Posts tagged ‘jewellery making’

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Back at the bench

29 January 2012

Photograph taken at my jewellery making bench.
The view from my jewellery bench today.

It’s later than I’d expected, but this afternoon I finally got back to my jewellery bench to do some making work.

It was just a tentative step with only three pieces being made for delivery to a couple of shops, but it’s a start.

This week I also need to get stuck into a big batch of etching now that I finally have some silver stock after running out of the required pieces late last year.

However, before then I need to do a massive clean up in the studio! Nothing has been touched in there since I downed tools just before Christmas and the room looks like it has exploded.

So tomorrow I plan to be back in there giving it a good clean up and re-organisation. Plus I hope to finally get back to actually finishing off the space after it was converted from an old three-walled shed into a four-walled studio after moving into my home last year.

You can see the progress made so far in these posts from last year: Progress on my new jewellery studio and Back to business.

I’ll share more of the evolution of my studio as it happens.

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Endlessly making jewellery

12 November 2011

Well, it feels a bit like that at the moment!

I’m spending very long hours every day at my bench as I prepare for upcoming markets and the festive season in general. I currently have a scarily long list of pieces to make!

I thought I’d share some photos of incomplete pieces and scrap, so you can see what’s been happening on and around my bench.

Saw pierced sterling silver.

Above is a saw-pierced piece of sterling silver with several designs ready to be cut out, including medieval arabesque earrings, the front panels of two Elizabethan cage pendants and a flannel flower earring.

Below is another sheet, also with designs ready to be cut out, including an art nouveau pendant and butterfly wing earrings.

Saw pierced sterling silver.

Finally here is a photograph of the sterling silver scrap I have accumulated over the last few months.

Scrap sterling silver.

Once this box is full of scrap which cannot be used in some other way, it will be sent to be refined and recycled into new silver sheet and wire, ready to be used all over again.

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Findings, findings, findings

26 October 2011

In the lead up to Christmas I always do my best to make sure I have plenty of handmade jewellery findings – the components used to finish pieces of jewellery, such as ear wires and clasps.

Handmade jewellery findings.

I tend to go through them at an alarming rate over the festive season, so it’s always good to try to stock up beforehand.

Almost all of the findings I use in my jewellery are handmade – and handmade by me rather than by someone else! This means I’ve been spending a lot of time forming, hammering, soldering and finishing a variety of findings recently. And I still have a lot more of this work to do!

So I thought I’d share some images of some of the findings I’ve been making recently as I build up my stock levels.

Handmade jewelry findings.

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Jewellery making marathon

20 June 2011

In the lead up to moving my home and business interstate, one of the things I need to be on top of in a big way is jewellery making.

So over the past week I’ve been spending hour after hour slaving away at my bench to catch up on making jewellery for my own shop as well as for some offline retailers who stock my work.

Collection of finished handmade jewellery.

Above is a photograph of much of the work I was able to completely finish over the course of the week. Below you can see some images of my progress during the week, with pieces of jewellery in various stages of completion.

Handmade jewellery making process.

I still have more jewellery to make to be fully caught up, but for now I’ll be taking a little breather from my bench!

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New jewellery out now!

18 May 2011

Finally my new range of handmade jewellery has been launched – hooray! This range is a celebration of pattern and ornament, with decorative elements from different eras and cultures, often combined in a single piece.

You can check out the entire new range in my Australian jewellery shop and my International jewellery shop.

Below is an introduction to just some of my new jewellery range!

Elizabethan design cage pendant in sterling silver and gold.

This cage pendant features an intricate Elizabethan-inspired design which is hand cut in sterling silver. The interior of the pendant is gilded with 23ct gold foil (or 23kt if you’re in the US). You can also find it in my Australian shop.

Elizabethan cage ring in sterling silver and gold.   Elizabethan panel earrings in sterling silver.

Also see the cage ring and panel earrings from the same set (Australian shop: cage ring and panel earrings).

Etched circles dish ring with rhodolite setting.

This striking dish ring has been etched with a contemporary circles design and features a rhodolite gemstone setting. Also available in my Australian shop.

Etched and gilded sterling silver teardrop earrings.

These teardrop earrings are etched with an Elizabethan-inspired pattern which has been gilded with 23ct gold foil, creating a luminous gold texture. Also available in my Australian shop.

Chandelier earrings in sterling silver.

These sterling silver chandelier earrings are etched with a detailed damask pattern which has been given a matte brushed finish. Available in my Australian shop.

