This week I’ve been undertaking a series of experiments to attempt to create a variety of colours on a variety of metals.

Patination experiments

This has involved using various chemicals, stamping my experiments so I know which is which later, taking copious notes as I work and using Top Secret (!) recipes which take anywhere from three seconds to two or more days to get the desired results. It really has made me feel ever so slightly like a scientist!

I still have some more experimenting and testing to do, but so far I’ve had some interesting results, as you can see above.

In my experiments I’ve been using a variety of chemical recipes to try to achieve a wide variety of colours on a few different alloys, including sterling silver, gilding metal and shibuichi. I’ve also been testing the finishes to see how well they will survive general wear and even being coated to help preserve them.

So what’s this all for? Well it’s a start on the new range of work I plan to have completed in a couple of months and which will be sold in my handmade jewelry shop. I’m using my trip to Ubud in Bali as inspiration and really want to bring some more colour into the work to reflect the vibrant nature of the place. I’ve also wanted to start using some different metals in my production work, so this is a good excuse to test the ways in which they can be used as far as patination goes.

I’ll write more about the development of this range as I move ahead with it. For now, you can see some of the photographs I took during my trip on Flickr: here, here and here.

Rose pendant

Most of the making work I do for my business is what I’d term ‘production work’ - creating items which are not one-off designs and which are intended to sell and be worn by my customers.

Back when I was a student I used to see production work as a necessary evil - or at least a necessary not-so-interesting thing to do. My intention was always for my production work to help fund my other ‘more interesting’ work. It was a way to bring in some income by doing what I love, even though the work itself I didn’t think was as engaging as the one-off jewellery and object artworks I created which were far less likely to find a market and were much more about exploring ideas.

But things have changed, particularly in the last couple of years. I’ve come to realise that I now really love the process of creating production pieces to sell in my jewellery shop and elsewhere - both re-making designs, along with the process of developing with new designs which are intended to sell.

I think in part this is to do with coming to even more fully appreciate the actual process of making jewellery at least as much as completing something that I feel pleased with.

I’ve written before about how in recent years I’ve started to particularly love the process of saw-piercing metal, which is just one example of the fact that I now find a great deal of enjoyment in undertaking and perfecting these sorts of processes, even when it comes to creating the same design or components over and over - although of course in the world of the handmade, no piece is ever really identical to another.

Additionally I’m also developing even more of an appreciation of the materials that I work with, of course this means silver in particular, but I’m keen to expand into using other materials more regularly as part of my production work.

There is also a challenge in creating pieces which are mostly intended to be worn as every day items and which aren’t too complex to re-create, particularly given that selling online means that pieces need to fairly closely resemble those I’ve photographed previously. This sets up a particular set of design issues to resolve for each new idea I develop. And of course I have to actually like the designs myself, which adds another dimension to the process!

These days I rarely have the time to devote to one-off conceptual pieces for exhibitions - or even just for my own benefit as I explore an idea. I do definitely miss being able to do this as much as I would like to, but at this stage that’s outweighed by my newly discovered love of the process of making and developing production work.

I’m sure this is all helped by the fact that I’m now able to spend a chunk of my working life doing something that I love and also that this work is now a very major part of me making ends meet. That’s definitely something to be happy about!

But of course there are times when production work can be a bit more of a trial. I often find this to be the case after I’ve come up with a new series of pieces to put into production. I’ll finish the design process with one of each new piece made and lurking in my mind is the thought that I’ve completed the process … and isn’t that great! Except of course that’s just the start.

Each piece needs to have numerous photographs taken of it - which always takes longer and is harder work than expected - which all then need to be organised and edited. Each piece needs to be priced properly, which can sometimes be an agonising process. Then descriptions need to be written and the pieces need to be listed in various online outlets. All of this takes a considerable amount of time.

And then straight away the process of production work needs to start all over again - I need to make multiples for my own stocks and I generally need to make more for any bricks and mortar outlets I think the pieces are suited to. This means that I often need to make quite a number of a particular design at this stage, which does sometimes get a bit frustrating and exhausting, especially when - as in the pieces photographed above - the pieces all require very similar components to be made repeatedly in order to complete them.

On the day I took the image above I would have been happy to never need to make one of these little cup shapes again! Each one needed to be punched out of metal, beaten with different hammers to build up the right texture, annealed, drilled, domed and then the edges needed to be softened - and that’s before any of them were put together to form an actual piece of jewellery.

But I’ve recovered from that now and have been enjoying the process of re-making those same pieces as required - just not in the same quantity all at once!

Thank you to all who subscribed to my mailing list during April. I hope to have an email coming out to all of you soon, so keep your eyes peeled.

For those who weren’t aware, during the month of April I ran a competition for all subscribers to my mailing list to win a US$50 voucher to spend in my handmade jewelry shop.

So today I set myself the task of drawing a winner. This meant undertaking the complex process of printing out the list without looking at it, cutting it up into a few sections (still not looking!), shutting my eyes while I shuffled them around with them facing downwards on a table … and finally turning one of the pieces over and - with my eyes still firmly shut - pointing a fingertip onto the winner.

And I’m pleased to announce that my fingertip landed on Hayley - the lucky winner! Congratulations.

Thanks to everyone who entered. I plan to run similar competitions in future, so keep your eyes peeled for that too!

My new mini range of poppies and roses jewellery is now properly photographed and listed in various of my handmade jewelry shops.

