A Splash Of Colour And Some Twirly Studs

I've been playing with my enamel colours again and creating my own "blends". It's fun sitting at the table with my different colours and mixing them up to make new ones. Enamels don't really mix to make new colours but you can achieve some really pretty speckly effects. Using the same colour groups work better than mixing colours opposite each other on the colour wheel. I found this out when I mixed some purple and lavender enamels with a bright green hoping I'd get a nice purple/green mix but it just looked grey when it was fired. If you looked closely you could see the individual colours but the overall effect was dull but luckily the beauty of enamelling is you can fix it with another layer (within reason!) What I have learned with mixing colours is if it looks dull in the pot it will still look dull when it's fired........... :D

The hoops above are enamelled in a mix of different greens with some transparent turquoise layered on top on the bottom section.

These were originally a really dull orangey-grey (one of my not so great mixes) so I revived them with some more opaque and transparent oranges and a sprinkling of cream and lighter orange on top. They make me think of marmalade.

This pair were victims of the purple/lavender/green horror mix so I brightened them up with more green opaques and a budgerigar green transparent. I love the effect sprinkling opaque enamel on top of transparent gives you, it reminds me of lichen.

I finished off a few simple stud earrings in copper and silver this week too. I used thin strips of metal and coiled them with round nose pliers like you would make a spiral to form cute twirls. I soldered the ends then after sanding one side flat I soldered them to a base, tidied them up then added posts and oxidized them.

The copper pair remind me of chelsea buns!

New Earrings - A Bit Of A Stud Thing Going On!

Going to jewellery classes has made me want to conquer my still slight anxiety about soldering. I don't know why I'm anxious about it - the worst that can happen is you melt something (done that), get solder where you don't want it (done that too) or the soldered parts come apart when you quench (yes, done that too). So I thought I'd do something easy and make a few pairs of stud earrings.

I started simple with some flat discs in copper and silver that I textured using wire and my Bigshot then hammered in areas. I use the posts with the pads as I don't think my hand is steady enough to hold just a post in position while I solder it in place, in fact I know it isn't! I flow some solder onto the pad first then solder into place to make things easier.

Then I made two pairs of concave disc studs with a fine silver ball soldered in the centre. I like this design and the fine silver forms a smoother rounder ball than sterling. I textured the discs with a Vintaj folder and my Bigshot again and flowed solder onto the back of the silver balls. This a bit fiddly but I find you're less likely to get excess solder flowing where you don't want it by doing it this way, especially when you're soldering onto copper.

 I made myself a silver ring in this design a few weeks ago and kept meaning to make some matching studs to sell so now I have!

Spirals!

I've been sadly neglecting my beloved spirals for quite a while now but seeing the necklace Professor Alice Roberts was wearing on that BBC2 program last week (that I can't remember the name of!) made me want to make spirally things again. Her necklace is a series of linked silver spirals and very cool. I started by annealing some 14g copper wire, straightening it then hammering it a lot to flatten. After annealing the hammered wire again I coiled it into two spirals which after a bit of tweaking and pickling I soldered together......... then I soldered it again at the ends to make it more stable. After a lot of filing and sanding and thinking.... "Do I like these? Do I? I'm not sure, I think they're ok, I'll see what they look like when they're oxidized....." I've decided I do like them but there's room for improvement! And they look nothing like Alice Roberts' necklace :D

I'm going to make a silver pair but form the double spiral shape from one piece of wire which will do away with the ends which I should've hammered flatter on the copper pair so they would be easier to file and taper in a bit more neatly. I'm planning on putting a hole at the top so I can thread a balled piece of wire through to add beads (or something, not sure yet). Silver solder on silver will look better too :D