Roses in progress

 A quick snap of the work I've been doing this morning - pretty Rose Red earrings waiting for me to set their sparkly garnets. I've had a flurry of orders for these this week for January birthdays! I do enjoy making them. The garnets are rose cut cabochons so the top of the stone is faceted and catches the light beautifully!

One more week to go!

And all of a sudden here it is, the last full week before Christmas. It's Ben's birthday tomorrow, with his school choir's show for parents on the same day, plus lots of other Christmas activities at school and pre-school. There has been a disco, party, wear-a-Christmas-jumper day, etc etc event for one or other of the boys almost every day this month - so much so that if there hasn't been something written on the family calendar for a particular day I've worried that I've missed something out!

New sparkly earrings, perfect for Christmas!

It's also the working week for UK orders on my website. Everything in the Unique Collection is ready to ship out, and many items in the Golden Collection and Simply Silver Collection are available as well - if in doubt email me on admin@joannetinleyjewellery.com!

For full details see http://www.joannetinleyjewellery.com/a-christmas-gift-for-you/

 There's also a little incentive for you to order your last Christmas presents - spend £30 or more before midday on Friday amd receive a voucher for 15% of your order value to spend before the end of the year. Afterall, after treating the people on your Christmas list you deserve a treat as well!

Pretty earrings!

I think that it's safe to say that my resolution come New Year should be to blog more often! I only have the usual excuse to offer - busy with teaching, busy with orders for Christmas presents and some lovely commissions too, and of course busy with Christmas events with the boys. In the last week we've had one Christmas concert, four birthday parties, one Cubs Christmas party and one school historical dress-up day - and that's just been for Ben!

Anyway, enough of that - I have been making some new pieces of jewellery for the website in between the order and commissions and it's been too long since I last showed you some pretty pictures....

Four new earring designs for you - from top to bottom, left to right Onyz Drops, Angels , Autumn Sparkle, Amethyst Hearts, all looking for new homes now!

Tutorial Tuesday - Nothing goes to waste....

Part of the design for the earrings that Brenda (one of my regular students and the woman behind the beautiful stones at Iced Hot Rocks) was making during her session last week needed some rectangular wire, and none of the wire I had in stock was quite right. Ten minutes or so with a length of 2mm round wire and the rolling mill soon sorted that out, but after Brenda had cut off what she needed we were left over with a very short piece that I rescued from the scrap pot saying that nothing goes to waste and I was sure that I could use it in something. "Go on then!" came the reply - so I did!

Brenda set me the challenge of making a pair of earrings using only that short piece of flattened wire and any other bits and pieces that were sitting out on my desk, and as I was making them during her lesson while she was filing or doing other bits and pieces that didn't need my help they had to be relatively quick too. And here's what I did!

A very pretty pair of earrings, even if I do say so myself! I'm very pleased with how they turned out. I've made a couple of projects recently that were just made from pieces that were already sitting on my desk or from pieces rescued from my scrap pot, and I've really enjoy the challenge that brings. So, your turn....what can you rescue from the waste basket or scrap pot?

I've been especially organised and these earrings are already available on the website here, looking for a new home for Christmas!

It's the blues turn!

Just a quick post before today's student arrives for their private tuition session. I came in a little early to take some photos of a couple of pieces I finished on Thursday - including a variation on the ruby earrings I made the week before. You may remember that I posted a picture of the earrings half made on my facebook page, trying to decide on which stones to use. I went for rubies in the end, but amazonite was a popular choice too, so here they are!

I went for a drop earring design this time instead of studs, and decided to leave the silver bright rather than oxidised too. Subtle changes but they do make quite a difference. I'm really pleased with how they turned out. I love the curve in the silver - again quite a subtle thing to do but it usually is the small things that turns a design from "that's nice" to "I love that!"!

Both pairs of earrings are now on the website - amazonite here and ruby here - but if you'd like a different colour of bead then do drop me an email and let me know!

Decisions decisions.....

Today was my first day back in the studio following a few days off - we had our friends from New Zealand visiting us for a few days. We would have loved for them to have visited for a few weeks, but they were only over here for 4 weeks and had lots of other people to visit, so we were thankful for every moment that we had. Saying goodbye is always the hardest part though.

I had some admin to catch up on today, a couple of magazine deadlines to meet, a few orders to finish off and some planning to do for the small group workshops that I've got planned for this term. This was some of the planning I was doing - new stud earrings examples for the workshop coming up in December!

