Ring A Month 2019 - January

I decided it was time to join a challenge again so for 2019 I've joined the Ring A Month 2019 challenge started by the lovely Anna Campbell-Hall.

When Anna first posted that she was going to do this challenge and would anyone like to join her I immediately clicked to join. It was one of those impulse things, I love ring making and I'd already decided I wanted to do some sort off challenge in 2019. It was perfect! 

I was busy thinking out what my first ring would be when Anna posted the theme for the January - which rather took me by surprise - because in all the excitement to join it turned out I'd only read the first half of her post about the challenge!!! 😄. I'd completely missed that there would be a theme for each month!! This actually was a good thing as instead of making some easy ring that just sprang to mind now I would have to do a bit more thinking - making it an even better challenge for the year.

So I got making. I didn't really have a plan so I made a plain wide band with natural uneven edges and went from there. First I added varying sized holes around the band.

I then decided it would be a good thing, over the course of the year, to try to use some of the many dried clay elements I have laying around, and I have lots!! This box has teeny, tiny bits in. I chose some textured discs of clay to fit behind some of the holes on the band.

I added them from the inside of the band to create some textured recesses. I tried to make sure every texture I used was different. One or two are similar but no two are actually the same. 

Once I'd filled as many of the holes as I wanted I drew a pattern onto the plain areas with pencil to see how it would look. I'm not a great fan of plain silver so by carving in a design I could fill up some of the area. 

I thought that looked okay so I went ahead and carved the design onto the surface using a combination of the tip of a needle file and a tiny balled headed burnisher tool. 

You can see in the recess at the front in the photo below that one of the circular textures had a little crack in it. I did debate filling the crack, but as it didn't go all the way through I left it as it was - it added more texture!!!! 😉

Um...there was still still quite a bit of plain silver left so I went with my normal filler when doing designs that I feel are a bit empty. If in doubt add some dots, they always seem to work! 😂 

Finally I did a bit of carving to the edges of the band to make it a more interesting shape.

Finished and ready for firing. It went off into the kiln and was fired at 820C for an hour plus.

After polishing the ring I used some patina to make the recesses dark and to highlight the textures. 

Here's a short video of the ring so you can see all around it. 

I quite like the outcome. I've certainly never made a ring by this method before, and I'm sure I wouldn't of done without the challenge - maybe I will develop this technique more in the future :)

Now I will patiently wait to find out what the theme for February's ring will be! 

Have fun!

Joy x