9/52 - Midnight Garden

This week my challenge piece is another wand pendant. This one is blue goldstone. It has lots of lovely sparkly bits in it, especially when the sun hits it. Blue goldstone is in fact a man made material, and this wand is nice and round in shape, and super shiny!! It was a real problem to photograph!! I started off on white in the light tent, but not much sparkle! I normally photograph in a tent to avoid reflections, but as the sparkle didn't come up very well I went for some photos in natural light on a dark background as well. You'll have to put up with the reflections on those!! :)

Goldstone was first made in Murano, Venice in the seventeenth century, if you are interested you can read more about it here. I decided some nice glass beads would be the perfect combination to go into the chain and I knew I had some Murano glass beads that might match in well. I'd seen them only recently, but do you think I could find them!! Of course after a while of searching it becomes a challenge in itself! They had to be somewhere, and I wasn't giving up!! 

When I eventually found them they were somewhere I had already looked, not in the sort of bag I thought I was looking for, oh...and they were totally the wrong blue after all that :) Oh well...

In the process of searching though I found a few lampwork beads by Izzy Anderson of Flame and Glass, and they matched in very well. The chain is a mix of handmade links, commercial chain and the aforesaid beads wire-wrapped.

The top of the wand cap has the same design as around the sides, and it is finished with my Joy logo on one side, and three little faux rivets on the other side.

I was pleased that the shrinkage worked out really well on this. At the moment the wand is firmly in place with just a friction fit, but I will remove it to send the piece for hallmarking. I'll add a touch of glue when I refit it for added security.

It was fun to consolidate two of the techniques from my earlier challenge pieces, the wand setting and the beaded chain. I will be doing more faceted wands in the future - they are harder to do than this round one was!! :)

Have fun!

Joy x

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8/52 - April Showers

Yes, I know, I'm late with this challenge piece! This could be a long blog post :)

So are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin!!

Last weekend I was teaching a one-to-one Art Clay Level 1 Diploma certification workshop (well done Frann Healey on passing!!). The very first piece made is a fairly straight forward textured pendant with a stone set with syringe. The problem with teaching these workshops all the while is what to do with the pieces I make when I demo. Sometimes I don't fire them and reconstitute them, but on this occasion I made the centre piece of this pendant. During the workshop I also made a top piece with a bail on the back, and some raindrops which were attached with chain. The top piece had a little bit of gold added with the keum boo method after firing.

If you are following my challenge this year you'll know I have a list! Well fairly near the top of that list is making necklaces using beading wire and crimp beads. I've never done this!! I have read up on it often, and really struggle to get my head around those daft little crimp tubes being strong enough to hold a necklace together properly to make the piece saleable!! Whenever I have contemplated going that way, I always end up reverting back to wire or chain for necklaces. (Better the devil you know??!). I know the system must work!! There are many amazing artists out there stringing stuff together. My good friend Lynne Glazzard does it, and boy, if there is anyone who would be sure the system worked securely before using it then I know it would be Lynne. If in doubt on the strength of something she'll hit it with a hammer to check first!! ;) She probably added a one ton weight to the end of her first strung piece to check it!! lol

So there was my nice little pendant waiting for a strung necklace. I debated, looked at it, found a load of other things to do, generally procrastinated, and started another challenge piece!! I even photographed the pendant (above) on a ready made necklace and wondered if I could get away with it as my challenge piece!! It is a fairly simple pendant though, where was the challenge in that? 

During the week Frann and I were in email contact after her workshop. I had told her my plan for the piece she saw me make, and she kept asking how it was going!! Yikes, I felt I had to do it!! So today, with the next challenge piece already in the kiln firing, I decided it was time to stop being a wimp and to get on and make a necklace. 

And guess what... these things are soooo much easier if you just start them!! Why hadn't I done this before? It wasn't a difficult thing to do. And now I think I might do a lot more, because I really enjoyed it!!! Ha, ha, ha...you can see why I started this challenge for the year.

I pulled out a load of beads of suitable colours from my large (but mostly untouched!) bead stash. Of course, having never done this before there was a learning curve.

Firstly, I now know I need one of those plastic bead board things. Beads rolling all over the table is not good. I also know that it is not worth crawling around the floor for each seed bead dropped, the hoover can have them!! :D And I know I seriously need to sort out the bead stash!! Too much rummaging through plastic bags.

As I had no sensible way of laying the beads out I just went for it on a design. I did have sufficient forethought to put a matching bead into a dish for every bead I used though. This meant once I added the pendant in the centre the second side was much easier to make replicating the first one. I wouldn't claim it is the most wonderful necklace, but I learnt a lot and thoroughly enjoyed myself. The necklace is really quite sparkly, but I just couldn't manage to capture that in the photos.

I was especially pleased to include the four large flat freshwater pearls. They came from a bag of pearls I bought when we were on holiday in China in 2003!! I've never used any of them before! The mix included real pearls, Swarovski pearls, Swarovski crystals, seed beads and handmade lampwork beads by Laura Sparling.

