London Adventures

A couple of weeks ago there was a suprise warm up show for Green Day in preparation for their Reading and Leeds Festival appearances. It was at Brixton Academy which is a venue I have always wanted to go to. So I went! I got the train straight after work, rushed to the gig and loved every minute of it! They played a few random songs then went into playing Dookie in full. Then more random songs. I managed to get a few rows from the front and it was hot and pushy. But that's fine! I'm really glad to have seen them in a couple of small venues recently, as much as the stadium shows are a spectacle, these smaller shows have a different atmosphere.





Yes I am sad enough to take pictures of coffee

Long way down...

I already had the Thursday off so decided to have a full day in London, I was meant to be having my hair done but my awful roots were not as important as shopping! For breakfast I hit Department of Coffee and Social Affairs on Leather Lane, amazing name, amazing drinks. It's right in Hatton Gardens so I eyed up the diamonds. I then got the tube to Monument. Purely to find out what the Monument was. I ended up walking up 311 steps to the top of a tower built to remember the Great Fire of London. At the top you get a great view of London, I imagine it would have been amazing before all the crazy tall buildings. But for 3 quid you can't really complain! Apart from sore legs...

I then went to Brick Lane, for graffiti, vintage and Tatty Devine. I saw this amazing elephant/octopus which I'm sure wasn't there when Natalie and I hit the Sunday market in July. I treated myself to many dresses and a pumpkin carriage necklace from Tatty Devine. This brand is really what got me into making jewellery and I have always admired it from afar. But I saw this and had to have it!




















I spent ages walking around Spitalfields market and then to Oxford Street for some Topshop and Selfridges time. Shockingly, I did not buy anything. I had an hour left before my train so I got the tube to Camden to get an ice cream from the Chin Chin Laboratory. This time I had the Tonka Walnut Whip with salted caramel sauce, heather honeycomb and a little sample of grilled white chocolate. Lush. I ate that while wandering round then it was time to go home...

 

This is a random mosaic at Tottenham Court Road tube station

 

Being Less Precious

I am a bit of a craft collector a hoarder. I have all sorts of crafty bits that I have gathered, magpie-like over several years. I just like pretty things! 

After another tidy up of the craft corner I have set myself a challenge - to use up some of this collection. The main issue I have is that I don't want to waste things... I don't want to use this really nice stuff and make something not worthy. I guess it's a confidence thing. 

We used to go on a class trip with A-Level Textiles to an embroidery and textile show at the Harrogate show grounds. This was basically a room filled with silks, beads, wools, felt, ribbons, buttons... A crafters heaven! We went just before we started our practical coursework to get a collection of materials. I then went again after A Levels and had no reason to buy anything, not that that stopped me! 

One of my favourite stalls was Oliver Twists, a company that dyes silks and wool with stunning colours.  Now I'm sure I've looked for them on the Internet before and there was no website, but I did a quick google and found them on Etsy! Great for them, not great for my purse if my willpower gives out! I bought an experimental pack, containing abaca tissue, silk throwsters waste, carrier rods and a selection of threads, and two lucky bags, full of random goodies.

These were my starting point. I had a lot of fun making this necklace for my Etsy store and I haven't really done anything like it since. I had an afternoon and two days off so put them to good use, entirely devoted to crafting! Thinking about how to tackle my stash, I decided to just go mad and see what happens, as all the lovely stuff is more of a waste sitting in the cupboard where no one can see it.

My results:

Garden

Inspired by the view from my kitchen window! Some random plants in a giant planter. I used voile to make the flowers, again a selection pack of various colours. I used seed beads in the centres. These were then fixed to a felt background on to which I had couched some silk throwsters waste. And then added some beading and hand embroidery.

