Featured In Making Jewellery Designer Profile!

Issue 84 of Making Jewellery magazine came out last week and as a MJ contributor it's my turn to be featured in the Designer Profile section!

I had to answer 8 questions asking things such as - What made me take the plunge to start selling my jewellery/What are the challenges of working with enamel and If I wasn't a designer I would be...

There's some nice photos of my jewellery too.

I look a bit hot and bothered in my photo - for some reason I thought it would be in black and white so didn't worry about editing the rosy cheek thing I had going on before I sent it off :D

Copyright © 2015 Cinnamon Jewellery. All rights reserved.

New Torch Enamel Project In Making Jewellery Magazine

I was on holiday last week but just before I went away to the land of beautiful sandy beaches and castles - Northumberland in other words - I had another step-by-step torch enamel project in issue 81 of Making Jewellery!

The magazine came out on May 28 and this time the theme for our projects was "tropical".

I decided to go for a colourful combination of orange and seafoam opaque enamel colours and make a hoop style earring with turquoise jasper bead decoration on the earwires. As we have to provide three pieces I also made another pair of earrings with turquoise jasper dangles and a pendant with {you've guessed it!} turquoise jasper bead links.

I've done a few projects for magazines now but I still get a little thrill every time I see one of my projects finished and published!

Copyright © 2015 Cinnamon Jewellery. All rights reserved.

Enamel Experimenting And Gold!!

This week I have mostly been playing with enamel. 

I've been wanting to try using wire to create "cells" along the lines of cloisonne but nowhere near as exact {or skilled}.... no, I went for a slightly more rustic approach and used 16g {1.2mm} copper wire which I formed into jump rings then placed onto the partly fired second layer of opaque enamel and fired until the rings were fused into the enamel.

I pickled the copper rings beforehand to make sure they were nice and clean before placing on the enamel. I wanted them to stand a bit proud as I was then going to fill them with wet enamel.

I filled the rings with wet enamel then let the enamel dry naturally before firing.

They worked ok. There was some firescale on the surface of the enamel that pinged off the copper wire as it cooled but I think that adds to the rustic style. Next time I might try a thinner gauge wire but I do like the texture it gives the enamel in my first attempts.

I also spent some time teaching my friend Nicki how to torch enamel. She enjoyed herself and a few hours later went home with these pretties.

••• Gold!! •••

No, I haven't gone all Spandau Ballet on you, I'm referring to the simple gold studs I made recently after an order for gold ball earwires didn't go quite as planned. A customer asked if I could make her some gold ball earwires and I said yes of course I can and ordered the 9ct yellow gold wire. When I started to ball up the wire I discovered that it doesn't like balling up very much and quite a bit of it just shrivelled and turned black. I managed to get three out of the ordered five pairs of earwires made which my customer was happy with and then refunded the difference for the missing two pairs. 

Which left me with lots of mangled looking gold wire and a slightly annoyed feeling because I was quite a lot out of pocket..........until my brain clicked into gear and I remembered I have a rolling mill! Meaning I can melt the gold wire and put it through the rolling mill to make a small piece of gold sheet that I can then do things with!

So that's what I did and after adding a leaf vein texture to the gold sheet I made three pairs of simple studs.....

The studs have sterling silver posts and scrolls as I wasn't going to go as far as buy gold versions and gold solder. I'm very much still a silver girl at heart ♥ 

I still have a tiny amount of gold left so watch out for a silver pendant with a small gold ball somewhere about its person coming soon{ish}!

Rainbow Lovelies - Enamel Stud Earrings

I posted recently about some enamel earrings I made recently and how I was going to make some more small enamelled stud earrings. My first attempt at them a while ago was a bit fraught as it involved using enamel solder and enamelling the back over the soldered on post. I hadn't done much soldering at that point so was a bit, well, scared really! It worked ok then and it worked ok a few days ago when I made the little group above. I thought I'd take a family portrait before they were separated!

Pea green topped with lichen and robin's egg blue

 I could make life easy for myself and just enamel the front like a lot of the enamelled studs you see on Etsy, I could but then I'd be waiting for the cracks to appear in the enamel which they have a habit of doing on thin gauges of metal without any counter enamel. I know this because I tried it :D

They are "easy" to do really, just a bit fiddly with being pretty small at 7.5mm. The orange speckled pair were one of those experiments where I couldn't think what colour to do so tried a base of nut brown with sunset orange, pastel pink and brown with a bit more pink and brown added on top. You still can't really see the pink! They make me think of Bet Lynch and animal prints for some reason......

I looked up the 2013 spring/summer colour predictions and this mint green is in apparently.

And a colour I haven't used much so far - Robin's Egg Blue, a really delicate light blue which is quite hard to photograph as the light bounces off the colour.

