Silver clay cufflinks

 As one of the projects, I had to make cufflinks, so I decided to get my kids to help. This was quite a difficult thing to do and I am blaming them for the rustic nature of the design!!

Unfired. Lettering with a metal stamp, finger prints by my children!

Fired and cleaned up

Treated with liver of sulphur

Polished up

Backed added and turned into cufflinks

They made a great Christmas gift for my husband!

Memory wire - project six.

The final project from Cooksons was to make a beaded necklace using crimping, which I confess i haven't done yet and to make a memory wire bracelet.

I have made a few of these from the materials sent!

With beads from the kit sent and some blue sodalite

Banded agate and amethyst

Skull beads with haematite and some sparkly bits

Jasper hearts, haematite and a bit of  swarovski with flower charms

Dalmatian jasper and agate hearts


Most of the gem stones were from Jewellery Maker and I loved using them! I am getting into gemstone jewellery. 

August project part 2 - bracelet and earrings

Here are the finished articles. The bracelet is on stretchy elastic and I have added the same birds as I did to the lariat.  The head pins were again a nightmare to cut and shape, I did change from the round nosed pliers supplied with the kit to another pair I had, with a bit more success. 

Bracelet and earrings

Lariat, bracelet and earrings

But I have to tell you I am not loving this project I found it boring, probably because it is nothing new to me and also if I was a complete novice I would have just given up with those head pins!
It's clearly something I need to work on so I have ordered a few other kits that will get me working hard with my pliers from Creative Beadcraft   Hopefully these will improve my skill set and also provide some Christmas presents perhaps?

August project part 1 - lariat necklace

This project has been troublesome to me. Not because of any real technical difficulties but because I didn't really like the materials that came with it and I struggled to come up with something I would actually wear!

This is what arrived. A nice case with some round nosed and flat pliers, some side cutters a snipper thing (will come in handy) a good pair of jewellery tweezers, a metal bead scoop and some little bead boxes that fit together quite cleverly.

I got a number of head pins, jump rings, stretchy wire, cord, ear hoops and an assortment of beads. The task is to make a lariat necklace with matching bracelet and earrings.

This i could do, I have done this before at college but I didn't like the beads, not at first anyway, now i appreciate the colour mix a little better, but my first thought was YUCK!

A lariat necklace one that is just a long piece of cord or chain with embellishment either end.  You fold over or twist the ends together to make a long necklace.

I tried lots of different bead combinations and making little links with the head pins but it felt like there was somethiing missing from it. I tried adding some old keys, that looked daft, so I eventually added a couple of these little birds  to add extra interest.

I struggled with the positioning of the different jump rings to hold on the head pins but as they are just knotted on it was fairly easy to adjust. I though the head pins provided were very difficult to shape and too hard for the cutters provided, I had to really give it some welly, so I am not happy with the quality of the loops in the pins. I have done much better in the past, in fact I might post a pic of a similar piece for a long time ago to show you at some point.

*update here are some pictures of the finished article.

Next thing to do now is the bracelet and earrings...

July Project - Shamballa bracelet

My July pack was smaller and less exciting than the June pack, for one thing it didn't have a blow torch!

I got several lengths of cord, some precision glue, 5 shamballa beads and some instructions to make a shamballa bracelet.

Shamballa bracelets first appeared as an aid to the meditation of Tibetan Buddhist monks, with a similar purpose to rosary beads. Traditionally they were made of hemp and wooden beads. In the 1990's a company used the idea to make a blingy version to appeal to spiritual types with far too much cash and this has become the style known as Shamballa.

The one I have made is a bit blingy but any kind of bracelet made with this knotting technique counts as a Shamballa bracelet.

The instructions that arrived with the kit were a bit confusing.  

Luckily I found this lovely Brummie lady  who explained it all so much better with her sailing analogy. I took some photos as I worked but watch the video in the link if you want a good tutorial. 

You start with a straight central strand

You use a longer strand to make knots on the central strand

Add a bead and keep knotting

All beads on

Once you have finished knotting you seal it with the glue.

You get a third strand and using the same knotting technique make a sliding clasp

I decided to add a couple of little beads to the ends for interest.  Hmmm, wonder if I have any :)

Finished bracelet

Modelled by me! 