This rose pendant is made with four layers of disc-shaped pieces of sterling silver to create the petals. The discs have been beaten, shaped with a variety of hammers and domed. It is attached to a delicate silver chain with handmade findings.

There is a matching pair of stud/post rose earrings which have three layers of petals.

And there is also a matching rose ring, which features a rose the same size as the pendant.

This poppies necklace features five blackened poppies which move freely around the delicate chain. I’m really pleased with the shiny black and silver finish on these pieces.

There is also a pair of matching poppy earrings in this style, along with the above poppies ring, which features two poppies which move freely around the band of the ring. I really like the tinkling sound the poppies make when they hit against each other.

This silver and gold poppy ring features a centre of 18ct gold (or 18kt gold if you’re American!) as a highlight.

There is also a matching sterling silver and 18ct gold poppy necklace.

You can find all of this work in my handmade jewelry shop, along with my other online outlets.

I tend to make much of my jewellery in a fairly organic way. I generally do a only a few very rough sketches of an idea and possibly a little bit of design problem-solving on paper. Then I launch into making, using the process of sitting at my bench and working with materials to refine my ideas and finish problem-solving.

Poppies and roses rings, earrings and pendants prior to being tumbled and finished.

I’m sure some of my former lecturers would be horrified by my minimal drawing and lack of comprehensive design work beforehand, but for most of what I make it works very well for me. I really enjoy making this way and have lots of happy accidents.

Close up of poppies and roses jewellery after tumbling and finishing.

But a couple of months back this process failed me, as it does every now and again. I made some little cup-shaped flowers out of sterling silver - an idea I’d been sketching and thinking about for a while.

But while the little flowers themselves turned out really well, I found myself unable to satisfactorily resolve the finished pieces of jewellery I wanted to make with them.

Ever since the little flowers have been sitting on my bench amongst my ‘bench junk’ (partly finished pieces, experiments, interesting pieces of scrap, etc.), looking at me reproachfully for never having made them into anything.

Until today!

Before I start work on the larger range I want to create in the next few weeks, I decided my little cup-shaped flowers had to be resolved. After some more thinking, drawing and playing with the flowers, I decided to make them into poppies and roses … and successfully made them all into new pendants, rings and earrings.

Along with sterling silver, I’ve also used some 18 carat gold as a highlight in a couple of the pieces. I have blackened (or ‘oxidised’) some of the silver, but have finished them in a way which leaves them a really lovely shiny metallic grey, which I’m really pleased with.

Once I have the new pieces properly photographed and listed in my jewellery shop, I’ll post the new images and links right here!

Sign up to my mailing list in the month of April and you’ll be in the running to win a US$50 voucher to spend in my handmade jewelry shop!

I’ll be randomly drawing a name from the list of subscribers on 1 May 2008 and will announce the winner right here.

By the way, I definitely will respect your privacy and promise not to be spammy! And you will be able to easily unsubscribe from my list.

So run off and subscribe now!

In the spirit of working less and getting a bit more balance into my life, I spent the weekend … at my bench making jewellery! Which probably sounds I’m failing on the whole ‘working less’ front, however, I do of course work with metal because I enjoy it and this weekend I actually made some pieces just for me - which makes a very nice change indeed!

This ring is made from a hammer-beaten sterling silver band and settings with two lovely deep pink lab-grown rubies.

The idea behind this ring is something I’ve been wanting to play with for a while now. The two stone settings are not actually attached to the band of the ring. Instead they have loops at the back through which the band passes. This means the stones move freely around the ring and change position as the wearer’s hand moves. So far I’m really enjoying fiddling with them!

This domed ring is made from sterling silver and 18k gold. The circle on top has been heavily textured with a variety of hammers and given an organic, petal-like edge before being roughly punched into a domed ‘buttercup’ shape. A beaded piece of 18k gold has been soldered into the centre and the inside of the cup has been blackened. Finally the ring was tumbled, which has given the interior of the cup a glossy, metallic grey sheen.

And here are my two new rings being worn. I’m likely to put similar versions of these rings into production to sell through my handmade jewelry shop at some stage - even though I’ve been putting off selling rings because the sizing issue is such a pain.

So keep your eyes peeled for these designs and some other new pieces I’ve got in development.

Anyone who works in precious metal of any type will be very well aware of what sort of pain I mean.  In the last 18 months or so the price of metals - especially precious metals - has skyrocketed.  Every time you think it can’t get any more expensive … it just does.

Currently I’m paying about AU$0.97 a gram for sterling silver - that’s around double what I’ve paid for it throughout most of my career (US$0.89 at today’s exchange rate).

Even worse, today I purchased some 18k gold for the first time in a very long time.  I remember the days where I used to gasp over it being around AU$9 a gram.  Today I paid AU$35 (around US$32).  Ouch!

And here is what AU$187 worth of gold looks like!  Yep, it looks pretty piddly - especially when you consider that it’s only 0.3mm thick (0.1″ or around the same as 30 gauge wire).

Of course everyone who knows a thing or two about precious metal prices is wishing that they’d stocked up on kilograms of the stuff a few years back!  Although some people will tell you that those reading this post a year or so in the future will most likely wonder why we didn’t buy it in bulk right now - many people think that the prices are going to get much higher again than they are already.

Ouch.  OUCH!!

Anyway, I just felt the need to have a little whine about that!  And buyers of jewellery and other precious metal objects should feel free to whine too as of course ultimately they are now paying more too.