Sterling Silver Hoops with Glass Cabochons

I went through a hoop phase a couple of weeks ago when I just had to make some hoop inspired jewellery. I quite often get these urges - sometimes it's for enamel, sometimes it's etching, it just depends. I'm currently in the grip of a hollow form phase but I'm having to wait for supplies before I can go any further which is a bit annoying but does serve to make me think about it a bit more before diving in!

I wanted to continue my bezel setting practice so I added cabochons to the hoop earrings and pendants. I stamped a circle design onto the hoops and added a jump ring at the top then pierced out the part of the hoop in the centre of the jump ring to make a cute hanging hole.

The glass cabochons are from a Turkish shop on Etsy and are lovely!  They remind me of jelly sweets.

Tip! Put a piece of aluminium foil behind the glass cabs before setting them. The foil gives them a luminous glow in the light and avoids the backs of the bezels darkening and dulling the colour due to the silver oxidizing over time. Cutting the foil discs neatly to avoid too many creases is easier said than done! Luckily these were the same size as one of the holes on my disc cutter so I used that to cut them. One thing I soon realized was that the silver on the bottom of the bezel needs to be completely smooth otherwise any bumps (from solder, etc) will transfer through the foil and show on the bottom of the glass cabs as dark patches. I had to abort two pairs because of this before I figured out what was going on. I think the solution is to add a disc of sanded copper under the foil so then you know it will definitely be completely flat and smooth.

 I love the delicate ghostly colour of the pink glass.

A simple pair using the greeny-turquoise colour glass. This is the first time I soldered jump ring links onto the tops of bezels to thread the earwires through and thankfully I managed ok and it worked. It can be fiddly and I'm not that great yet with the combination of soldering and fiddly. Still learning!

Handmade Copper Bangles

Not usually something that crosses my radar being a committed earring freak, strangely I had a sudden urge a couple of weeks ago to make some bangles. I made the first one at night school as I needed something to do in the last couple of weeks that wouldn't take too long. I enjoyed making it - it was a hammered round bangle made from 2.6mm copper wire which I soldered three coils of thinner wire to.

 I soon discovered that soldering the coils onto it meant I couldn't reshape it. I used paste solder for the coils as I thought it would be easier but two attempts and some burnt blobby messes later I went back to sheet solder which worked. In the meantime the bracelet had been bent out of shape slightly plus it needed a good hammering to work harden it as it was a little "bendy" having been well annealed with my soldering attempts!

So having learned what not to do - I never got on with paste solder so why I used it I don't know! - I bought a bracelet mandrel and made a few more -

They are made from 2.6mm and 3.25mm copper wire and are textured with a hammer and stamped designs. Really fun and easy to make.

The twisted wire bangles were a bit more work. I rolled the wire through the rolling mill at college then twisted the flattened wire using a vice and big pair of pliers. Matching the join and soldering was a challenge - I discovered that wedging the solder in the join was the best bet as it had a habit of sliding round the twist as I started to heat up the wire. Thinking about it now pick soldering the join probably would've been a better option and even easier!

A YouTube Gem I Have To Share!

 

If you're a budding metalsmith who wants to watch decent how-to videos made by an experienced jeweller then have a look at Soham Harrison on YouTube. I discovered his videos a couple of weeks ago and love watching them! 

Easy to follow - in other words no weird music/total silence/blurred images or hands in the way, Soham's 141 videos cover a huge range of projects including claw setting, bangles, rings, bezel setting, sweat soldering and die forming plus some on how to use various tools and then there's the one on making creme brulee :D

He has a very calm manner and explains things clearly plus explains what to do if something doesn't go as it should. They're great to watch if you need a bit of inspiration too.

Silver Jewellery Course Project - The Last One

This Tuesday night (14th May) is the last week of my silver jewellery course. I feel a bit sad to be honest as I've met some lovely people and had a lot of fun. I've also learned stuff!

The main reason I went on the course was to learn how to bezel set and hopefully to become more confident with soldering and piercing. Well I certainly feel a lot better when I'm sawing and piercing now. I don't have a proper jeweller's workbench and have to make do with working on the diningroom table and in the kitchen so sawing metal was a bit of a challenge as the table is too low. I used to resort to sitting on a silly little plastic stool and feeling uncomfortable and a bit stressed about it all. Then I thought it might help if I used a G-clamp to attach my bench peg to the table instead of the metal clamp that came with it (that I'd managed to bend out of shape!) and use my computer chair to sit on as I can adjust the height. The result - a much better position and much quicker and confident sawing. Hallelujah!!