On the plus side while I was messing around and not getting on with this I started my next challenge piece. It is already fired and now needs finishing, so yay, I'm back up to date again! Next challenge post will be Sunday/Monday time :)

I mentioned earlier that I made this pendant while teaching. I love teaching one-to-one workshops, and Frann did so well on her Level 1 Diploma. She even had time to made a more elaborate brooch based on my mask pendants. We adapted the making techniques to fit the Diploma criteria and I think she made a great job of it!! Here are all the pieces that she made. 

If you are interested in doing a workshop with me do get in touch!! :D

Meanwhile...

...have fun!

Joy x

3/52- Moon Gazer

This weeks challenge piece is a fine silver locket, made using Art Clay Silver. It is enamelled and set with 2mm stones, and also has 24k gold keum boo details. I've called this Moon Gazer.

This is a piece that has been in my mind for a while. On Facebook we have a group called Metal Clay Europe, and we run challenges. The theme of the current challenge is The Sun, the Moon and the Stars. Being one of the admins of the group I am not allowed to enter, but if I was this would be my entry!! :) (BTW if you want to enter the current challenge you have until 31st Jan '15!!!)

The front panel of the locket swings to open...

...and inside are a few hidden gems ;)

It is deep enough to hide something special. At one of the shows I did last year someone suggested my lockets were perfect for keeping a TicTac or two close to hand!! I guess you can keep anything secret in a locket! :)

It is quite small, measuring just 24mm wide by 30 mm high plus the bail.

Finally I added a handmade silver chain. I used to make lots of chains but always left them bright shiny silver. These days I patinate almost everything I make to bring up the textures and make them more pronounced. (Patination is a process of making the piece dark all over, and then polishing back up for the desired effect.) 

It was a logical step to start patinating my chains as well and I am loving the results!

While making this locket I was also working on a new stone setting technique which lets me set stones quickly and easily. I shall be doing more experimenting with that!! 

I realised this week that everything I've made so far this year has been very restrained on the colour palette. When I mentioned that on Facebook several people commented that they liked the results! So you never know, maybe 2015 will be a more colour limited year for me (but I'm sure a few  rainbows will appear sooner or later!!).

Have fun!

Joy x

Modern Medieval Earrings

So, yesterday I showed you some colourful things!

These are my new design, a range I am calling Modern Medieval.

Here is a WIP shot of the pieces made in fine silver clay waiting to be fired in the kiln at 820C.

  

As they fire for an hour or so the binders which were added the the powdered silver burn away, the pieces shrink a little and I am left with pure fine silver. 

Here they are fresh out of the kiln (cooled first of course!) :)

At this point the silver looks white and the next stage is to polish them up to nice and shiney, and then enamel them.

Until finally we have lovely earrings!!

One pair just had to be rainbow!! 

 

 

The lovely red and black of these have a real Gothic feel.

 

And this pair have 24k gold dots around the edges, and wonderful green and blue enamel. I called these Pretty as a Peacock!

 

These earrings are now up for sale on my website and also in my Etsy shop.

I am really happy with this new style and Im working on matching pendants and also lockets.

I'd love to know what you think of them!

Thanks for reading...

and have fun!

Joy x

Long Time - No Blog!

I've been a really bad blogger!

I kept thinking 'I must blog' but somehow never got around to it - it has been a hectic year!

And yes, it is a year!! Today I decided to go get started again, and guess what, then I saw it was exactly a year since I last posted!!

To be fair it is not totally all my fault, blogger seems so unresponsive that just posting this today has become a major struggle and I have had to change browser to do it.

Still, enough of the excuses. I shall now be blogging again!! YAY!!!

So here is a bit of colour to start with - 

I'll tell you about these in my next post ;) 

 

Meanwhile...

have fun!

Joy x

WCC 17/52 - Ollie

 

Now this one REALLY is completely different. No metal clay in sight!!

 

Last weekend I went on a workshop at the British Museum to make a mosaic. It was only a short three hour session, and I've never made anything like this before. It was a bit rushed to fit it all in, but in the end we all got finished!

 

The workshop was to coincide with the Pompeii exhibition on at the museum, so we started off with a talk about Roman Mosaics, then we were given a few design ideas, or told we could do our own design. Well mine had to be a critter didn't it!! I'm in the process of making some more of my owl earrings so an owl seemed an obvious choice for me. Then we chose some tiles for our design, were shown how to cut the tiles, and were off. We had about an hour and a half to get the hang of cutting tiles and put our mosaics together. Phew, so there was no hanging around. This piece is about 20cm square.

 

There wasn't any time to grout our pieces, but as it happened I had some white mosaic grout at home so I added it yesterday. You can see it makes it look totally different to how it looked at the end of the workshop in the photo below.

 

Maybe white was not the best colour to use, but that was all I had! Still it was great fun and I enjoyed it all. There's definitely a LOT of room for improvement but I do feel inspired to give it another go.

 

You might wonder why I just happened to have some mosaic grout at home!! Well, for quite a few years now I have planned to try micro mosaics, but of course have never actually got around to it. Now I think I just might give it a go... :)

 

Here is Ollie's poem

 

Two beady eyes
in orange and black
Vitreous and ceramic
mosaic plaque

 

Phew... that is the end of my blogging marathon for today. This is the last of EIGHT posts on my Weekly Critter Challenge to bring me right back up to date. Do check out the rest of them :)

 

Joy x