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.

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.

Before I take myself off to bed I wanted to let you know that I am alive and (kind of!) well.

I’ve been working hard on all sorts of things, including a web project which has eaten up vast amounts of time over the last month.

Plus I came very close in the last several weeks to packing my whole life up and moving it to another city … only to realise that right now simply isn’t a good time to be going anywhere for complicated economic reasons.

So that I can help myself to feel okay about staying put, I have also managed to do some sorely needed re-arranging at home. In particular I wanted to have far more functional working spaces, seeing as I work entirely from home. I’ve found spending so much of my life working in one little and very cramped room isn’t really doing me much good.

I’ve now successfully separated my office from my jewellery studio by moving the office into the lounge room … which probably doesn’t sound like I’m heading for a more balanced life as I’ve been intending!

However, so far it’s working really well and surprisingly the lounge room - which previously had a lot of wasted space - actually looks better for it. Plus I’m finding it great to leave my work on my desk and go and sit on the couch in the other part of the room if I want to take a break, rather than taking work with me to the couch as I have in the past! It’s making me feel more functional and now that my little workroom/studio is vastly less crowded, I can easily open the curtains and window and that makes working a lot more pleasant too.

As part of changing and reorganising things, I’ve also painted some furniture, bought new cushion covers and art for the walls and in all home is looking more homelike. Although there is a lot more of that sort of thing to do and I also have to organise for a painter to come in to repair and paint the walls, which unfortunately are worst of all in my jewellery studio. I see a messy and irritating few days in my future …

Anyway, I hope to have some photographs of my new working spaces once I have everything finished. If you’re interested in seeing my bench and workroom as it has been in the past, you can find some images on Flickr.

In other news, I will soon be taking some time out from other projects to get to work on a new range of handmade jewelry that I have had bubbling away in my mind and have been idly sketching in my notebooks for ages now. I’m really looking forward to sitting in my revamped space and getting to work on some brand new pieces. So keep your eyes peeled!

And now it’s goodnight from me … and goodnight from … me.

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.

Over the weekend I once again spent lots and lots of time at my work bench, a fair bit of which was pinning down and completing some new designs - but as usual I spent some time catching up on making existing pieces as well.

New and existing partially complete jewellery components.

… And today I’ve spent a chunk of time taking a whopping 370 photographs of completed new work.

I now need to sift through the images and delete those which are clearly no good. And then it’s a matter of opening them all up in Photoshop in batches, choosing the best variations for each piece and editing them ready for listing, before finally calculating pricing for the pieces and writing descriptions. Once all that is done, finally I can list them.

Which goes to show that creating new work is about a lot more than just creating new work!

Once I’ve edited the images I’ll post some of them here to give you a better sneak peak of what’s about to be listed in my jewellery shop.

I spent much of my weekend sawing out pieces of sterling silver, some of them into very intricate designs. While working I thought about the process of saw piercing and how much my own perception of it has changed over the past year or so.

Finished handmade jewelry and components fresh from the tumbler after a weekend of making.

I suspect it’s no accident that many courses teaching jewellery making from a metalworking perspective often have beginners start out by learning to saw shapes out of sheets of metal.

Of course many pieces of jewellery require saw piercing as the first step in making them, but I think more importantly saw piercing requires seemingly boundless amounts of patience, especially when starting out. And if there’s one thing that jewellery makers need to have in buckets it’s patience, along with a healthy dose of perseverance.

A day’s worth of broken saw blades. Thanks to Shoshona Snow for this gorgeous little dish!

Saw blades used in a jeweller’s saw frame are incredibly fine. Even if beginners are started out on what more experienced makers would regard as thick blades, they are still much finer than most people will ever have used before. Also, sawing out shapes for jewellery very often requires the maker to saw out intricate and fluid designs with complex curves and sudden changes of direction.

Left: A 5/0 saw blade against my hand to give an idea of thickness (or lack thereof!). You can see a close up showing the tiny teeth of the blade on Flickr. Right: Sterling silver scrap caught by the pouch in my bench after a few days of saw piercing and other jewelry making work.

The result is broken saw blades - lots and lots (and lots!) of broken saw blades.

Of course beginners will break blades a lot more frequently than more experienced jewellery makers, but it’s something that still happens often no matter how much experience you have. As a beginner you will either learn to live with this and keep going or you will decide this world of jewellery making isn’t for you and will find another outlet for your creativity. And realising this sooner rather than later is always a good thing!

Obviously as a beginner I stuck with it, despite the large mounds of broken saw blades and the frustration of seemingly endlessly replacing them as I was learning. Patience is definitely one of my personal strong (and weak!) points, so jewellery making and me seem like a good fit.

However, I still didn’t exactly love the technique of sawing metal. It was something I had to do as part of making many designs, but I was never exactly fond of this aspect of my work and would avoid doing it when I could.

Then I read one little line in a technical book which changed my perception of saw piercing. It was simply that a saw blade is effectively like a tiny sliver of the cross-section of a file and that to a degree you are kind of filing metal when you are sawing. This led me to go off on a tangent and suddenly see saw piercing as being a little bit like carving - and I love the process of carving! I find it easy to get into ‘the zone’ with this sort of work and for me it’s a very fluid, organic process, which I very much enjoy.

So this simple change in perception completely turned my thinking about saw piercing on its head. Pretty much immediately I started to work on much more intricate pieces where the technique is really the focus of the finished jewellery. And of course my skill in this area of work continues to improve as I push myself.

Sterling silver butterfly pendant.

One example of this in my current handmade jewellery range is the butterfly pendant I have been making in recent months - an extension of the butterfly wing pendant I have been making for a year or so now.

I now also often prefer to leave evidence of the saw piercing process in many of my pieces. For example, the marks from the saw blade can be seen in the pierced out sections of the butterfly wings. I like my work to look handmade and I love to leave traces of the process of making in my jewellery, and this is one example of doing so.

So as a result of one sentence in a book, for me saw piercing now really is a joy instead of a chore.

Except of course when I’m having one of those off days where I seem to break about ten times more saw blades than seems reasonable and even my patience is worn very thin! In which case it’s a good idea to simply do something else.

Today I collected from the post office a little present I’d purchased for myself - a lovely tripod bowl made by the very talented Shoshona Snow.

This is my third piece by Shoshona and I’m very happy with my little collection, as seen above - and I’m sure it will continue to grow! My new bowl is the one with the yellow interior.

I seem to be increasingly into collecting ceramics - which is odd because in the past I really wasn’t into this form of object making at all. But now I have a long list of very diverse favourite ceramicists and and many pieces which I covet. I now hope I’ll end up with a home full of them!