I posted this picture on the Facebook page earlier today, and there were votes on which of the beads to choose! I'm afraid to say that I didn't go with the majority rule, but only because some of the votes came in after I'd finished the earrings! But don't worry, I have another pair started already!

I choose beautiful rough cut faceted rubies to dangle from the bottom of these long stud earrings, and gave them a patina/oxidised them too to show off the lovely texture. The texture came from a piece of linen that I sent through the rolling mill with the silver after I'd cut the shapes out. Usually I texture a piece of silver with the mill and then cut out as rolling metal through the mill distorts the shape, but if you line up a symmetrical shape like the one I've used here carefully the shape stays symmetrical and just gets a little bit longer.

So, these workshops..... I have organised a series of monthly workshops for this term, with the plan to have more in the New Year. The full details will be on the website over the weekend but briefly, the four workshops I have planned between now and Christmas will teach how to make bangles and chains, set stones, use your scraps of silver to create stunning earrings and perfect your soldering skills. Watch this space for more information!

Bead Table Wednesday 2

Lots of progress today! I didn't quite get as far as finishing the stone settings I showed you this morning as my friend Nicky came over to the studio to take some photos for me, some for the website and some for a magazine project and the light was so good that we just kept going. I'd got about a couple of hundred photos to whittle down but I'll show you some tomorrow. I'm hoping to get some work on the stone settings tomorrow too. I did finish a few pairs of Cup of Gold earrings though. About half of these have gone in the post - but as always there some available on the website!

Bead Table Wednesday

It's been quite a while since I did a Bead Table Wednesday post and I've also decided that I don't show you enough photos of work in progress, so here we go!

Cup of Gold earrings in progress - three of these pairs need to be posted this afternoon so they are my priority.

Sitting on my desk this morning are two different piles of work - one of made-to-order designs and one of more self-indulgent pieces. The made-to-order items have got to take priority, and I've got some more organising to do in my lovely lovely new studio, but hopefully I'll get some work done on the stone settings too before the day is done.

Three stone set pendants - look at the wonderful electric blue flashes in that labadorite!

 And if I'm really organised I'll have some photos of finished pieces to show you too!

Primrose Hill

It's been a while since I made a pair of earrings for the AJE earring challenge but as it was my turn to write the reveal post over on the AJE blog last Sunday I thought that it was about time I sorted myself out! It's not that I don't make earrings, it's just that most of them are from my Golden Collection so they don't fit in the challenge.

I'm really pleased with this pair of earrings. Yellow is definitely not a colour I work with much - ok, let's me honest here - it's a colour that I usually avoid! But something made me add a string of dusky yellow faceted glass beads to my shopping basket on Etsy ages ago, and seeing a friend's lovely yellow cardigan worn over a grey t-shirt encouraged me to actually use them! So here you are...

Primrose Hill - Soft primose yellow, subtle grey and silver with a delicate texture all add up to a dainty pair of earrings that quickly become your favourites to wear with jeans and a tshirt or a summer dress. Perfect for adding a lovely touch of colour. Picasso Jasper, faceted yellow glass beads and sterling silver.

Finished Projects!

Well, almost finished anyway. I did actually do all the work you can see in these photos last week with the intention of blogging about them and linking up with the post on Art Jewelry Elements last Saturday but blogging time has been short recently.

So, this is what I did with the unfinished bits and pieces that I showed in my last post - apologies for the over bright photos but I realised too late that I'd left my camera on the wrong setting after taking photos of the boys! This is also the reason that none of these are on the website yet, as I need to go back and take better photos!

Chrysocolla "bubbles" pendant with handcrafted silver bead and smoky quartz bead - this is eventually going to be a long necklace on a length (or maybe a double length) or soft brown leather. I've made the back of the pendant just as interesting as the front as a longer necklace is more likely to swing round so I wanted it to look especially nice!

I knew I wouldn't be able to complete this pendant, partly due to time and partly because I am still using it as a teaching example - honest! I need to add a bail, tidy up the prongs, polish, and then the stone is ready to be set.

Another one that is waiting for that soft brown leather. The bird is a clasp that hooks onto the ring at the top of the Botswana agate, and I'm planning a double strand of the leather to complete it.

Of course, a blog post showing off new jewellery designs wouldn't be complete with a Moogin bead! I know I've said it before, but I absolutely love Mindy's use of colour. The cage above was made with the longer piece of curved wire I showed in my last post.

And this is what the shorter pieces of wire became! I made myself a pair of these pretty petal stud earrings for my cousin's wedding in March and I've worn them almost every day since. They are so light to wear and have got me lots of compliments - so they will be on the website very soon!