The Finished Necklace
 

Stormy Sea

I started this when the weather changed from the ridiculous sunshine to the kind of grim clouds. This was part of an experimental pack in 'Oil Slick' and a raid on other parts of my collection. I wanted it to be in waves but it didn't really turn out like that, more straight lines! I machine stitched down some fabrics and ribbons to start the lines. Then to fill in the gaps I couched some silk throwsters waste, straight stitched textured embroidery threads and beaded. I added two buttons to secure the ribbon fastening.

Clouds

This is a collection of felt, beads and embroidery threads. I used freehand machine embroidery on the black felt, people do amazing things with FHME, I just like to do swirly patterns :) I hand stitched embroidery thread around the edges of the light grey and then used tiny seed beads on the other grey, this came from one of the lucky bags, it's actually grey with hints of purples and blue and has a nice texture to it. I then used some coloured copper wire to create some rain drops

I've had a great few days, it's been a treat to just make things, just to play around and do something different!

Silver Class Summer Break

I've reached the end of another term of my silversmithing course, it's time for the summer holidays which are no good when your not actually at school! I also have the dilemma of what to do with my Friday nights now?! We had some drinks and nibbles and all got a certificate of attendance, some people have been coming for 5 years! 

This lesson I finished off the earrings I've been working on and flicked through some magazines to find some inspiration for when we start again.

Last week I finished a ring that was really an experiment. I wanted to play around with some things I found in the toolbox. A doming block, some punches and texturing hammers. I didn't really like the effects of the hammers so used the punches in two different sizes to create a random dotty effect. Then I used the doming block to create a dish, as I was doing this a bit started to warp so it wasn't a perfect dish. I used some round nosed pliers to continue the around the dish so it had a random fluted effect. I made a ring out of two pieces of round wire soldered together in the middle and spiralled the ends round for the dish to sit in. I think this makes it look a bit like a flower. 

The earrings I made are Turquoise and Iolite cabochons and then two silver blobs left over from the stack rings. 



First Term - Plain ring, knot ring, learning to set stones and a spiral ring

 

 

Term 2 - The Epic Silver Bracelet and a swirly Malachite ring

Term 3 - Stacking Silver Blob rings, Earrings and the Experiment ring

Costa Bake Sale - What is Bake Sale?

The Second Annual Costa Bake Sale took place on Saturday, look how excited Laura is...

 All Costa stores fundraise for the Costa Foundation and we get to decide on our activities. As the bake sale worked well for us last year we did a bigger, better version - we actually advertised it and got the customers (and friends, mums and aunts) involved in the baking as well as the buying! As I'm not the best baker I got my friend Laura to help me, I'm really only in it for the icing and sprinkles! I did manage to make some mars bar crispies on my own, but snapped a wooden spoon in the process :) 

The best thing about Bake Sale Day is having cake for lunch, as its for charity it's totally acceptable, I had some banana bread and a brownie, both ridiculously good but what I really wanted was this amazing cupcake bouquet made by my friend Louise, isn't it fantastic?!

Cake bouquet in progress...

Laura's gorgeous butterfly buns...

We also did a lucky dip with a grand prize of a coffee hamper and then free drinks or loyalty points (the Tesco staff have now stolen this idea from me!) In total we raised £275, absolutely amazing and will go towards a great cause!

The Epic Silver Bracelet

For the spring term at Silver Class we could think of our own designs or adapt some from our teachers books. What ever we chose was to reinforce our knowledge of the winter term and push ourselves a bit. A bit. I decided to make a bracelet that was a test of patience and not swearing in class more than anything.

I was flicking through a magazine and looking at all the beautiful jewellery. I saw a bracelet by Adler with POA next to it. Everyone knows that's designer code for if you have to ask, you can't afford it but it was beautiful. I ripped the picture out and took it to show my teacher, Rebecca. 'Of course we can do that!' She said. She's so positive! So off I went to Cooksons and KernowCraft to buy lots of silver and gorgeous Iolite stones. These are a dark blue with hints of purple. In theory all I needed to do was make some rings, make some bezels, join them together, shape the bracelet, set the stones, polish and show off. In practice, I learnt exactly why the designer one was expensive. Mine isn't even half as intricate as the original and it's taken about 40 solid hours of lessons and I didn't count the bits I did at home. 