Etched gemstone cufflinks.

These contemporary cufflinks have been etched with a circles design. Each cufflink is set with a different gemstone – a faceted rhodolite and a faceted citrine. Also available in my Australian shop.

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At the bench: enamelling

11 April 2011

It’s been a very long time since I did any work with enamel – and what I have done was pretty basic! But a while back I picked up a sample set of enamels and have been meaning to try them out. And finally last week I did!

The first step was to wash all of the enamels to remove impurities – which felt like quite a task given I had a set of 12 to clean. This involved repeatedly rinsing each enamel with water until the water was clear and then tipping it out onto its own piece of paper to be left to dry, before finally pouring the powder into a container, along with a slip of paper with a note of the colour scribbled onto it.

Washed powdered enamels in their containers.

After finding and cleaning 12 small scraps of silver, I could finally get to work and start testing the enamels.

I wanted to torch fire them rather than using a kiln, partly because I wanted to see how the results would differ from a usual enamelled finish – torch firing tends to create naturally varied finishes. But of course it also means not needing to run a kiln! It’s also a much more hands-on process which is something I enjoyed.

Test samples of enamelled silver.

All up I was pretty happy with my testing – and it was lots of fun! It took a few pieces for me to get a clearer idea of how far to keep the torch from the silver and how long to heat each piece. Plus I had to keep a close eye on the changes happening to the white hot enamel and get a feel for when it was done (and not over-done!).

The finishes aren’t consistent seeing as I was learning as I was working, but there are some interesting ones and I learnt a lot during the process.

As for how I’ll be using enamels in my work … well, who knows! But I hope to include some enamel in my handmade jewellery designs in future.

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New handmade jewellery (a sneak peek!)

9 April 2011

I’ve been working hard to pin down designs for a new range of handmade jewellery, which I hope to have in production very soon. So I thought I’d share a sneak peek with you.

Handmade jewellery test pieces in sterling silver.

At the moment I’m at the stage of testing the designs I’ve put together in silver, along with determining final shapes, finishes, findings and any other materials I might use.

Here you can see some test pieces and some gemstones I’m looking at using – they are a long way off being finished, of course.

Handmade jewellery test pieces in sterling silver with gemstones.

Some of the designs require a step back to the original artwork to make some adjustments. A design might look great on paper, but when cut out in silver it may prove to have weak points or be difficult to complete reliably for some reason.

And sometimes a design can be problematic enough that it never gets any further than an initial test!

I should have more of this work in progress to show you shortly – and I hope to have it all finalised and in production in the next week or two. Can’t wait!

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My new blow torch

18 June 2010

I was very excited to pick up a shiny new blow torch from the post office! I guess that’s not something everyone would get excited about, but I certainly did.

I use an LP gas bottle for my jewellery making work in my home studio, which is less than ideal for what I do. However, it avoids expensive insurance issues and other complications were I to use an oxy-acetylene set up inside my house or something similar.

The biggest downside has been the torch I’ve needed to use with the gas bottle up until now – a big, clunky, heavy Primus torch with a fairly inflexible hose which results in a sore hand and wrist if I need to do a lot of soldering. It’s just not designed for jewellery making.

In addition, the flame cannot be varied – there’s no way to add or reduce the amount of oxygen in it, which is a useful thing to be able to do.


My old Primus torch and the new Orca one side by side.

However, I’ve been using this torch for years and have adapted to it and have tended to notice the problems with it less over time.

But finally I found a much better alternative after a friend told me about a new torch she’d discovered which is designed to work with LPG bottles and is intended to be used for jewellery making and other fine work. So I invested in one!

My new torch is an Orca and compared to my old Primus one it’s unbelievably lightweight, which makes me very happy. It comes with three different sized tips which are easy to swap around. And the hose is light and flexible.

And best of all it has an oxygen inlet which draws in an adjustable amount of oxygen from the air around the torch. It’s still not as good as having air pumped in to it by way of an air compressor or oxygen bottle, but it’s a huge improvement on having no flame changing ability.

So today I’m feeling very happy about my new torch and I’m very much looking forward to putting it to use!

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The hammer of doom!

30 May 2010

A photograph of my hammer.Yesterday I spent several hours finalising some designs for a new range of work.

I ended up with numerous sketches and wanted to get to my bench to start testing them – figuring out the best sizes to make and how best to complete them and what other materials would complement each piece.