Colour Splash! Torch Enamel Earrings

I've been concentrating on bezel setting and soldering a lot recently so have been working mainly with metals of the silver and copper hue. So a bit like when your body tells you you need chocolate (all the time in my case) I got out the enamels recently to feed my craving for colour.

Enamels used to scare me when I first started using them and I was ultra careful about not contaminating them so as not to discover those little black specks and tiny pieces of wire wool that you never see until after you've fired something. I'm still careful but maybe a bit more relaxed these days. I recently had a problem with some transparent enamel I'd washed several months ago. I used it over opaque and it cracked. Not straight away because enamel likes to lull you into a false sense of security sometimes. No, one piece cracked a few hours after it was fired and the other a couple of days after. I reckoned it was because the washed enamel had been hanging around for a while and was probably contaminated.

I washed some more and it's worked fine this time as the earrings below show.

 I can't be the only one who finds the idea of washing a dry powder slightly odd. When I started torch enamelling and read that you needed to wash transparents if you want to use them over opaques I thought it seemed a bit of a chore and how can you "wash" a powder, how does it dry? 

It's really easy to do and involves putting a small amount of enamel into a shot glass or similar and filling it with water. You stir it, let it settle then pour off the water. This helps to remove a lot of the dust and other bits in the enamel powder you don't want. Do this until the water is clear(ish) using filtered water for the last rinse then blot as much of the excess water off the wet enamel powder with a kitchen roll as you can. Take care not to touch the enamel with the kitchen roll to avoid getting bits in the enamel. Then spread the wet enamel onto a clean piece of paper on top of a baking tray and put in the oven set to the lowest heat setting for about 10 -15 minutes to dry. When it's dry tip the enamel into a clean pot labelled so you know what it is. You do need to make sure everything you use is clean and doesn't have any bits or dust on it to avoid getting those bits in the washed enamel as they will show up when you fire it!

A bit of a fiddle but worth it. The alternative is muddy looking dirty colours.

I used three opaques for these - aqua, pea green and lichen green. My Mum used to say to me that blue and green should never be seen, usually as I was just off out on a Saturday night wearing blue and green! I never took any notice and reckon if these colours are good enough for nature they're good enough for me!

The colours in these orange and brown earrings remind me of an exotic colourful beetle. I used orange transparent over nut brown with a sprinkling of brown on top.

Next I'm planning on making some more small enamelled studs. I made some of these a while ago when I had just started soldering and found it terrible fraught and stressful! Enamel and solder aren't always easy to combine. I had to use enamel solder for the posts and was so worried things would melt or that the enamel would react with the solder. It didn't and everything was fine but I didn't enjoy the experience very much so haven't made any more, apart from a recent custom order. As I'm a bit more confident with the soldering part now I've decided to make some more even though they are fiddly to do. They are very cute when they're finished though :D

All The Reds - Folksy Featured

It was a lovely surprise earlier when I went to sign into my Folksy shop to see my red enamel poppy earrings as part of the current Featured items on the homepage!

There's some really lovely stuff on there at the moment with a red theme. Definitely worth a look!

New Fold Form And Torch Enamel Earrings

I posted recently about experimenting with fold forming and enamelling - creating a definite division in the surface of the metal then enamelling both sides a different colour as seen in these disc earrings below

Well I've been playing around with the idea again and made two more pairs this time leaving one side of the fold bare copper. I used transparent enamels over opaque - you can achieve some lovely colours that way. 

A bit fiddly but that's all part of the fun :D

Raspberry transparent over ivory

Turquoise transparent over lichen green with a sprinkle of seafoam

Unpredictable Enamel

As every enamellist no doubt knows enamelling can be very unpredictable! You never know for certain that something is going to turn out the way you hope. Most times it does but sometimes....well..... it doesn't.

I've not had time to do any enamelling lately so last night thought I'd make a start on a couple of pairs of simple flat disc earrings - one opaque and one transparent with opaque on top. The counter enamelling (enamelling the back) went fine and after pickling
and cleaning the pair to be enamelled with transparent enamel I made a start on the first layer this morning.

No problem there.........until I picked up the first disc from the trivet and put it down to cool and it didn't lie flat! Looking at the back I could see this huge carbuncle had developed when I was firing the front - something that's never happened before. You sometimes get the odd bump or pit appear due to contamination but when it's on the back it doesn't matter too much........but this! I normally just fire the counter enamel to orange peel stage so it's still fairly bumpy so I didn't really notice anything untoward before I fired the front but there was obviously something there that really shouldn't have been and it must have been something fairly big!

To be honest I quite like the effect but the chance of reproducing it on the front of a piece is probably very unlikely! I'd love to know exactly what caused it so if anyone has any ideas please let me know.

My Latest Artfire Collection - Enamored By Enamel

I've just made this lovely Collection on Artfire featuring handmade enamelled jewellery - my new obsession!

Enamored By Enamel

Curated By: cinnamonjewel...

ArtFire.com

Handmade Jewelry