AJE Component of the Month - Giveaway!

First of all, thank you so much for the lovely comments on my Mum's earrings in yesterday's post. It was so nice to wake up to them this morning!

Secondly, GIVEAWAY!! Did that grab your attention? Good! It was my turn to create something new for the AJE Component of the Month challenge. The challenge itself isn't until next month, but so that I can get the components out to the challengees early enough I've reveal them today. As I'm enjoying making hollow beads so much at the moment I thought that I'd make some for the challenge, and here they are!

Antiqued copper hollow lentil-shaped beads, measuring approximately 15mm in diameter and with the holes running across the beads. If you would like the chance to win one and take part in the challenge then visit the AJE blog and leave your details in the post comments before Friday midday eastern time. Winners will be revealed on Friday evening - good luck!

P.S. these are not available in my Daisychain Extra shop yet - but watch this space!

Very special recycling

I've got a very special project to show you today, one that I was rather nervous about but thankfully turned out very well!

My Mum has recently been dropping hints about wanting a pair of gold earrings - the type of hints that were accompanied by a little plastic bag with parts of a couple of broken gold earrings and a few other scraps as well! As it was her birthday on 15th February I decided that that was the time for gold earrings. Fancy seeing how I made them? I'm afraid that the pictures aren't the prettiest as they were quick snaps of work in progress, but there are pretty pictures at the end, promise.

First up was melting the scrap into a ball on my charcoal block. Doesn't look particularly pretty at this point, does it? I then realised that to make the type of earrings I had in mind I would need some more gold, so I took out of my Grandma's old jewellery box a couple of old broken earrings of hers that I'd been keeping to melt to make something special. Perfect for a new pair of earrings for Mum! A bit of weighing scrap and a bit more melting and I had two nuggets of gold of as closely the same size as possible. 3g of 9k gold is about £30 worth of gold!

My plan was to use the rolling mill to turn the nuggets into little pieces of sheet as oval as possible, so I hammered them first to speed things up a bit and passed them through the rolling mill lots (and lots!) of times, making sure that they were the same way round each time to stretch them out into ovals. A little bit of filing to make sure that they were the same shape and size and they would have been ready for hammering......but I decided that I wanted to make them thicker and a different shape so I melted them again, into one bigger nugget this time!

And, after hammering with my favourite hammer, soldering on stud fittings and polishing, this is what I ended up with (here are the pretty pictures!). I think that I was more nervous about giving Mum these earrings than I have been about any other piece of jewellery I made for her. I don't think it was because they're gold, I think it was more about where the gold came from, but I do like the idea that I made Mum a pair of earrings from gold recycled from her old jewellery and her Mum's old jewellery. Much better than old broken pieces sitting at the bottom of a jewellery box! Mum put them in as soon as she opened the box, which is always a good sign.

Canadian Soup

Deb has emailed - her parcel of Bead Soup ingredients has arrived in Canada! I have to say, I am very impressed with how quickly it has got there. There is still one UK parcel that I posted at the same time that is yet to arrive at it's destination! I showed you a teaser last week, but now I can show you more details....

 I made Deb a copper Lovebird clasp (you probably guessed I'd make the clasp!), and a smaller Lovebird charm and heart charms to match. There's also a reel of patinaed copper wire and some hammered rings in there in case she didn't have any copper wire. I am sorry to say that I don't know the name of the maker of the lampwork bead, but I love the swirls of blue and ivory inside the clear glass. The ivory spacer beads are ones a friend who no longer makes beads made me a few years ago, and the blue spacers are Mindy Macgregor's. And a final touch to bring it all together, a length of deep turquoise silk ribbon from Marsha Neal. 

I'm really looking forward to seeing what Deb makes with her ingredients - you can see what she thought of her goodies here. And I'm really looking forward to seeing what the postman brings me!

New Daisychain Extra designs now available

It's been far too many weeks since I listed new designs in my Daisychain Extra shop, but there are lots in there now, from new toggle clasps with lovely textured daisies in copper and sterling silver....

 

to Lovebird bangle blanks like the one I used in the Art Jewelery Elements challenge last month.

There are also reels of 1mm and 1.2mm patinaed copper wire following requests from customers and leaf connectors to match the leaf rings used in the new Daisy and Leaf toggle clasps.

And if you'd like to find out how to make your own Daisy and Leaf toggle clasp (or to see just how much work goes into making a handcrafted jewellery component!) then please visit the third of my Soldering Tips tutorials over on the AJE blog today!

Daisychain Extra shop update!

I've spent the morning taking and editing photos of lots of lovely new products - 

there will be a Daisychain Extra shop update at 1pm today!

Mystery Discs!

Earlier today on Facebook I posted this picture and asked if anyone could guess what they could be - either everyone was out enjoying the spring sunshine this afternoon or I had everyone stumped! Well, this is what the textured discs have turned into....

I am slightly obsessed with making hollow beads at the moment. One of the three projects that one of my evening classes are working on for their assessment pieces is a hollow bead pendant, and we've been exploring different ways of making hollow beads and decorating their surfaces. This is one of the most simple methods. I've used a punch to decorate the surface of discs of silver, used a doming punch to cup them, filed the rims smooth and flat and then soldered them together in pairs. One of my jobs tomorrow is to drill the holes in them.

The five smaller ones are going to be part of the bracelet I'm making with the wonderful cabochons that Mindy Macgregor sent me for our collaboration, and the larger one will be in a pendant with the largest cab - and here's a reminder of how beautiful the cabs are, just in case you'd forgotten!

Focus in Life - week 7: Beauty of Flowers

Earth laughs in flowers.

                                                          ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I do love that quote, but until Sally used it in her prompt for us this week I hadn't known who it was from, and unusually for me in this age of Google and Wikipedia I hadn't got round to looking it up! 

The beauty of flowers was our photo prompt this week. I could easily have shown you the lovely red roses that T gave me for Valentine's Day, but it was my orchid that kept catching my eye when I got my camera out - not the best photo I'm afraid as the sun has refused to come out today! This orchid is something of a miracle. I maybe able to saw and shape delicate flowers out of sheet metal but I am most definitely not as good with living flowers but so far I have been able to keep my orchid alive for just over two years now. And not only is it alive but it has 15 buds in various stages of blooming as well as this lovely flower, plus new shoots growing. Heaven knows what I'm doing to it, but it seems to be working!

For more beautiful blooms follow this link!