Still here....

though it seems to have been a few months since I last posted (boy is time whizzing by!).

My new found interest (make up) is still with me and I am slowly getting back to the bench a little more consistently.

Below are the latest additions to my shop:

I've a few things on my bench that I am working on.
And I am back playing with enamels a little, but this time on silver.
The one thing I didn't realise, was that some opaque enamels do not turn out on silver like they do on copper.

Here is an example of a pair that went wrong:

 I began this pair with a colour called 'Clover Pink' - which on copper looks like a deep musky pink, but on silver, it became a green with pink blobs. So then I applied 2 coats of Marigold - which is an orange/yellow colour and it fired a yellow with lots of grey flecks.

This pair however were just fine:

They were fired using Mint Green and I love the colour against the silver.

Because I don't have much experience with enamels on Silver, I never thought to do the sample pieces. I have a board with all my colours fired on copper discs so I know just how they will turn out before I bother making them. So now I need to do the same with silver.

This is what I have sampled so far apart from the above, 2 opaques and 2 transparent.

I have a whole lot to go through, but on the Metalclay US site there are a few that have been sampled on silver, so I know of a few now that won't work, the rest I have to try out for myself.

In the picture above you can see the opaque Sapphire - it looks absolutely gorgeous on silver and next to it is Bitter Green and that is almost a neon green and it looks nice and bright against the silver.

Right now my youngest is napping, so I can't prepare any earrings as it means making lots of hammering noise and I'm also waiting on a supply of earring posts. I could make my own, but I can't be bothered.....

Hope everybody who reads this is doing well and having fun in their craft!
Em ♥

And it Starts all over.

The school year that is!
Summer started Year 1 today and I was sceptical as to how well it would go, given that she had been at home and having fun for the past 6 weeks. But I saw her to her new class room and met her teacher and she settled right in as though she'd always been there.

No tears.
No worries.
Relief.

And now I can focus a teeny bit more time on my bench work, well at least once we are into a solid routine again. I have enjoyed the lazy days of doing what ever, when ever.


Playtime all day.
Lunchtime when ever.
No school run.
It was nice.

Now we're back to a schedule and I have to retrain my brain and my childrens.

Poppy is getting more and more aware of what she wants and who she wants. Which is me.
Or rather my lap.
All the time.
And I love it.

This is a picture of both of my girls around the same age in the same dress I had made for Summer, so around 7 months(ish):

Summer on the left and Poppy on the right.
They look so similar. But their personalities are Polar opposites. Summer was a full on, balls of energy, plenty to say baby. Poppy is a more solemn, serious kind of child. It has been a fun and interesting 8 months so far!

So when Summer is home and can play with Poppy, I will be able to get to my bench. Below are some of the things I have made since my last post:

The enameled elephant was a custom order. It was a bit of a challenge as it was hard to know how to colour it so that had the traditional colourings of an elephant. But I (and the customer) were happy with how it turned out!

The silhouette lady is my 3rd so far. Think I might have to make myself one, someday soon. And a couple of heart pieces for Valentines day.

It has just started raining right now and I have mopping to do and then some parcels to pack up. I hope you are all having a great start to the year - though January is already almost over!!!!

Em ♥

Markets.

So I finally tried the markets.
After all this time of talking about it and slowly buying display cabinets etc, I decided to try my local Farmers/Craft markets.


And frankly it was terrible.
But 2 things were against me.
1, it was the wrong time of year. So so wrong.
2, it was a poorly chosen place for me to even try.

But all is not lost, as there have been lessons learned and some valuable experience gathered for my next attempt.

For the new year, I am going to go with a big well known craft market in our main city around April. In the meantime I will refine my display and gather a lot more stock, hopefully add some new techniques and put a lot more into my Etsy store. I truly believe that you get out what you put in and in 2013, I honestly didn't get to put much in, so obviously, I didn't get much out of it. I hope to change this in 2014.

I sold my First enamelled piece on Friday! It was the Fox! So of course I will have to make another :)

And below is a picture of the goodies I made for the market, that will go nicely into my Etsy store for the new year and will help fill it out as it was looking decidedly lame.

