It's Been A Bit Of A Bronze Week

I managed to get a couple of pairs of bronze earrings finished last week that I photographed at the weekend and I also had a custom order for some bronze stacking bangles so it definitely has been a bit of a bronze week.

The bronze stud earrings above are made by melting bronze wire into pebbles then flattening the pebbles to create off-round and oval organic-looking shapes. After forming them into concave bowl shapes I tidied up the edges then paired them up and soldered them together with a fine silver ball for decoration and contrast.

I oxidized these then cleaned them up a fair bit so the dark areas are just in the crevices.

I also made some simple oval bronze earrings with an etched pattern and a turquoise jasper bead added to the earwires for a bit of colour.

I still find bronze a bit unpredictable compared to copper where liver of sulphur is concerned but I do love the golden brown colour you get when it does behave nicely and oxidize evenly :D

I also made a set of skinny bronze bangles with stamped letter disc dangles.

These were for a custom order and the initials stand for the names of the customers children. Not my usual thing as stamping letters in a straight line isn't a natural gift for me {!} but I can manage one letter!

I'm planning on making a set of leaf vein texture bangles using flattened 3.5mm {7g} wire very soon. My bronze bangle selection is a bit limited at the moment and needs more variety and as I'm getting more used to working with bronze and it's little quirks I feel a lot more confident in adding a few new designs. Watch this space!

Copyright © 2015 Cinnamon Jewellery. All rights reserved.

New Copper Bangles - Stamped Designs And Leaf Vein Texture

My recent sterling silver bangle-fest where I made quite a lot of silver bangles for hallmarking in various designs made me want to make something similar in copper. I really enjoyed making the stamped silver bangles on the right in this photo...

I hadn't done any stamping for a while and it reminded me how much I like doing it. When I say stamping I mean creating patterns from mostly circle and line stamps rather than the inspiring words/phrases/childrens names that are so popular. I can't stamp letters in a straight line and making that style of jewellery has never appealed to me at all. So I stick to making patterns.

I also made three copper bangles with a leaf vein texture using leaf skeletons. I used some 4mm {6g} round copper wire which I annealed then ran through the rolling mill a few times to flatten it.

After annealing the flattened wire again I ran it through the rolling mill with the leaf skeletons, holding them in place with my fingers as they go through. I left a gap between each leaf skeleton for a bit of contrast on the bangle and I reused the leaf skeletons as you only flatten a part of them as they go through the rollers.

The wire was now pretty wavy in both directions so I annealed it again and used my mallet and steel block to flatten and straighten it. You need to do this in order to get a straight cut on the ends.

I then cut the wire to the right length for medium size bangles and used my mitre block and file to make sure the edges were straight for the join.

Using a mitre block gives you lovely straight edges on your join making soldering very easy.

After soldering the bangles I rounded them on the mandrel, sanded the join and checked they were the right size.

I decided to add a few silver balls to one of the bangles. The gaps I'd left on the copper between the leaf vein texture were ideal places for the balls.

I prefer to apply flux and heat it to dry it first before I add anything else. Once the flux is dry I placed the solder and balls in position and soldered them on. That way I didn't have to fiddle with repositioning things that had moved due to the flux bubbling.

After pickling I sanded the inside of the bangles then cleaned up the outside with steel wool.

Then they went in the LOS {of course!}I haven't had chance to photograph them properly yet but I took a couple of quick photos in my shed after they came out of the tumbler.

I textured the stamped bangles in the rolling mill with sandpaper before stamping the copper. The stamped designs took a while to do but I enjoyed making up the patterns.

 Did I tell you I had a thing for circles?......

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Copyright © 2015 Cinnamon Jewellery. All rights reserved.

An Eventful Morning And Silver Bangles For Hallmarking

What was supposed to be a quick half hour trip out in the car yesterday morning to post an order and pop into Tesco turned into an hour and a half and ended with me walking home........

As I turned into the car park at Tesco the car made a very loud bang and there was the smell of burning rubber. After checking under the car and staring at the engine for a bit - I had no idea what I was looking for but it seemed like the right thing to do - I ended up at the garage via a nice roadside recovery van man being asked if I'd gone over a pothole. I hadn't when it happened but all the other potholes that I hadn't managed to avoid in the past had obviously done their worst and cracked the front coil springs. I must have hit a little bump or something and the springs both snapped causing the car body to drop onto the tyres at the front. Luckily the tyres weren't damaged. I was really impressed with the service I received and the speed that everything was fixed and I now know what coil springs do...... :)

Anyway...enough waffle about cars and that sort of stuff. I mentioned in my last post that I was in the middle of making some thicker gauge sterling silver bangles that would be sent off for hallmarking. I've been a bit reluctant to make heavier sterling items because of all sorts of things - the higher cost, the faff of having to get them hallmarked and how complicated the hallmarking pricing system was but as you can see from the photo I've now got over that! Some help from fellow jewellery maker Claire of Dragonfly Lane has made me see it's nothing to worry about and the London Assay Office has simplified the pricing for hallmarking which also helps.

I've made 18 bangles of various designs and even got my stamps out! They aren't completely finished yet as some of them will be oxidized once they've been hallmarked but it was really enjoyable just making new things without any limitations in weight or design. I'll be sending them off next week and then avidly waiting for them to get back to me so I can see what the hallmarks look like. That might sound silly to some people but I'm sure there's a lot of jewellery makers who understand my excitement at seeing those small but very important stamped marks on my jewellery for the first time.

Copyright © 2015 Cinnamon Jewellery. All rights reserved.