Fishin' YOJ Week 17

Back to chainmaille for this weeks piece of jewellery. Although my fish hasn't been caught - he's just swimming past the net. The Bracelet is Sterling & Copper Euro 4 in 1 weave with the fish charm wired on, as are the Freshwater pearl studs. Pin It

Ripples, Depths & Shallows.

Week 16 of the YOJ is Ripples Depths & Shallows. I had a creative block with this one plus I was in a hurry to get it finished before I go away for a long weekend. I'm heading off to sunny Queensland (across the other side of the country!) for a flying visit to help celebrate my niece's 21st Birthday.
I wanted to try some etching but that will have to wait. Instead, I hammered some pre cut sterling oval discs, lightly domed them, put the holes in (I've got some cool hole-making pliers that make that job easy) and joined them with jumprings to make this bracelet. As luck would have it - it fits me perfectly!
It was a first for me as I used Liver of Sulphur for the first time to oxidise the piece to represent the depths & shallows. Wow, was this fun or what! I had dabbled with oxidising metal with an egg but this was so quick in comparison! I was chucking every bit of scrap metal I could find in to the LOS to blacken it just so i could scrub it back with the steel wool. Yes, I need to get a life - I know! Pin It

Seafoam & Rolling Waves YOJ Week15

Week 15 of the YOJ is Drifting, Seafoam & Rolling waves. I decided to ignore the Drifting and concentrate on the rolling waves and the seafoam.
I had these fabulous amazonite rondelles which were the perfect colour to represent seafoam. I put them in clusters hanging from the pendant. I couldn't work out how to represent waves at first . I would have loved to texture the metal to get that feel but in the end decided that I would saw the pendant in half in a wavy pattern. I'm happy, the little seafoam rondelles dance around from the bottom of the pendant just like ........well...... seafoam!

Next week's theme is " Ripples, Depths and Shallows" so I'm already thinking texture.........What did I do with that etching fluid?! Pin It

Year Of Jewellery

This is my first contribution into the YOJ (year of jewellery)

I was following the theme " April Showers". For me, part of the appeal in participating in the year of jewellery was to challange myself by keeping to the theme where possible.
After thinking about it for a while I had a clear idea what I wanted to do. I decided to try a product ITS because I wanted to transfer text on to metal. It did occur to me that most of the projects on the manufacturer's site included photos, but not actual text being transferred to the metal surface ......but did that deter me?......No!
What did deter me was that after following the instructions to the letter (no pun intended!!) my lettering looked awful! The text adhered to the metal just fine but with a misty looking surround that was not uniform or attractive.
I ended up sanding the whole lot off. I'm not bagging the product though - I'll do some more experimenting - I'm sure it works fine with photos etc though, which I think is what it's mainly intended for.

A glass of wine and a lot of thought later I decided I'd get my text on the metal if it was the last thing I did! And I did.......well sort of........
I printed the text out on acetate and overlayed it on the sheet metal instead of using the transfer product.

I have mixed feelings about this - I'm disappointed the transfer medium didn't do what I wanted it to do, but at the same time I'm pretty pleased with my problem solving abilities to achieve the result that is the same as what I had in mind at the beginning even though the methods were not what I set out to do.

I know you metal smith people are thinking " why didn't you just etch the text on to the metal?" Well, I was getting around to that - but not just yet - that's why I had bought the acetate - to experiment some more with etching......Stay tuned :) Pin It