Lots of enamelled and a few etched pieces and one new small labradorite ring. So I have lots of listing to do, which is super fun....... I really enjoyed making all of these, as along the way I learned a bit more about enamelling and etching and how far I can take things. I've decided I quite enjoyed etching copper and perhaps will do a bit more of it in the future.

We got our daughter a little pool for the school holidays as it's really starting to warm up here. She enjoys it several times a day. It gives her something to do, helps cool her down and it helps her swimming improve. I haven't gotten in it myself yet, but the rate this heat is going, it won't be long before I do!

Em ♥

The Waiting Game.

I've done it.
I've finally applied to a market.
Now I'm playing the waiting game.
Waiting for them to let me know if I can go. Though I'm not going on my own. I don't have enough goodies. So I am going to be sharing a stall with my Mother In Law, who makes handbags. This market isn't anything out of the ordinary. It's a Farmers/Craft market. But I just wanted to get my work out before Christmas, to test the waters. (And to hopefully sell a few pieces!! of course)

So, I have a whole lot to get organised. First off I have these I want to get finished:

 I am totally loving my disc cutter!! It has made my crafting life that little bit easier. All the other shapes I have sawn and dapped and pierced. The flowers have been waiting a while for me to choose their colours (hence the patinas). They're now going to need a super clean up before I can start. The circles are just going to simple pieces, they will help to plump up my stock. I might even dap some of them to give them a little bit more something. Then I need to make all the ear wires to go with them. Not sure yet what I'll do with the small circles, but I have a few ideas.

Below is the animal I have been working on:

I had a hard time experimenting with bails. I didn't want to just pop on a jump ring and leave it at that. It wasn't going to do him justice and it didn't look right. So the bail in the picture is what I finally came up with and I'm happy with it.

Typically today is really humid and so not much fun at the bench. I'm supposed to be finishing up a custom order, will see how that goes. Will probably get to it late in the afternoon. That now seems to be when I spend time at my bench most, between 4pm and 6pm. Whilst making dinner and feeding the baby and so on. It just seems to be the time that I feel like being there the most. No idea why. Clearly I don't get much done, when I'm doing all those other things. But it's working for me right now.

Most likely I will post again when I hear about the market application. Pretty sure it'll be accepted. But there is no point in working like a mad woman, until I know for sure.

♥ Em ♥

Hello.

Well it's almost 2014.
My baby girl is now 6 months old and my eldest is going to be on school holidays very soon. This year has definitely been one of the fastest. Ever.
I am thinking about my goal list for 2014 as this year I've mainly focused on baby (as you do). Next year she will be crawling and walking and eventually talking, so I do struggle to see how I'm going to find that extra bench time I'll need to fulfill my goals. But I'm sure I will manage somehow.


A couple of weeks ago I tracked down a hardware store with foldable market tables and I got one! And I've even ordered a table cloth for it too. I'm actually on Vistaprint right now looking at banners and posters. I'm serious about the markets. I'm dying to see how the locals receive my kind of work.

The enameling experiments continue.
I'm still enjoying it. My other half even offered to buy me a kiln! Yes, That is how supportive he is of my metalwork. Basically though I want to continue to torch fire, until I see a steady sale of enameled pieces. (none have sold yet) I don't think it would be a wise investment if there was no opportunity of recouping the costs. Do you? Right now, I am still able to do decent sized pieces with my torch. Just. It's hard to keep the whole piece hot enough, when you have a large area to fuse.

Instead of a kiln, I am thinking of a nice bench guillotine. I have my eye on a Pepe one. Their smallest. It will help make some of my work a bit swifter. Not a big fan of sawing out big squares and then sawing out the shape. I just want to get in and saw the shape and be done. Especially if there is piercing involved too. Plus I like the idea of being able to cut my own bezel wire easily. Sawing in a dead straight line tends to send me cross-eyed!

