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 :(