Although I haven't yet put the moogin bead pendant and the stud earrings on the website yet they will be there very soon - but if you are interested in them please email me- address on the left!

Enjoy the sunshine with free shipping this weekend!

The Spring sunshine is a time for a new injection of colour into your life! For me Spring means fresh colours, natural materials and textures - and long dangly earrings that can no longer get caught in woollen scarfs and bracelets that shorter sleeves show off to better effect!

Whether your tastes run to the one-off pieces in the Unique Collection, such as the earrings above, or the timeless elegance of the sterling silver and 24k gold designs in the Golden Collection, this Bank Holiday weekend brings FREEPOST on all jewellery orders above £25, UK or International.

No codes are needed, free post will automatically be applied for you, and the offer runs until midnight on Monday 6th May. Have a wonderful Bank Holiday weekend!

The earrings shown above, L to R, are: Ebony and Silver, Tropics and Luna

AJE earrings challenge - reveal 4

One week I will actually publish a blog post on time for the Art Jewelry Elements earrings challenge reveal! I'm quite pleased with myself that I have made a pair of earrings for each week, even if I did get a bit behind with taking photos of them while I was setting up my new photography lights. I find earrings the hardest type of jewellery to make - they have fewer components in them than bracelets or earrings, so for me everything in them has to be perfectly balanced, and there's no room for error.

Top: Tropical Flowers, Bottom: Tropics

This week's offerings have a tropical colour scheme - partly because I want to see far more of the sun that we have started to see a bit this week, and partly because I just love the combination of brown, turquoise and deep red! Both pairs of earrings are waiting for new homes on the website here.

I'm really pleased with the earwires on the second pair. A lovely friend came round last Thursday evening so that I could show her how to make silver earwires to compliment her beautiful polymer clay beads. Joanna and I spent a fun couple of hours in the workshed melting wire into headpins, turning loops, twisting wire, and these are the earrings she made....

Aren't they beautiful? I love Joanna's beads, especially the hollow beads that she makes. And remember when you look at these that she hadn't made a single earwire before! You can see more of Joanna's work here.

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.

Inspired by Winter - Snowdrops

I signed up for another challenge - I couldn't resist! I had told myself that with the Focus on Life photo challenge, the AJE earrings challenge and the Bead Soup Blog Party (more about that at the weekend!), not to mention teaching, orders, magazine deadlines etc etc - oh yes, and family! - I had enough going on. But I couldn't resist when I read Sally Russick's post introducing her Inspired by Winter challenge. It was the words "The muted colors of nature as it awaits Spring" that caught my imagination. Our garden and the local park are not looking their best at the moment. We've had so much rain over the last year that everything is so wet, and the new growth hasn't arrived yet. In fact, everything looked a lot prettier a couple of weeks ago when it was covered with snow! But if you look carefully there is beauty, and a promise of what's to come.

And so this is what I made - subtly patterned earrings in off-white and a dark dusky purple jade, reminding me of the snowdrops that have started to grow and the berries that the birds have almost finished off the bushes along our route to school! The ceramic teardrops are by Bo Hulley. They've been sitting on my desk for a while, waiting for the perfect time, like the snowdrops they represent I suppose. I hope that you like them - and if you really like them you can find them here! And I hope that you will take the time to see what everyone else who took up Sally's challenge has made. I'm teaching all day today, so I'll be working my way round the blogs this evening.

Sally Russick (our hostess)

Patti Vanderbloemen

Shelly Buettner

Therese Frank

Donna Bradley

Jo Tinley (me!)

Karin Slaton
Rochelle Brisson

Renetha Stanziano

Tanya Goodwin

Jenny Davies Reazor

Cynthia Machata

Lola Surwillo

Veralynne Malone

Mary Lamoray

Lynsey Brooks

Mary K  McGraw

Ailsa Cordner

Staci Smith

Rana Wilson

Karin King

Beth Emery

Pam Farren

Jess Green

Susan F.

Getting organised

That's what I feel I've been doing this week! I'm teaching quite a bit this month, both privately at home (including tomorrow!) and at college, so I've been sorting out the workshed after the pre-Christmas, making lots of last minute orders, rush. It definitely needed a good tidy, but I've also taken the opportunity to do a couple of jobs that I've wanted to do for a while, including putting together a new photography set up.
 

Not the most exciting photo I've ever shown you!

