Bangles!

Lots of bangles waiting for more hammering and polishing!

 Just taking a quick break from hammering to show you one of the jobs on my list for today - lots of bangles! I think I may have mentioned once or twice before that bangles are one of my favourite pieces of jewellery to make - the one of the most visited posts on my blog is one with photos of all the steps I go through to change a length of wire into a beautiful, go-with-everything piece of jewellery.

My Maker's Mark and the traditional hallmarks

I made these bangles last week and they've just come back from hallmarking up in London. You might notice a black mark on a couple of the bangles. This is where the Assay Office put the hallmark. I like to mark where I like the hallmark to be, so a quick pen or pencil line marks the spot. Hallmarking is another of my favourite things - I'm fascinated by the history of hallmarking and proud to continue the 700 year old tradition, and of course I've got a blog post about that too!

My first group workshop of the Autumn teaches how to make a bangle. At £65 plus the cost of the material (usually £10-15) I will teach you everything you need to know about making bangles - and of course you will go home with your own beautifully made bangle as well! On NOTHS sterling silver bangles cost £75 or more - so for the cost of buying a bangle you will go home with a bangle made perfectly to fit you and all the skills you need to make more at home. A bargain when you think about it!

The Bangles workshop is on Friday 13th September, and booking is easy through the website here.

Love My Art Jewellery

I've written a guest post for the Love My Art Jewellery blog, and it's been published today. I was pretty much given a free rein about what to write about. The first thing that sprung to mind was hallmarking, as although most people in the UK recognise hallmarks, even if they don't know exactly what they stand for, I do get questions from people over the States about what those tiny marks are on the back of some of my pieces of jewellery. The answer goes back over 700 years, so if you want to know what King Henry III has got to do with my jewellery, follow this link!

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.

Brrrrr

It's so cold it tried to snow here in Southampton this afternoon and it never snows here - the warm sea air generally keeps it away. B and I went to Katie and Tim's for lunch today, and Katie and I took the children for a walk on the common - well, we had to do something to walk off the chocolate muffins! It was FREEZING!! B enjoyed the playground though, and Gracie had a lovely sleep snuggled up warm in her pram - and a quick hot chocolate in the pub next to the common sitting by the fire helped to thaw us out before the walk back!

I've managed to get some much needed time in the shed over the last couple of days. I definitely get cranky without regular soldering and sanding time! I've been making chains for a new workshop project that I will let you know about over the next day or so, and I've also been finishing off a couple of pieces including the ones here. They both involve rolling leaves through the rolling mill with sheet silver. I made them before Christmas and sent them off for hallmarking with my Christmas commissions. Today was the day to sand and polish off the scratches made by the hallmarkers - they are careful with your work, but a few marks are inevitable unfortunately. The cuff will be going on to the website tomorrow, but the pendant needs some gems and chain. The last one I made ended up looking like this, but I'm not certain about the new one yet. It's slightly bigger than the original. Any requests, anyone?!

Hello....

I'm still here, and I have been working hard this week, promise! The problem is that until tonight none of my work used yellow at all, so I haven't done too well at the colour challenge so far. I've been busy sawing, filing, sanding and soldering in my lovely lovely shed, trying to get as many things done as possible to send of to be hallmarked. The assay office have a minimum charge, so to keep prices down as much as possible (which I'm sure you'd rather I do!) I want to send off as many pieces at one go as I can. The plan is to send off everything I've got by Tuesday so that it gets back to me in time to polish up to take to the Southampton City museum shop at the end of the following week. So far I've got a couple more cuffs, bangles, chain bracelets and a couple of pendants, but none in a fit state to be photographed - you'll just have to wait until they get back, sorry!

I think the closest I've got to yellow so far is this bracelet - one of the aquamarine beads is a creamy yellow I'm sure! I've kept the bracelet simple - beautiful aquamarine with my hammered silver rings.

Anyway, it's past my bedtime. I'll try and photograph the bracelet I've been working on tonight (lampwork and citrine) and show it to you tomorrow to prove that I really can work with yellow! in the meantime, go and see what Fiona's been making - she's had a very busy week!

Daisies

These are the projects that I finished on Saturday - I meant to post this yesterday but yet again my 'to-do' list was much too long!

I am so pleased with the cuff in particular. I actually cut the daisies out a month ago and after filing, sanding and in the case of the cuff forging into shape, sent them off to Goldsmiths' to be hallmarked. It's taken me until now to finish sanding, buffing, giving them a satin finish and then polishing, partly because I've been moving into the shed and also because I had spent so long cutting the cuff out that I was a bit nervous of spoiling it!

I've used the same daisy shape for both pendant and cuff, but the cuff has got daisies overlapping to form a row. They'll be on the website later this evening, and watch out for a matching pair of earrings when I've rolled out some thinner silver sheet!

Making my mark!

Now, my exciting parcel - on Saturday the first pieces that I sent off to Goldsmiths, the London Assay Office to be hallmarked arrived home! I applied for my own Maker's Mark in April and decided to keep it a surprise for most people until I got my first pieces back. The main person that I wanted to surprise was my Dad. He's an ex-Trading Standards officer and they're the people who enforce hallmarking and things like that in the UK, so I really just want to hand a piece to him and say "so, do you notice anything?". I think he was suitably impressed! I know that in theory anyone can apply for their own maker's mark, but in my mind having one makes me a 'proper' silversmith.

Anyway, this means that I can now start selling my pieces of jewellery with more than 7.78g of silver, as anything over this weight legally has to be hallmarked. This is why I haven't added things like my silver bangles to the website yet - they will be added very shortly! And if you'd like a preview of my hallmark (although you'll need good glasses for this!) have a look at the bangles above - no, they're not scratched, that's a hallmark that you can see! My maker's mark is my initials JRT inside an oval. So, Hannah, was your guess right?!

The parcel containing all my silver and hard work was actually supposed to arrive on Friday, but thanks to the Royal Mail van breaking down after it left Goldsmiths' on the Thursday afternoon everthing was delayed and the Royal Mail had no record of my parcel exisiting until Friday morning. That made me just a little bit upset (!), so thank you to Nichola who came round and gave me a hug on Friday morning! I really needed it!