With making the rings, I struggled to get them to solder or didnt solder them properly. This was due to me rushing and not making sure my ends joined up properly. Once I slowed down and did some square ends homework we saw some progression. Bezel issues were all down to sizes. A few were massive and a few were tiny so there was a bit of redoing there but then soldering them to sheet silver was a doddle! 

With those made up I then had to join everything together. This was probably the most time consuming part. Once all the bits were in order I had to sand every place they touched so there was a flat surface for soldering. There was a lot of touch points and everything kept moving, so frustrating. Then it was time to begin soldering and finding out if I had sanded properly (no). I split the bracelet up into 5 smaller sections, soldered them then joined everything else up. I'm quite surprised I didn't melt anything at this point! I quite like the flat stage and in moments of madness I think about making another for a necklace...

From flat to round. I actually got Rebecca to do this because I was so scared bits would break and I would have to do even more soldering. She got a bracelet mandrel and pushed the flat stage round it and gave it a few taps with the raw hide mallet. I then had to do one last bit of soldering to join it into a circle, even though it would be a cuff. Cue lots of 'that's never going to fit on your wrist'. More hammering then I had to set the stones. The fun part of this was trying to remember which ones went with which bezel, I had numbered them originally so there was some sort of system. I just used a burnisher as I couldn't always get the bezel rocker at the settings, wire or another bezel got in the way. It made my thumbs hurt. 

Once these were set I sawed the temporary join, filed the edges and polished. Then put my bracelet on and said 'Oh my God my bracelet is finally finished wooooooooo!' which my class loved... Everyone came to look at its beauty and I felt like a bit of a celebrity! A lot of people wanted to check I hadn't done this before, that I'd definitely only had the autumn terms lessons. It looks really impressive but it is just rings and stone settings, the hardest thing was patience and perseverance when it wasn't going well or when I couldn't see it ever getting finished. It really has to be dedicated to the ladies I sit next to who brought me Custard Creams, laughed at me for trying to cover up or stop myself from swearing and who kept telling me it was all going to be worth it. If I ever attempt something like this again I have to remember that preparation and patience is key. Not to rush things because I want to get it finished ASAP, because that will only slow me down more. And to take a deep breath and count to at least 10!

Silver Stars

Ages ago (3 months according to the blog post) I had a play with some metal clay and made three stars. I love stars so they had to be the first of the cutters I used. Anyway for those 3 months they have sat in the metal clay box as I had no idea what to do with them. Last week I was asked to make some earrings for a friend, she wanted them to match a gunmetal coloured bracelet but with a bit of bling so I raided the silver/grey bead draw. Knocked up 4 pairs of earrings but while I was rooting round I found these crackly grey beads which I had originally bought for another set of earrings (I have made so many earrings for my mums friends!) but these had been a bit too big.

They were perfect for a necklace with the silver stars. Something simple but not plain or boring. I used some silver wire and looped and wrapped the ends to create links with the beads then joined them to the stars with some jump rings. I finished the necklace with a thin silver chain and clasp. 

Fixing My Silver Star Ring

As I was casually taking some photos for this blog post I broke my favourite ring/future family heirloom. It's the one I made during my week in London at the start of my international jewellery design career... There was an incident last year when I caught the star on something and bent the ring into a weird oval shape and a crack appeared on the back. I still wore it though but I had to be very careful when taking it off. 



Nasty Break

Only this time I wasn't careful. I yanked it and felt it go. I could of cried! Don't panic! I'm (attempting to be) a silversmith! Only I've never had to repair anything, let alone someones one of a kind, irreplaceable, favourite ring... Pressure was officially on.