 For the last few years I've been using a table top photo tent that I wrote about here. I've been wanting to change it for a while though as it's not big enough to take decent photos of long necklaces, and the backgrounds I've made for it get creased really easily. Putting up the new roller blinds in the window of the workshed gave me the idea of using one to take photos on, and I finally got it set up this week. It's not really anything fancy, I've just fixed the blind to the wall above the table, but it draps really well, it's not going to get creased (I hope!), I can roll it up out of the way when I need to and I love the texture of the material. I still need to perfect the lighting for it though as the lights I've been using seem a bit dark for it. I can turn up the exposure on my camera to compensate for that, but as I hold my camera rather than use a tripod so that I can get the angles I prefer turning up the exposure can result in some rather shaky photos!

Blackberry Earrings

 The first piece of jewellery I took photos of using it was the pair of earrings above. They're my first pair of earrings for the Art Jewelry Elements Earrings Challenge - we're challenging you to create a pair of earrings a week during 2013, making sure that each pair includes art beads or art components. The challenge is broken down into 13 week sections, so you can just do part of the year if you wish. You can find the full details of the challenge here, and if you'd like to see how I made these earrings head over to the AJE blog for a step-by-step tutorial. And if you really like the earrings you can find them here!

Tutorial Tuesday - links from the tutorial library

I thought that it was about time that I updated the list of free jewellery tutorials that I've written, the list that I keep on the page shown at the top of the screen, as I rarely seem to remember to do it when I actually post the tutorials! I knew that I'd written quite a few, but I was surprised that there are 29 free jewellery tutorials so far. So I thought that this week's Tutorial Tuesday could re-introduce some of them to you - or indeed show them to you for the first time if you haven't been here long!

Some of the tutorials are on techniques or tools. For example there are a couple of tutorials on soldering tips (here and here), a tutorial on how to cut jump rings, and one on polishing your jewellery with a tumbler. And then there are the project tutorials. All but one of these are actually on making earrings! My three favourites are the ones above - Leaf Green earrings, Bubble earrings and Hammered Drop earrings. So, if you fancy learning some new skills or brushing up on some old ones, or making yourself a quick pair of earrings click on "Jewellery Tutorials" and have a browse. The list will be getting longer soon!

P.S. It's also worth clicking on the Tutorial Tuesday button on the left, as the list on the Jewellery Tutorials page doesn't include links to tutorials written by other people or tutorials that I've written on other subjects.

Danglies!

I'm enjoying making very dangly colourful earrings at the moment. Maybe it's the time of year - it's been so wet and grey here for the last few days that I need more colour in my life! It's also partly due to the fact that I've been blow-drying my hair straight again recently and I like dangly earrings peeping out - and these ones are looong, with lots of movement.

These are the first two pairs. I should have taken photos of the purple pair a week or so back as they are actually for a friend who claimed them as her own when she saw me planning out the stones while she was filing her pendant during a recent tuition session. Anna - they're ready! I was going to solder long earwires on the back but Anna requested stud fittings, and they look fab like that, even if I do say so myself. The stones are smoky quartz and amethyst (one of my favourite combinations at the moment) with phospsidarite cabochons - a stone that I hadn't actually come across before but I love. You can find out more about the stone here if you like. The longer earrings are red onyz in a lovely rose cut cab, orange aventurine and smoky quartz again - very autumnal! These are actually my favourite of the two pairs, and I'm going to treat myself to some more stones so I can make myself a pair.

And these are very different from my usual style - lovely Sea-urchin ceramic cabs in a prong setting, separate earwires for lots of movement and forged drops of silver wire dangling underneath. I've been wanting to make a prong setting like this for ages, and I'm really pleased with it. It's the perfect setting for these cabs as I didn't want to hide any of the gorgeous texture. I've cut discs from the centre of the back of the setting so that you can still see the stamp that Lisa puts on all of her work. These are actually my entry to the Love My Art Jewelry monthly art spark challenge "colour and movement" - when I read the challenge this month I knew that I had the perfect design sketched out for it, but I've only just met the deadline - all that wallpaper stripping took up so much time this week!

The earrings will be on the website by tomorrow evening!

Tutorial Tuesday - earring display cards

Yippee! I'm back on the internet! We've had a very erratic connection over the last four or five days. We've tried everything we can to sort it out at our end but we've come to the conclusion that it must be to do with the work that Virgin (our provider) is doing in Southampton at the moment, as the problem only seems to be during the working day! I was very annoyed yesterday as I finally had sometime during the day to get some admin jobs done and couldn't do half of them.

