Ups and downs

​I can't believe there is only one more week of lessons and then it's marking week! This diploma is just flying by! I've had a really mixed week; a great start with fused glass and enamel and then a few difficult days with stone setting in silver and intermediate wax carving.
 
Fused glass was so much fun! Cutting the glass was really easy, although we only did straight lines so that might not be true if curves were involved! It's all about building up layers of glass and thinking about the textures you want to achieve and varying the order of the layers. The great thing about it is that it's totally unpredictable. No matter how carefully you stack your glass you just can't tell how it's going to come out in the end. I made some pieces that I really liked and would seriously consider using glass in future jewellery projects.
 
Onto a different way of using glass: enamel. This is essentially powdered glass that can be used to add colour to metal. This was the class I had most been looking forward to as I really love the effect of enamelling on jewellery. I had done quite a bit of reading around it and was under the impression that it's a really difficult and lengthy process but that's just not the case! It was really quick to apply and only took one minute in the kiln for each layer. I was really impressed with the results and will definitely be incorporating it into my jewellery and am even thinking of using it in my final collection for the diploma exhibition that will make up 20% of our marks.
 
We had two days of stone setting in silver this week. Silversmithing is not really my forte but day one went pretty well. I really like the results, particularly the stone in a bezel setting. We learnt three different kinds of setting; bezel, tube and flush. Bezel and tube are my favourites and my first attempts went well, however on the afternoon of day two we had an opportunity to practice whichever technique we liked. I decided to try the bezel setting again as I found it the most difficult, but it was disastrous! No matter what I tried I could not for the life of me get the solder to run properly to create a join between the bezel and the base. In the end I gave up and will have to come back to it another time, sometimes you just need to put some space between yourself and a project. I often find I can get too close to what I’m working on, which isn’t very helpful if for some reason I am having a bit of a bad day. But my design for my final silver project which we will be doing next week includes a stone in a bezel setting, so fingers crossed I have more luck with it next time around!
 
Lastly we did intermediate wax carving and received the silver version of the rings we carved last week. I love mine! I’m so happy with how it turned out. I have started polishing it up and it's looking good so far. I need to work through all the sandpaper grades and then pop it in the tumbler to get a really high shine. We spent the rest of the day experimenting with different types of wax and how to join them together and using heat on the tools to create various textures in the wax.
 
Next week we have Perspex jewellery, two days to create our final silversmithing project, a brooch for me, and then a day of business and a day of photography. I really can't believe we are so close to the end now. I’m going to miss the other diploma girls, I’ve got so used to seeing them every day.