Break Part 2 and the Odd Shape

Now I wasn't saying thankfully yesterday when I had to rush to the Post Office to collect the parcel, but thankfully my new treats from Cooksons had arrived. I'd ordered myself a mandrel and rawhide mallet and some other silver goodies. I reshaped the ring, feeling much more confident now I knew it wouldn't be able to crack and filed the ends of the break smooth so I could solder. All the soldering equipment came out and fingers were crossed that nothing would melt, I was a bit wary that because it had started life as metal clay it would need some sort of special treatment, but at the end of the day it has turned into silver, so should act like the normal silver we use in class. Luckily it did! And it soldered first time! Good times in silver world. 

Then I just had to give it a bit more reshaping, I flattened the star down so it shouldn't catch on anything else, and then sanded the join. My only issue is that you can see the join on the outside, I can't sand it because of the textured band, but then the textured band makes it less obvious so it's not really an issue, I'm just being picky! After a good polish I have my ring back, looking beautiful again.

No Break! But still needs sanding :)

 




 

 

Recycling Silver

Recently in silver class all of my attention has been on my epic bracelet (read about that here). I managed to sneakily finish a ring but that was started while I was waiting for bracelet supplies. Now I'm finished I wanted some quick, instant gratification projects. While I was making the settings for the stones I had ended up with a lot of scrappy bits of silver. These all went into a little jam jar in my tool box (another jam jar recycling opportunity) and waited. Originally when I wanted to do was solder them all together in a really random manner and make a pendant but lots were really sharp. So I decided to make some rings. I spend too much time on Etsy and Pinterest and have seen a lot of stacking rings recently. Judith, one of the ladies I sit with, had made some little silver blobs to go on a necklace out of her silver scraps and I decided they could look cute on some rings (I had a lot of scrap bits!). 

Off I went to the soldering table and made a pile of scrappy bits. Making the balls is so easy. Continuously heat the metal and it will start to melt, more heat and it will start to roll around, join up and form a ball. Stop the heat then and give it a second to cool slightly, take it off too soon and your tweezers will squish it, too late and it'll be stuck to the soldering block. And yes, I experienced both! 

I made 3 rings out of some round wire I had left over from the bracelet. Then sanded the bottom of the blobs so they were smooth to attach to a slightly filed ring. I soldered the blobs and then sanded and polished. 3 stacking rings using scrappy, unloved bits of silver and leftover wire, done!

Taking this picture led to a trauma with my star ring, find out here!

Featured!

I've just been featured in a gorgeous treasury by Michele McKee-Orsini over on Etsy. It's full of lovely purple things, my favourite colour!

View these beauties

The London Weekend

I got back late last night from an epic weekend in London with my friend Natalie. I travelled down on the Friday and hit Camden just after lunch. We had an amazing pulled pork BBQ roll from one of the market stalls then went to explore the jewellery and clothes. Then to celebrate the beautiful sunshine we had the first of many ice creams, this one was from The Chin Chin Laboratorists, made with liquid nitrogen and served with a medicine spoon! I had vanilla (boring but amazing) topped with salted caramel and heather honeycomb. It was lush! There should really be a disclaimer here that most of this post is going to be about food...

After Camden, we took the tube to Leicester Square and spent too much time in M&M World! Then we went to see the Queen and had a wander around St. James's park, taking lots of pictures of ducklings. We hit the south bank and had another ice cream (after all the walking we had worked the first one off) and sat by a giant sandpit/beach and made sand castles and a sand turtle called Borris... We were going to do the Tate Modern seen as though it's open late on Fridays but our legs were tired so back to the hostel to rest for the next day.

Saturday we hit Oxford Street and the giant Topshop heaven that lives there. So. Many. Clothes. The afternoon was spent in Hyde Park with a picnic and several ciders, a walk round the Serpentine, past the first of many protests and then home to get changed ready for Green Day! What an epic show! We missed both support acts and got there just as Bohemian Rhapsody started, we walked through the crowd singing away, it's a pretty awesome sound hearing the whole crowd singing it all! Blitzkreig Bop and the drunk bunny meant it was nearly show time and we got ourselves into a good spot, near the pit and near the second barrier. 

