Tutorial Tuesday - Art Clay Textured Heart bead

One of the things I like best about writing the Spotlight review pages for Beads and Beyond is writing the review of the blog of the month, as it gives me the perfect excuse for spending time finding great new blogs to read! Joy Funnell's blog, Fired with Imagination, is a perfect example, and as she posted a great tutorial on using silver clay paste and cork clay (something I've been intrigued by but never sure how to use) to make the beautiful heart bead shown above I thought I'd make it this week's tutorial. It's a lot easier than I thought it would be, especially with Joy breaking it down into easy to follow steps with photos!

You can find the tutorial here, and if you want to find out more about Joy's work and her teaching go and read her blog, and also buy the August issue of Beads and Beyond in a couple of weeks!

Bead Soup Party Day 2

Just a quick post as I've just popped on here for ten minutes while I'm at my parents still to give you the list of the Bead Soup Party blogs for today. If you're able to visit any of them I know they will appreciate it! By the way, Malin (my Bead Soup partner) will post her party piece on Wednesday and I'll be posting mine on the last day, next Saturday.

14. Jen, Jen Judd Rocks 

15. Kella, Me But a Little More In Depth 

16. Emanda, Artemisia Studio 

17. Marie, Skye Jewels 

18. Loretta, Designs By Loretta 

19. Stacy, Sissy and Jack's 

20. Joanna, Filcowe 

21. Diane, Diane Hawkey 

22. Marianna, Pretty Shiny Things 

23. Anna, The Laughing Raven 

24. Marcie, La Bella Joya 

25. Lois, Que Onda Q'town? 

26. Jayne, Mama's Got To Doodle

Party Time again!

The Bead Soup party has started again!

This time there are so many of us taking part that Lori has decided, very wisely, to spread the party out over the next week. I remember that last party time I spent all my free time (and a fair bit of time I was supposed to be working!) visiting all the party blogs, so this time things will be a bit more relaxed. Today's party blogs are:

1. Lori, Pretty Things

2. Lorelei, Lorelei1141

3. Norma, Moonlit Fantaseas

4. Beth, EB Bead and Metalworks

5. Katie, KatieBead

6. Kimberly, Bahama Dawn

7. Debbie, Prairie Emporium

8. Lisa, Joolz by Lisa

9. Kate, Tropical Blonde

10. Janet, Singing Woods

11. Julianna, Juls Beads

12. Erin, Treasures Found

 

 

I haven't had a chance to have a look at all of them yet as I've been teaching today but I love Lori's necklace show above - look at all those juicy beads! In her own words, Lori has use "orange carnelian, blue iolite, and yellow citrine, a ton of 26 gauge wire, and started wrapping tiny 3mm and 4mm gemstones around an 18 gauge base" together with an amazingly detailed focal lampwork bead by  Jennifer Cameron. 

 

 

Right then, I'm off to catch a train over to my parents for Fathers Day and Dad's birthday tomorrow. My boys are already over there as they drove over to spend the day with friends. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, and I'll see you on Monday!

Tutorial Tuesday - hints and tips for sawing metal sheet

As the project I've got in Beads and Beyond this month is all about sawing daisies from copper sheet, I thought that I'd share with you the hints and tips I give my college and private tuition students.

The main tools I use for sawing and piercing(piercing is sawing inside a piece of metal).

Hammer and sharp tipped steel rod for marking where I want to drill a pilot hole for pierced work.

Bench peg that clamps to my bench to support my work - I like this type as I can move it out of the way when I don't need it.

Two different types of saw frames with saw blades

Saw frames

There are two different types of jeweller's saw frames - adjustable and fixed. The blue one in the picture above is an adjustable saw frame with three wing nuts - two that hold the blade and one that adjusts the length of the frame.

To put a blade in an adjustable frame:

1. Open top nut of saw frame and put in one end of the blade with teeth of blade facing towards you and pointing towards the handle of the saw. Tighten the nut. 
2. Loosen the nut at the side of the frame and adjust the frame so that it is a centimetre or so shorter than the blade. 
3. Loosen the bottom nut, insert the blade end and tighten the nut.
4. Lengthen the frame so that the blade is taut and tighten the nut. When you ‘pluck’ the blade it should make a nice sharp ‘ping’.