Below are a couple of pairs of enameled earrings:

 

The green ones are in my Etsy store and the crescent shapes I'm still yet to list. 

I have been having a play with drawing on enameled pieces with Graphite pencil. My ideas of 'drawing' would just be patterns mainly as I can't draw to save my life. It's a great addition to the enameling. I have found you can even do it on coloured enamel pieces too. 

I have run into a bit of difficulty. I can't for the life of me pin anything (ball up both ends of wire to secure a bail). I have tried a big bushy flame, a very small hot flame and nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. My wire. Just. Won't. Ball Up. Super frustrated. As I really wanted to pin my enameled earrings and pendants. Someone on Instagram suggested riveting, but I'm not really any good at that either. Guess I will just have to practice that, as I really need a solution to attaching a bail to my pieces.

So that is about all for this post. 

Might go and have a little snack before Poppy wakes up.

Have a great week all.

Em ♥

 

More Enameling Fun

So yes, my latest love has to be Enameling.
I am having so much fun! I love that I can blend (sort of) colours together, to give the illusion of texture and I love that I can pair enameled pieces with silver. Below are 3 pairs of earrings I have made so far (available in my Etsy store).

My biggest challenge has been how to attach an ear wire that compliments the earring. I don't really want to do plain french ear wires, I wanted to do something a little bit more fancy. The Aqua blue pair of earrings have an enameled center ear wire, so they add to the look and the function of the earring.

I have just finished an animal piece last night, now I just have to work out how I want to attach it and then it's good to go too. I just ordered 2 liquid enamels yesterday to try and I have gotten some Cloisonne wire with my rio order last week, as I would really like to attempt torch firing Cloisonne too :)

The only booboo's I have encountered thus far, is when I don't balance my piece on the trivet properly and just as I go to fire it, it falls off and in the process, dumps half of the powder too :( But fortunately it's a pretty easy fix :) I really need to seriously consider a hydraulic press in the near future as I would like to be able to cut ovals, squares and circles quickly and neatly (which pancake dies are great for I hear!). As for flowers and animals, well I will continue to hand saw those.

I have just washed a nice Prussian Blue transparent enamel last night, I want to give it a go with some fine silver cups tonight at some point. When I get some time and some very fine tipped paint brushes, I will also give that Cloisonne a go too. And eventually when I get back to some etching, I hope to give Basse-taille a go as well :) So many techniques, so little time!! But I love having something new to try.

Hope you are having as much fun as I am?!
Em ♥

long post ahead .....

Sometimes I want to write more about how I'm feeling here than I do. But I have tried to make this blog more about my journey of jewellery making, rather than about personal things. Though by personal things, I mean jewellery personal things, not 'life personal' things. If you know what I mean??

*I just wrote down everything I wanted to and decided to delete it. I think I just got things a little out of perspective and needed to 'see' my thoughts written down in black and white to help answer some of my own issues*

Basically I'm still a little down with how I'm doing on Etsy, or rather how I'm Not doing on Etsy (as I touched on in my previous post). If I don't sell some of my pieces, I can't restock supplies and then I can't continue to create - as I'm sure those of you who craft are well aware of that vicious circle. I don't want to sound martyr like. I have so much to be grateful for. And sometimes I just need to be reminded of that.

All negative things aside, I have been having an absolute blast with torch fire enameling. Below are some pieces I have been experimenting on.

The leaf and the flower shapes (sawn by hand) are in copper. And the little yellow cup is in Fine silver. For once, this is a skill I have picked up rather quickly and haven't really had any boo boos yet. Even my other half is surprised at how good the enamelling is turning out, he tells me they look better than he thought they would. I think though, that it comes down to how much time I have spent reading and researching torch fire enameling (countless hours). Most likely also helps that I have my little Orca torch to do it with too. I haven't really tried much firing with my butane and I probably won't bother, seeing my Orca works so well for this. It would also be great to not have to hand pierce/saw every shape I want to make, as in all honesty I'm not a huge fan of it - but I do love the end result of course, so it's all worth the work. Though I'm not against using my disc cutter for my circles!!!  I'm working on an earwire that compliments the enamelled pieces too.

