It's Amazing Where Your Jewellery Can End Up!

A couple of months ago I received an email from Liv at the Wildfowl and Wetland Centre at Arundel in West Sussex which is about an hour's drive from me, asking me if would be interested in a wholesale order for the gift shop at the centre.

After setting up a meeting where I took some of my jewellery to show the manager, Liv and another member of staff and agreeing terms, I waited to hear if the Wetland Centre's head office would agree to them placing an order. They did and a few weeks later I received an order for 40 pieces!

Fantastic, I thought, I can do that! I've just started a new job but hell, I can do that! It took about 2 weeks altogether as most of the pieces are oxidised plus making all the earwires and oxidising and cleaning those up too but I did it. I did take some stock from my Folksy shop to save time and experimented with using a radial disc polisher on my Dremel to clean up some of the oxidised pieces (it worked and saved a lot of time!) and finally everything was ready.

Just a few of the oxidised pieces waiting to be cleaned up!

All bagged up and ready to go followed by a big sigh of relief!

I'd love to show some photos of the Wetland centre too but unfortunately they're copyrighted so I'd better not. I'll be honest I had no idea there was a wetland centre in Arundel. I've been there several times and it turns out the centre is a bit further along a road from The Black Rabbit pub I've visited quite a few times :D



Raspberry Enamel Heart Earrings

It's a fairly bright day today so I thought I'd catch up on some photographing. I managed to get 5 pairs of earrings done and I've just finished editing them including these raspberry pink enamel hearts.

I cut the hearts myself from copper sheet - I don't enjoy sawing metal if I'm honest but I am slowly getting better at it! After filing and sanding the hearts and punching the hanging hole I enamelled the back then enamelled the front with two layer of mauve opaque before adding some transparent raspberry ontop.

I love the effect you get with transparents over opaques. Transparent enamels do need to be washed before using them over opaques to help get rid of some of the "bits" that sometimes contaminate the enamel and leave imperfections in the final result. I've become a bit obssessed when I use my washed transparents and always check them to see if there's any black bits, bits of hair or wire wool in them before using them as once they're fired any bits thats show up cannot be removed - most frustrating!
I'm glad to say these turned out ok : )

Caught In The Act

Charlie my cat that is with his strange rubber fetish.............

He likes to rub against the rubber mallet I use to whack bits of metal with whenever he gets the chance.

He also loves the smell of bleach.

Funny boy  : )