·       

The wooden handled saw in the photo has a fixed saw frame, in other words, you can't adjust the length of the frame.
To put a blade in an adjustable frame:

1. Hold the front end of the frame in the V of the bench peg so that it doesn’t slip and support the handle against your chest. 
2. Open top nut of saw frame and put in one end of the blade with teeth of blade facing towards you and pointing towards the handle of the saw. Tighten the nut.
3. Put the frame under tension by pushing on it with your chesor your hand. 
4. Loosen the bottom nut, insert the blade end and tighten the nut. 
5. Take the tension off the frame so that the blade is taut. When you ‘pluck’ the blade it should make a nice sharp ‘ping’.

Posture

·         Posture is really important when you are sawing metal. If you sit properly then you will actually have more control over the blade and find the job easier to do, and it's a good idea to sit properly anyway, especially as you will find yourself sitting still for a long time cutting out complex designs!

•       Saw at eye level – it makes it easier to see what you are doing, helps to keep your back straight to reduce back ache and helps to prevent excessive pressure on your wrist. Most jeweller’s benches are taller than normal tables, or you can use an adjustable chair. 
•       Keep your feet apart and knees over your feet – this helps to keep you stable and more comfortable and so helps to prevent ‘wobbles’when you're cutting!

 With practice you will be able to cut so accurately that you can pierce a shape from metal and use both the negative and positive pieces in your work, as I've done with the daisy above.

 Other tips 

•       Keep the blade upright – holding the blade at an angle will make it more difficult to turn corners.
•       Hold the saw lightly – too tight a grip will make the blade jam and cause blades to break
•       Use as much of the blade as possible – short strokes will jam the blade and cause the blade to wear out unevenly.
•       To remove the blade from your work – saw backwards!
•            If your blade gets stuck – try lifting up the whole piece of metal by the saw. This usually loosens the blade.
•       To cut (pierce) inside metal – drill a pilot hole and thread the blade through it before tightening it in the frame.
•       Always turn the metal not your blade – this helps to make your cutting more accurate.
•       To turn a sharp corner – ‘saw’ up and down on the spot with slight pressure backwards, slowly turning the blade/metal as you do so. 
•       Always buy the best quality blades that you can - it will save you hours of filing to clean up your work afterwards.
•       Always use the correct blade for your work – you should ideally have two or three points of the blade to the thickness of what you are cutting. Too thick a blade will catch in your work, too thin a blade will take ages to cut and wear out very quickly. The blade that I use most often is graded as 2/0

There's nothing quite like

a new diary to help me feel more organised and ready to tackle the world. I don't know why new stationery should make such a difference, but it does! I know that it might seem like a strange time of year to buy a new diary, but although I left school teaching four years ago I still haven't broken the habit of using academic diaries, so yesterday after church B and I paid a visit to Paperchase as I love their design with a whole page next to the weekly layout ready for my to-do lists. Sad? Probably. Feeling organised and ready to tick off those 'to-dos'? Definitely!

I've been ticking a lot of 'to-dos' off my lists over the last week or so, which is why I've been awol.
I have:

• finished a magazine project and drafted two more
• almost finished painting the garden fence (the fiddly bits partly hidden by the decking railing were not easy to get to)
• finished the wording for a new  masterclass for Beads and Beyond (need to finish the photos tomorrow)
• finished a couple of new designs (need to edit the photos tomorrow to put on here and the website)
• made two Daisy cuffs, a Leaf cuff and lots of bangles for orders
• nearly finished weeding the front garden
• planted more potatoes
• nearly finished my college marking - T is looking forward to getting the dining room table, as my students portfolios are hiding it at the moment!

There's more boxes of marking under the table! Help!!

I've also been making lots of these

as the July issue of Beads and Beyond included a project that I'd written using daisies cut from copper sheet. I decided to offer the daisies on the website for people who didn't have the time or equipment to make their own, and the orders have kept me busy. I need to visit my friendly local motorbike-mad metal merchants tomorrow to buy some more copper sheet. If you are local to Southampton and need any sheet of any metal that isn't silver, then do go and visit the Metal Mart - any woman (and some men!) who walks in there nowadays is greeted with "do you make jewellery?" and I've sent so many students down there for copper sheet for practicing their sawing techniques that they now keep small amounts pre-cut behind the counter! If you'd like me to make some copper daisies for you, then you can find all the information you need here.

This month's Beads and Beyond also included the first of four articles that I'm writing for the magazine on the legal issues of making and selling jewellery. This one is on hallmarking, something that it is easy to forget about when you first start to sell your jewellery! By law, all jewellery sold in the UK that contains 7.78g or more of silver or 1g or more of gold must be hallmarked, whether or not all the metal in a piece is actually soldered together. It's easy to see hallmarking as being an extra, unwanted business cost but to me it's something that is more than a legal requirement, it's a guarantee to my customers that my work is what I say it is, and it's a way of taking pride in my work. The article next month is on insurance for your jewellery business.