My soldering has improved too and I've overcome my fear of holding small things in position whilst I'm soldering. By this I mean attaching jump rings and earwires to the ends and backs of pieces. My hand isn't the steadiest and I have a tendency to panic slightly if things slip. I still use gravity and my third hand to help sometimes but some of the fear has now gone :D 

I've also realized that my sight when doing close up stuff has deteriorated in the last few months and using an old pair of my Mum's reading glasses helps immensely! I can now see those little bits of solder that have jumped off from where I fiddled about for ages putting them. The glasses do make me look like Deirdre Barlow though .....good job no one can see me.

 The photos are of the last project I made at college - a pendant using etched silver and a frosted yellow glass cab. It's simple in style like a lot of my stuff but I love the contrast in colour with the oxidized silver and the almost glowing yellow of the glass. I rarely use yellow anything when I make jewellery so it made a nice change. I decided I didn't want a normal hanging hole so made a jump ring that I soldered onto the front of the pendant then pierced out the centre. The frosted glass cabs came from an Etsy shop in Turkey and I have several different colours that are currently being turned into earrings and pendants as we speak.

For the last week of college I will be taking full advantage of the rolling mill to texture my own copper sheet for using at home. I would love a rolling mill at home but lack of a proper workroom means I don't have the space for it, alas. Last week I used it to flatten some thick gauge (2.6mm and 3.25mm) copper wire which I then twisted with the help of a vice and huge pair of pliers. I've used the twisted copper wire to make three bangles, yet to be photographed, but I will post the photos as soon as I've done them.

Another good outcome of going to college was that I was classed as a student and could register at the London Assay Office, which is the office nearest to me, for half price, saving £75 which isn't to be sniffed at. It means that if (when) I start making bigger sterling silver pieces I'm ready for sending them off for hallmarking. I checked with the assay office as I wasn't sure if a night school class would class me as a student and the answer was yes as long as the course is a fair length and not just a couple of weeks type of thing.

Overall, despite already knowing how to do some of the things we did at college I've really enjoyed it. I have learned new things and I could go back for a 2nd year in September - the 2nd year isn't a new class in it's own right but basically tagged onto the learners class but doing different projects. Decisions, decisions!!

Cinnamon Jewellery Website - Finished At Last!

After rather a long delay - almost a year - I'm happy and relieved to say my very own website Cinnamon Jewellery has been set free to roam the internet wilderness.

I bought the .com and co.uk domain names last May with the intention of making a start on my own site but other things got in the way, the amount of work involved was putting me off and I started having doubts about whether anyone would actually find it so it just got put on the back burner.

But with laughable views to my shop on Folksy and dwindling sales there I thought it was time to start work on my own website. I made a start about six weeks ago starting with the boring stuff - privacy policy and terms and conditions, delivery and returns and I even designed my own 404 and contact page. I worked on it for about 1 hour a day to avoid burnout (!) as some of it is incredibly boring to do and slowly got more into it and into making it more personal than a shop on a selling platform.

I added jewellery info and supplies info pages with images and played around with Paint Shop Pro to create little text graphics for the home page and category titles like the one above and below.

I really enjoyed the design aspect of it at the same time wanting to keep it looking quite clean and easy to navigate. I kept the background white and the text a brown colour which sounds horrible but it works (I think!) I saved the homepage till last as I wanted to get all the items for sale done first. That was fun (no it wasn't) and time-consuming as they are the same items as I have in my Etsy and Folksy shops so I needed to rewrite all the descriptions to avoid creating duplicate pages which isn't helpful search engine wise.
When I'd finally finished adding all my items I let myself play with the home page. I had a vision of how I wanted it to look in my head - big photo at the top, explain what the website was about then smaller photos for each category with a bit of text below. That's basically how it turned out. It took three attempts to get it "right" and several template changes before reverting back to the one I'd chosen right at the start - you can tell I'm a woman :D

 Here's a screen shot in two parts. That's how it looks but with less space after the "Welcome to Cinnamon Jewellery". I tried to take a screen shot of the whole homepage but it would only take the visible part on my screen so I did half the screen at a time and I've put the two images together here.

 Every time I thought I'd finished and it was ready to publish I'd find something else I'd missed. There's a lot more I could do to customize it and I'm sure I will tweak a few things as I go along. It also has a blog which I did think about binning and just linking to this one but I think I'll keep it as the blog page has the sidebar and links so that could be an advantage.

When I finally was ready to publish it I thought I'd better preview it first and ended up with a page and a half of notes of things that needed sorting, like spelling mistakes, image links not working, etc, etc! So I sorted those things out and published it just over a week ago. No sales yet but I have had a fair amount of views considering it's just over a week and I even remembered to set up a filter in GA to block my own views.

It's early days but I do like my little website and I'm sure it will grow and improve as I learn. Now I just have to sort out uploading my items to my Google Merchant account so they appear in Google shopping. Been having fun all week with doing that (very wrongly) and I think Samshika from Google who's dealing with it probably hates me by now........