Of course I did mess it up a bit! I decided the ends were too long and trimmed them and then realised why they were long, so you got get the bracelet on! I manage to fix it though by shortening the clasp. I am eager to try out some more complex designs now and think it is a little tight of Cooksons to only send three small strands when 10m of the stuff is £1.25 on their website. I suspect I would have been using up more beads well into the night :) I will be trying out some more designs over the weekend, I like this technique, it is very effective and can be adapted loads of ways. 

June Project part 3 - success at last!

I decided to try again with my silver clay pendant using the rest of the clay and what I had learnt making mistakes the first time!

I couldn't removed the fireproof stones from the disaster piece so I had to buy some new ones which I got from this website. I got a mixture of different sizes and colours and I am glad I did because the piece looks better for smaller coloured stones rather than the clear ones in the pack, in my opinion.

Here is the piece, stamped and cut.  I took two attempts to get it how I wanted. Then I set the stones into the clay.  These are lab created gemstones and suitable for firing but you should never quench a gem set piece as the stones could shatter! I chose two 1.5 mm stones, one a sort of lavender and one that looked like a peridot. I also chose a 2mm red-orange stone for the larger flower.

I sanded the edges of the piece after it was dry.  I didn't need to do much as cleaning up the edges with a damp paint brush before allowing it to dry out sorted most issues.

 Here it is straight after firing. You can see from the marks on the heat block how it has shrunk.  This is normal, PMC generally shrinks 10% during firing as the polymer that holds the silver burns off leaving you with pure silver..  I really took my time over the firing, used a lower amount of heat and worked in quite dim light so I could observe colour changes more easily.  it was more time consuming but it was worth it!

 Here is my newly fired piece with the failed one. It appears white because of the oxide layer on the silver from heating .

 Here is the pendant after polishing with a stainless steel brush

Comparison with the disaster piece!

                       
                                       After burnishing and using a silver polishing cloth. 

I am very happy with the end result and I am wearing it right now! Just need to order some better silver chain for it soon. :-)

June project part 2 - in which I mess it up every step of the way.

For this project I had to roll out a piece of clay, imprint a design, add some fire proof crystals and heat it up for two minutes. Dead simple? No!

I got everything ready, you can see the stamp I used on the left, the cutter beneath it. I didn't like the stamps included in the pack so made a pilgrimage to Hobbycraft and of course bought a ton of other stuff too because I just love Hobbycraft.  I will no doubt be posting some of the other things I bought :-)

Here you can see some very important parts of the process, the teflon sheet to work on, so the clay doesn't stick to the work surface and badger balm to rub on hands, stamps and other tools to stop sticking. You don't want it to stick because you will waste material and ruin your design. The clay is very sticky when it first comes out of the packet.  The blue things are spacers so that when you roll the clay you get a uniform thickness.  So far, so good. 

 I stamped the design on after much faffing to get it as I wanted. I added the stones but messed it up, so stamped it again. The clay was getting very hard at this point.  It was getting very difficult to work with and I was shocked at how quickly it was drying up! I had to abandon that lump of clay and use the other half of my clay. Luckily I was able to rehydrate the clay by adding water and kneading it in clingfilm over the course of 24 hours, which was lucky really, considering the cock up I made later.

This is the second attempt set with the fire proof crystals.

This is where it went wrong. With my silver clay paste pieces I fired them on a gauze on my cooker hob. The silver clay kit came with a blow torch that can heat up to 1300°c. Silver melts at 900°c. Can you guess what happened? The instructions said to make sure it was glowing orange for 2 minutes which I did. I later found an online video showing you how to do it properly and it should be pale orange not the glow stick colour I took it to. 

And this is what I got :-(  I suppose the positive side is that I got the stones to set and a piece of solid silver jewellery.  The negative is it looks rubbish and I have wasted about £15 worth of materials. 

Thankfully because I rehydrated the first bit of clay, I was able to start again tonight and I will post some (hopefully) successful pictures soon.

Lessons learnt

• Be clear on your design and work quickly once the clay is out.
• Don't keep messing with it once it is done. Many imperfections can be sorted with a damp paint brush, rather than your clumsy fingers. 
• Trust your instinct on firing!. Look at the colours carefully, do not allow your piece to glow!