I'm Back :)

We're back from our Far North Queensland 4 Wheel Drive Adventure. It was full of fabulous sights, scenery and people - but more on that later.

I've waited to blog this as it was a gift for my daughter, but now her Birthday has come and gone I can blog away and not ruin any surprises!

In June, my friend Jane & I enrolled for a two day workshop at Fremantle Arts Centre, one of my favourite learning places. We were fortunate enough to be taught how to make Sterling Silver Spoons by the marvellous George Lucas, a renowned and very well respected Silversmith here in Western Australia.

Here's the results of my class efforts.

 

The spoon was made in 3 parts, the top was sawn from sheet, shaped and hammered. The middle was from thick square wire and the bowl also sawn from sheet and domed to shape.
That was the easy bit - the fitting it all together and soldering was a bit trickier.  A bit of precision sawing was involved in getting that top bit to fit the mid section but we all got it in the end under George's watchful eye.
Fortunately George had a jig he'd made which we used to hold the bowl and the handle together when we came to soldering those parts together.  Jane was clever and soldered her spoon together without the jig - smart move really because if we ever want to replicate it at home we'll all be jigless and have to do that!

I made the little custom gift box because next to making jewellery I love messing around with wrapping and papercraft.
Hopefully, one day the spoon will get handed further down in the family as a little heirloom  - in the meantime,  I was pretty chuffed when my daughter (who'd seen it after day 1's class when it was in 3 pieces and not cleaned up in any way) on receiving the finished spoon said "Mum, you can't see the joins!"  WooHoo!

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All Fired Up!

Happy to finally put up a blog post to show something I've made. Creatively this year has been a bit of a non event for me, so it's great to be back into it again.
This term I enrolled at an enamelling class down at my favourite place of learning The Fremantle Arts Centre.
I've done 3 classes so far and I'm just loving it. Great teacher (Jacquie Sprogoe), great classmates and a relaxed, informative and enjoyable class.
I've nothing to show off from the class just yet - I'm doing a cloisonne piece at the moment and it's a work in progress but today, inspired by my lessons,  I fired up my kiln at home, (yes that poor neglected piece of equipment I purchased last year!) and had a play.
Just did a couple of simple sifted pieces but it gave me a bit of a feel for the firing times, how thick to put the layers on etc,  so all in all a good afternoons work and I realized I don't have to be scared of my kiln - it's actually quite user friendly! Using the kiln in class has given me a bit of confidence I think.

Here's the results - first one opaque white over copper and the second one was an unintentional but pleasant surprise with opaque white over opaque black. I've oxidised the edges of the copper too as I love the look of the blackish border around the pieces.

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A Ghostly forrest?

Well that's how I see it......

These are actually the results of my last casting class at Fremantle Arts Centre. I was only able to stay at class half an hour before I had to dash to an unavoidable commitment, so luckily my friends Jane & Lotta stepped in and melted my silver and poured the castings I'd prepared the week earlier...Thanks girls :)

The "snow" on my trees is the remains of the investment (heat proof plaster) that forms the moulds. As Jane put it "their love for me did not extend to cleaning up my castings" Ha Ha - they only wanted to do the fun bits, like playing with fire and molten metal!

Tempting as it is to keep these ghostly little trees as they are, they are destined to become "branch necklaces" similar to the one I posted last week. Pin It

Branching out......

In casting class I've had the most success with my twigs that I turned into little bird necklaces.

Last week instead of the single twig, I cast a twig with multiple little branches. I was really happy with how it turned out and I've made it into another necklace. I've attached it to a long chain which just slips over my head with no clasp. I've resisted the temptation to add a bird or other forest creatures -I did contemplate a squirrel, but decided the tree shape was impressive enough on its own.
Soldering the rings on for the chain was a pain that's taken the best part of the morning and I did a bit of a dodgy job on it, but undeterred I'm going to try casting another "tree" at next week's class and incorporate the jump rings into the casting. Hopefully that will work better :)

I don't always cast twigs though. I've also got a little aeroplane and a dinosaur head which turned out well enough to make into something......watch this space.........

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Possibilities in Metal

Over the last 2 Sundays I've attended the "Possibilities in Metal Casting" Workshop at The Fremantle Arts Centre
It was lots of fun, I went with my talented friends Lotta & Jane and the teacher was renowned Local Artist Sarah Elson. We enjoyed it so much we have signed up for Sarah's class for Term one to explore some more of the possibilities!
We cast all sorts of things, I tried a wax model of a lego brick, some twigs, a resin mini plane (that Jane made a mould of from a little toy plane I had lying around).

My most succesful casts were the twigs which I cast in Sterling Silver, the other things require quite a bit of clean up so I'll save them for another time. This morning I spent some time polishing up one of the silver twigs and soldering the jumprings on - I had sawn out the little sterling silver bird earlier in the week so he got soldered on too.

It's not really an original idea as I've seen lots of similar sorts of things done with cast twigs, I imagine because the obvious thing to do is to pop a bird on a branch! The beauty is of course, that no two twigs are alike. Anyway, I'm very happy to have a cute necklace to wear as a result of the course.

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