I was feeling very enthusiastic about this work and was enjoying getting these new pieces underway so I could get the shiny new designs pinned down and evolved into a form I was happy with.

And then, only about half an hour into my work, the Hammer of Doom struck!

I was punching out some circles in sterling silver with a much larger hammer than I use for most of my work and using a fair bit of force to get a nice clean cut … and somehow entirely missed the punch I was using. The hammer came down directly onto the middle joint of my thumb, side on.

OUCH!!!!!

My thumb was resting against a steel plate and it was at that point that it was most badly damaged – the opposite side from where I hit it. The skin ruptured and there was blood everywhere … and I very nearly fainted!

I was home alone and the nearest friend who could help me was over an hour’s drive away, so I had to do my best to sort myself out and just deal with it. So I bandaged it up, wrapped it in an ice pack, decided it wasn’t broken and spent the rest of the evening lolling on the couch, feeling quite shaken up.

Now it’s the next day and it’s very painful and swollen, but it will be okay, I’m sure.

However, it means that my plans to get the new range well underway this week have been halted. I’m not going to risk going back to my bench until the injury is a lot better as I need to avoid using the joint too much – and of course don’t want to risk hitting it again!

Anyway, I just thought I’d share the fact that I’ve been suffering for my art! And not for the first time, I have to say.

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Q&A in The Jewelry Report

24 July 2009

A while back I answered some questions for an article by the lovely Angela of The Jewelry Report, a blog for jewellery makers. I really enjoyed answering the questions as many were specific to the process of making jewellery and written by someone who knows a thing or two about it.

The resulting article has an introduction to make me blush:

Australian jeweler, Simone Walsh, is an inspiration to all one-man-band jewelery designs. Not only does her jewelry reflect a sense of originality and dedicated to quality, but her success is a testament to her hard work and dedication to being a successful business woman. Yet every…single…piece is completely handmade. Here she gives us some insight into that productivity, and I really feel that this gal is someone that many aspiring jewelers, and established jewelers alike can (and should) look up to.

So if you’re interested in reading the rest of the article with the Q&A I completed you can find it right here on The Jewelry Report.

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Tumbling away

19 July 2009

I spent some time at my bench this weekend making some jewellery for one of my consignment outlets along with for my own stocks. And the results of my labour all needed to be tumbled in steel shot to become bright and shiny.

Handmade jewellery fresh from my new tumbler.
A batch of handmade jewellery fresh from my new tumbler.

Recently I purchased a sparkly new Lorotone tumbler to replace the wonderful but now old and slightly decrepit tumbler my Dad made for me years ago using bits from his shed).

It’s taking me a while to get used to the ways of my new tumbler. Because I’d used my old (and rather eccentric!) one for such a long time I knew exactly how much shot, water and tumbling compound it needed and exactly how long my work needed to be tumbled to get the result I wanted.

Of course my new tumbler is different and it will take me some experimenting to get those things right.

It’s been making me think about how very familiar we all become with the tools and equipment we use extensively. Changing those things can be a bit disorientating at times. But of course change can be a good thing!

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A little bit of gold for a whole lot of money

30 June 2009

Sometimes it feels a tad depressing to be working in a field where the cost of your materials is down to the sometimes extreme whims of a market which has absolutely nothing to do with what you make.

A small piece of 14ct gold in my hand.

At the moment both silver and gold are priced higher than they have been for a very long time. However, especially since the global economic crisis kicked off the price of gold has been going crazy as investors have been sinking their money into it, seeing it as a much safer bet than the stock market.

But as someone buying gold as a material to make jewellery with and not as an investment (or to make investment jewellery with), this is definitely unhelpful!

The photograph above is of a piece of 14ct gold (that’s 14kt for Americans) which is 0.5mm thick (0.02″) and 35mm tall and wide (1.4″). It set me back AU$245 (currently around US$200). Ouch!

Silver has also been going up and up for the past couple of years for all sorts of complex reasons. It is currently costing around double what it has done for most of my career. But to give an idea of how much more expensive gold is by comparison, 14ct gold is currently around 28 times more expensive per gram than sterling silver at trade cost.

Gold is a wonderful material to work with, but it does indeed hurt when a very small business like mine needs to purchase it.

As for what I’ll be making with my teensy little piece of gold … well I have a few ideas, but nothing concrete at this point. I have been using thinner gold as highlights in a few handmade jewellery pieces for a while now, but I would like to make some pieces where gold is more of a feature.

Stay tuned for details!

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