My hallmark - my maker's mark, the modern sterling silver mark, the traditional sterling mark, the Leopard's Head showing that my work is marked at Goldsmiths' Hall in London, and the date stamp.

 

To see more of what's in this month's Beads and Beyond, and Cindy Wimmer's gorgeous stamped jewellery on the front cover visit the magazine's website here.

Tutorial Tuesday - soldered earwires

One of my jobs today was to make some new earrings for Between Dreams in Botley. One of the new designs I wanted to try out uses earwires soldered onto the main part of the earrings, so I thought I make that this week's tutorial. Earwires that are one piece with the rest of the earring aren't exactly new, and I expect that lots of people have their own method of soldering them in place, but I thought I'd show you my way anyway!

These are the earrings waiting for their earwires - long thin ovals of silver textured with my favourite hammer (of course!)

And these are the earwires. I've cut two lengths of 6cm 0.8mm wire and used a chasing hammer to flatten approximately Xmm at one end. This increases the surface area of the section to be soldered onto the back of the earring, making the soldered join stronger.

I tend to use solder paste for this job. As there's only one soldered join on these earrings I've used easy solder paste. I've put a little bit of solder on the hammered section of the earwire.....

and then I heat the wire so that the solder melts onto the silver. I stop before the solder melts completely and flows across the whole of the wire - I just want to make sure that it stays in one place and doesn't smear across the back of the earring during the next stage.

And the next stage is soldering the two pieces together. Remember that the main part of the earring needs more heating than the wire, so direct the heat onto that first, and then include the wire. I hold the wire in place using insulated reverse action tweezers, and have to remember to heat the tip of the tweezers too as they draw heat away from the silver. Once the solder has flowed between the two pieces remove the heat, but keep the earring itself still until the liquid appearance has gone. If you move the earring too quickly you could pull the two pieces apart. You do need a steady hand for this part of the job, and you will probably find it easier if you rest the hand holding the tweezers on the table beside your soldering area. Practise makes this stage a lot easier, promise!

Once the earrings have been pickled and rinsed,

the next job is to bend the earwires over a mandrel to shape them....

and then flick out the end of the earwires - this gives them a more professional 'finished' look, and also makes them easier to put on.

Remember to use a needle file or burr cup to round the ends of the wires so that they are comfortable to push through your ears.

And finally give them a polish! I decided to use nylon jaw pliers to curve the ovals slightly. Now I just need to think of a name for my new design!

The Bead Soup ingredients are here!

Well, they've actually been here a few days, but (apologies to Malin) I've been in a bit of a strange mood, a funk my friend Nicky would call it, over the last week or so. No particular reason for it, I guess it's just because I'm tired. It's been a busy year, what with teaching two evenings a week, lots of private tuition during the day, lots of orders and magazine writing. Oh, and looking after my boys and generally running the household. My evening classes finished for the year a few weeks ago, and I think my brain has just told me that now that they're done I need a break! So, no work was done this weekend. We had a true Bank Holiday weekend with friends over for lunch, afternoons playing with trains and lego (of course), trips to the park, gardening and treating ourselves to lunch out. I didn't even open the workshed doors or log onto the internet once over the whole three days, which is very unusual for me! I think it's done me good though.

Anyway, the Soup ingredients! I deliberately didn't visit Malin's blog before her parcel arrived as I knew she'd posted some pictures of the pretties she was sending me. I couldn't help laughing when I opened the different packets up, as despite the fact that we'd agreed to make everything a surprise and not discussing colours or anything like that we'd made up parcels of virtually the same colours!

She's sent me a beautiful pendant by Tracee Dock of Classic Bead, a designer I hadn't come across before. The amongst the "supporting" beads are Job's Tears, raw Baltic amber, wooden tubes and brass rings. A beautiful mix of colours and textures!

And this is what I sent Malin.......

I sent her a ceramic pendant too! It's by Lisa Stevens of  seaurchin as it was clear from Malin's blog that she loves Lisa's work. There's also hammered copper rings and a matching toggle clasp (I made those), some vintage buttons and some glass beads to add a bit more colour.

We've got a couple of weeks to come up with some designs. I think I fancy a long summery necklace, but I expect I'll change my mind a few times before the day of the party!