Out came Green Day to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and straight into 99 Revolutions and into Know Your Enemy. Stay the night and Stop When the Red Lights Flash from the Trilogy were awesome, some people didn't really know the new songs but hopefully they will look them up when they get home. There was then a bit of a mix of old and new, my highlights were Nice Guys Finish Last and Waiting. I absolutely adore Waiting and haven't heard it live, and it was epic with everyone singing along. They then played Missing You from Tré for the first time, a good chunk of Dookie, Hitchin' a Ride ( love the 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4!) Knowledge was back, with a girl up on stage to play guitar. Lucky girl! Billie Joe took her picture in front of the crowd, just one of the moments that make me love him and go a bit fan girl! St. Jimmy is always great as is the sing alongs for When I Come Around, Basket Case and She. Then it was time for the madness that is King for a Day and Shout (with a little bit of Satisfaction, Teenage Kicks, and Always Look on the Bright Side of Life) I just love this part of a show, funny hats, the drunk bunny came back, dancing, saxophone/kazoo-off, fun times! X-kid was beautiful. Then Minority. Epic. Everyone seemed to go crazy for this one, I think that's one of the reasons it's my favourite... They closed with American Idiot, Jesus of Suburbia and Brutal Love. Some people seemed a bit disappointed they didn't close with Good Riddance but it was nice to have a change, and that is another beautiful song, a suitable replacement. And turning round to see the full stadium with lighters and phone lights was just gorgeous. 

It was an awesome gig, with a great setlist, a good mix of new, old and really old (can you believe Dookie is 20 next year?!) and a couple of rarities. The guys looked like they were genuinely loving it and having fun, especially with all the fans that went on stage to sing and the cutest little boy with a Green Day Rule poster got picked out. There were some amazing singalong moments, I bet theres some songs Billie Joe doesn't need to bother singing and the crowd would do all the work :)Good times all round!

Sunday we hit Brick Lane for the market, we got an amazing chocolate and banana pancake for breakfast, even thought it was basically lunchtime, and checked out all the vintage goodies. Before heading elsewhere we got ourselves some of the cute cupcakes we saw, I had a glittery white chocolate one. Then a wander around Covent Garden and another ice cream, and then walked past some more protests around Trafalgar Square as we were going to Westminster Abbey. After another rest in another park it was time for the train to Harry Potter Land! It was Animal Actors weekend so we got to meet lots of owls and kittens and Crookshanks! We were a bit early so hit the gift store, I wanted to buy EVERYTHING! Capes, jumpers, the Marauders Map, wands, Tom Riddles diary, chocolate frogs...  Everything! And while we were loitering here we saw Tom from McFly! 

The tour was so good! We had a little sit in a cinema and watched the main 3 actors talk about what it was like working on the films then the back drop went and revealed the doors to the Great Hall! The whole room whooped! First of many geek moments on the tour. We got to see all the props, costumes, wigs, entire rooms, conceptual art, models... We saw Crookshanks do some tricks, had our picture taken with Hedwig outside Privet Drive, knocked on Number 4s door but the Dursleys weren't in... DRANK BUTTERBEER! Rode a broomstick, sat in Hagrids motorbike and went on the Knight Bus. Seeing things like the portraits for Dumbledores study and all the individual wand boxes in Olivanders really make you realise how much work went into these films. There's a photo of me casually walking down Diagonal Alley which I think might be my favourite picture ever! That or the emo mirror pose in the Mirror of Erised...

We had breakfast in style on Monday. Really we had a croissant from Harrods and sat on the pavement outside... We then looked at all the ridiculously expensive things and felt sad then we would never own the £51grand watch or the giant bottles of champagne. Acted like big kids in Hamleys getting glitter tattoos then back to the south bank for a burrito from Wahaca which was so good! Another ice cream as we walked down to the Tate Modern to be all cultural... We stopped in at another gallery which had photos from the first climb of Everest which were cool to see but confirmed that I won't be wanting to climb a mountain anytime soon. Then back to Camden to check out a bit more of the markets and to get another cupcake, this time I had an Oreo one (I'm putting this all down as market research for the Costa bake sale). 

