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!