New year, new jewellery

​Happy new year everyone! I had quite a big break over Christmas as we were entertaining a lot of people during the festive period. Something about moving into a new house seems to make people want to visit…

Before I got consumed by cleaning and cooking and general hosting I was absorbed in a couple of commissions people asked me to make for Christmas gifts. As I mentioned in a previous post one of my sister’s colleagues asked me to make identical necklaces for her daughters. I came up with three designs and luckily she liked all of them! She picked one and I got to work. I really thought it wasn’t going to take me long, but I had so many set backs throughout the process, not least when I was carefully getting the metal clay out of the dehydrator and managed to drop one of the pieces on the floor… of course it smashed and wasn’t worth fixing. I could have cried! However I finished them in the end and even got them hallmarked, my first things to go to the assay office. I was so excited to get them back and felt really proud of myself when I saw that official mark on my work. 

The second commission I had was from my husband who asked me to make something for his supervisor. My only brief was that “she always wears dangly earrings”… thanks dear! I came up with several designs and he picked one out immediately. Thankfully I didn’t have any breakages this time and have heard that she loved them.

The last thing I made before Christmas was a bit of a self set commission and quite a big project. My mother-in-law had mentioned that she would like a fox brooch and I was keen to practise wax carving. I had an idea in my head and got started the next day. It took me a long time to complete the carving, but I wanted to make it is perfect as possible. The more work you do on the wax version, the less you need to do to clean it back up once it has been cast in silver. I am so pleased with my fox and my mother-in-law was thrilled with it. I would say it is the best thing I have made so far and it enabled me to design my first collection. I was feeling a bit uninspired, but after I had experimented with the wax and saw how it could be manipulated I felt much more creative.

Now it's the new year and it’s time to start work again. I have the designs for my collection all drawn out so all that’s left is for me to get back down the workshop and start carving!