Then it was home time :( 

Redecorating

One of the great things about being on holiday is that people try and take up your free time with stuff you don't want to do. This week I've been roped into helping out strip wallpaper and take down some ceiling tiles. Both jobs have been boring but I have been driven by my immense hatred of the weird peach wallpaper in the living room and the polystrene (why?) tiles in the bathroom. I'm so happy to be rid of them!

I find it a bit odd that every other room in the house has been updated from the old lady style we moved in to but we are getting there. Nobody has decided on a colour for the living room, I quite like the weird green of the plaster, so I took to the internet to get some inspiration.

However, I got distracted. Here's a treasury of all the things I'd like for my bedroom...


Purple pretty things


 

Distractions like this is probably why it's taken so long!















 

Flower Power

So it's been a month since my last blog post, I'm slacking I know. So a run down of what I've been doing this month is in order!

Fabric flowers with diamonte centres



I have two sales through Etsy to celebrate! I have also completed the flowers for my mums friend.


 













One of my new makes

The rest of the month has a distinct floral theme to it, I've developed a bit of an obsession with plastic flower beads.











 

Malachite and Silver ring



In my silver class I finally finished my bracelet! And managed to make a ring as well. I'm now working on some earrings as all of mine are cheap and make my ears hurt. It'll be nice to treat myself to some designer one offs! I'm also making some rings to use up some scrap silver.

 

 

Back to it...

Right by the front door, welcome home!

I have finished work on time and for the first time in what feels like forever, I am not knackered. I haven't done anything productive jewellery wise for the last couple of months, due to lack of motivation, inspiration and energy. I feel bad. But the smidge of sunshine (might of imagined it) and the pretty flowers in the garden have given me a bit of a push to do some stuff this afternoon.



My favourite flowers that
inspired the necklace below

I've just finished off some projects and taken their pictures. I'm about to get them listed on Etsy then make a cup of tea (or hopefully someone might be home to make me one!) I have been asked to make some hair slides for my mums friends wedding which I need to crack on with and I've bought some felt to make another embroidered statement neckalce with so I'll be playing around with that.




Jewellery and vintage sheet music,
two of my favourite things

The Gaslight Anthem at Leeds - First Gig of 2013

I'll never get a job as a gig reviewer with these immense writing skills, but finally writing about 2013's first show! Last week I went to Leeds for The Gaslight Anthem with my friend Kate for what must be the worst organised trip anywhere, ever! Stupidly last minute, we planned it the day before, despite me going round to hers 3 weeks ago specifically to sort it out. We ended up making cake pops and not mentioning TGA once! But look at these works of art... Obviously we were concentrating so hard on them there was no time for distractions... Something like that...

Awesome cakepops...Nailed it.

But we got there. That's what's important. Had a quick detour into One Direction World to have our picture taken with the boys (yeah we only pretend to be into cool music) and off to the academy. Support band was the Japandroids who were pretty good, two guys - one on guitar, one on drums. Couldn't really understand the vocals, which is a shame.

Then the sound of 'Jump' by Van Halen. And Gaslight time! Loved it. They played a great show with a good mix of all the records. My absolute favourite moment was in Too Much Blood - when Brian Fallon sings 'Now I am no devil but I've got things on my mind' His voice! It was fierce! Wow! His voice in general was awesome. I think I'm developing a bit of a fan girl crush...

They played so many songs, about 25 in total, the energy levels were high all through the show and the excitement in the air was as you'd expect for a sell out show with some great singalongs.

I hope it's not too long before they're back.

Gaslight Photos courtesy of Kate Wall and her iPhone skillz