is the loveliness of papercuts. Thankfully this really lends itself to metal work, whether it be through piercing or embossing stuff - both of which I've had a go at, and I'm really pleased with the outcomes....watch this space....