Anyway, at least it's working again now so I can share this very quick tutorial with you. I'm constantly thinking of ways to improve my displays for craft shows, partly to make everything look more attractive, and also so that I can set some jewellery up at home and so reduce the time needed to set things up on the stall on the day. I'm selling alot of stud earrings at shows at the moment and I did have them on brown card folded in half to form a tent. They didn't stand up very well after a little while though, and didn't look that attractive. This is my next idea, and Mum is going to be trying it out for me at her coffee morning on Thursday. I've used a punch to cut out little tags from brown card and I've used watermark ink to stamp a flower on the front. I use the same tags and stamp to make the tags on my gift bags, but a pink flower on ivory card. Dusky pink ribbon has been threaded through the top and holes pushed through for the earwires. I've started making a display board for the tags to hang from, but they actually stand up really nicely as they are so I'm going to leave them like that for Thursday! I'm going to write the prices in pencil on the bottom corner so that they can be rubbed out and the whole tag put in a gift bag.

The tags were very quick and easy to make, and I was especially pleased that I only used materials I already had. even the display board is being made from things I already have around the house. So, a quick question for you - what quick, easy and cheap ideas for craft displays do you have to share?

Tutorial Tuesday - Bubble earrings

This is the tutorial that I was hoping to share with you last week - the earrings themselves don't take very long to make, especially if you have some jump rings already to hand, but writing everything up and editing the photos takes a bit longer! Anyway, I hope that you like it.

I'm making quite a few different designs of stud earrings at the moment. They're very popular both on my website and notonthehighstreet.com and at craft shows, partly I think because they are more every-day wear than my long danglies, and also because as they tend to use less silver I can offer them at a lower price. This design came about because I wanted a longer pair of earrings that were still studs and still nice and light to wear.

To make them you will need:

• 3 small jumprings (I used 3mm inside diameter rings of 0.8mm wire)
• 3 larger jumprings (I used 5mm inside diameter rings of 0.8mm wire)
• 2 stud fittings/pins (I buy mine from Cookson Gold - I prefer these as they have a small head which makes soldering them so much easier! They are one of the few findings that I still buy rather than make myself)
• 2 butterfly scrolls for the studs
• meduim solder
• easy solder
• usual soldering kit, hammer and whatever you use to polish your work

To start, arrange the jumprings  in a pattern that you like. You can of course use more or fewer rings than I have, and different sizes of rings too. If you don't already know how to make your own jumprings, have a look at my tutorial on that here. Make certain that the two earrings are mirror  images of each other!

Make sure that the rings are tightly closed and move them on to a soldering brick. Put the joins of the rings where the solder will go so that you solder the rings closed and solder them together at the same time. Put a little medium solder on each join. I used solder paste but I'm going to try solder pallions and separate flux next time and see if that's less fiddly.

Solder the rings together, removing the heat as soon as the solder has flown so that you don't risk melting the rings. Quench, pickle and rinse the silver.
 

Hammer the earrings if you wish - I much prefer the hammered look!

Mark on the back of the earrings where you want the pin to go. I used marker pen which gets quickly burnt off, but it stays there long enough to guide me. This step isn't absolutely necessary, but it does help you to make certain that you end up soldering the pins on the right sides!

Hold a pin in tweezers and apply a little easy solder to the end. Melt this onto the pin. I prefer to do this so that the paste doesn't get smeared all over my work if my hand moves while I'm soldering. Solder the pin into place. Repeat with the second earring, and quench, pickle and rinse them both. Polish the earrings, and enjoy!

BTW

 
Ummm....yummy colours! This was what was on my desk at the start of the evening when the sun was still streaming in through the windows! A gorgeous Moogin heart focal, some deep red spacer beads, Swarovski crystals, amethyst nuggets and some handmade silver chain, all sitting on top of the latest Beads and Beyond.

I've just spent a lovely couple of hours in the workshop working on some new designs, some of which I can't tell you about yet - sorry, I know I've said that a few times recently, but I've got a couple of exciting things in the pipeline! I can tell you about one of them very soon, promise. I can show you one though - some new earrings made with my favourite hammer.

Sorry about the awful picture - it was a very quick one!

These long ovals of silver have been sitting on my desk for months. They're the cut out sections from behind the turquoise set in two pairs of earrings that are waiting to go on the website, and I didn't want to put them in my scrap pot as they were so well matched and I just knew they'd be perfect for something. Today the perfect something came together, partly because most of the things I'm working on at the moment are big or NOTHS orders and I wanted something smaller to work on, something I could start and finish in one sitting!

The ovals have been hammered (obviously!), gently curved and had stud fixings soldered on. I think I'm going to oxidise one pair - what do you think?