Below is a picture of most of the colours I have thus far. I do have a couple on my bench that aren't hanging up and also 2 transparent colours in my locker, that I have to wash first (boooring). I have some *hopefully* nice little clear containers coming, so I can store my enamels in them on a shelf and then I will make a little colour swatch board for the discs as referral. But before playing with the enamels, I spent time cutting and doming a copper disc for each colour and firing them 2 - 3 coats so I could see what colour to expect after firing. I will have to do this with fine silver also, but costs in doing so are substantially higher than with copper (obviously). Doing this with the discs gave me practice too for my other later pieces.

I was struggling to find those 3 point trivets here in Australia and eventually found 1 supplier and so I grabbed them right up, but I could do with more as it could certainly speed up the process not having to share a trivet between firing. So with my next Rio order I think I will stock up on a few more and some more enamels too :P  Honestly I haven't enjoyed myself like this in ages. I've always been a fan of instant gratification (come on who isn't?!) and I feel that enamelling somewhat gives me that. As much as I love the beauty of metal in it's natural state, I also love bright colour especially in accessories. And what better place to put bright colour than in my jewellery!!

This is a picture of where I am at with the custom order I last wrote about:

One will be a pendant and the other a ring. Both a gift from a daughter to her mother for christmas. My muse swiftly evacuated the building when it came time to do these too. Sooo frustrating!! I just hope I can finish them with no more issues.

So there is the latest for me. I think I am falling in love with enameling and the endless possibilities for incorporating it into my work. And I can't wait to experiment more with it and also accumulate more colours hee hee :)

Em ♥

Whirring.

That's how my mind is right now. Whirring. With ideas. Too many ideas and not enough time in the day. I find when it gets like that for me, I tend to do little bits of making here and there on something small or I don't do anything at all. I really frustrate myself sometimes. Wasting time thinking and daydreaming, instead of actually Doing. Well I am never really wasting time as such, I'm always researching and learning something .... but still, not actually doing.

I am focusing on enamelling.
And I am really enjoying it.
It took me a while to finally track down some of the necessary tools I required and I think I am going to stock up on a few more of those particular hard to find tools as back up. Just in case. Fortunately, they're not costly. Just so hard to find here.

A picture of my bench right now:

It's a little annoying having to clear all my silver work before I enamel, but to avoid contaminating my work, it's something that I must spend time doing. So because of that, I am trying to work out a plan for another bench of some sort, just for the enamelling side of my work.

Last week I received some new tools I'd ordered. One of them being digital calipers. Why the heck I hadn't ordered those before now I'll never understand, but they are a mighty handy tool to have around!

I've also been buying up new books. My husband found a great online bookstore a few weeks back and he suggested looking to see if there were any books I would like (metalsmithing books are always more pricey here and damned hard to get). And lo and behold, there were loads!

Below is what I have purchased so far and I've another on the way:

Not much else is happening round these parts jewellery wise. Etching has taken a back seat for the time being - but once I have mastered torch enamelling, I would like to try etching and transparent enamels together. I'm still yet to try etching silver. As I said initially, not enough time in the day to do it all, as I know you are well aware....

My shop isn't doing so well. I won't get talking about it now though, as I know where I could improve things. It does put a dampener on making new pieces though. So I am happy to be trying new techniques in the meantime. Etsy isn't as easy to be selling at anymore (as I'm sure you are well aware of that also). This is part of the reason in the new year I want to focus on selling at markets, where there isn't so much competition for my style of jewellery (yes I'm tired of me talking about damned markets too lol). Though I do have the pleasure of a commission order I'm working on at the moment.

Poppy is 5 months today! It won't be long now till she will be crawling and I will have to really try and organise my time even better, or I will never get to my bench.

I've a long overdue dentist appointment late this afternoon looming over me. Kind of ruins the whole day, especially when you know how many other things/bills you could be spending that large amount of money on!

So that's it folks.
I hope you are all keeping safe and well.
Em ♥