On my desk...

It's going to be a day of hammering, soldering, oxidising, polishing and taking photos today! This is the sight that greeted me this morning - lots of Daisychain Extra designs laid out on my desk.

I took this photo just before I left yesterday with the intention of posting it on here last night, but to be honest by the time I'd sorted the boys out, got everything ready for school today and done all the other household bits and pieces I sat down - and that was that! It was Ben's first day in the Junior section of his school yesterday. He was a bit nervous on the way but as soon as he got there and saw his friends (he's still with the same classmates) he was all smiles, and last night was so excited at the thought of going back to school today that he couldn't sleep! Jamie starts preschool in a couple of weeks too, just two afternoons a week, and he's so keen to go that I had trouble getting him to walk on the way to the childminders (who he also loves going to!) past it this morning! I'm so lucky that I have boys who want to spend time as a family but also enjoy school/childminder. It definitely helps with that working mummy guilt thing I'm so good at!

Anyway, back to work - I've got a Daisychain Extra shop update to finish work for - look out for the announcement on here and my Facebook page!

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.

BTW

It has been the most beautiful day here - sunny and bright from start to finish! I love doing the school run on days like this. Everyone is so much more relaxed, mainly as there's no trying to encourage children to walk a bit faster through the cold and wet!

I'm always a lot more productive when the weather's nice. Jamie had a couple of good naps today, so I was able to get my jobs done round the house in record time and then head out into the workshop with the baby monitor. My main task today was to finish a couple of magazine projects, one short project and another with six pieces of jewellery in the set. The project including the necklace above includes two of my favourite things - hammering and making findings!

BTW

No, not by the way, which is what I thought it meant when it started appearing on some of the other jewellery blogs I read. It's Bead Table Wednesday! There's a Flickr group full of photos that jewellery designers, bead makers and the like have taken, well, of their workdesk every Wednesday - and I thought that now I'm finding a bit of time to get out into the workshop that I'd jump on the band wagon.

My desk is it's usual messy self as you can see. I do tidy it up every now and then, honest, but then I start working on four projects at once (so I can sand one while the others are cleaning in the pickle pot etc) and organised chaos rules again! If you look closely though you'll be able to see a couple of magazine projects in the making and a pendant waiting for it's stone to be set.

A productive evening!

As shown by the state of my desk! The three pieces you can just about see at the front are currently polishing in the tumbler, and their stones are waiting to be set. Photos soon!

A Flock of Lovebirds

Well, I think I might be waiting a bit longer for the sun to come out! I'd better go and collect my daylight lamps from my friend's house (she's been taking taking some photos for me) so that I can use those instead! Meanwhile, this is what I've been working on today, well, mainly this evening in fact as I picked B up early from his childminder today as he'd been poorly. He was okay about an hour after I'd got him home, so I think it was just too much running around and excitment and eating his food too fast, but we'll have a quiet day at home tomorrow just in case.

First, a flock of golden lovebirds with their gold wings attached, cooling down and waiting for their polish and finish and chains attached. 5 of these are flying off to new homes (one of them literally flying to the States) on Friday, but the 6th is still looking for a new home - any takers?


And secondly, a pair of daisy earrings for Eve. If you read the comments on my blog you'll know that it was Eve's birthday last week, and these are her birthday present to herself. They will be on their way to you either tomorrow or Friday Eve, and Happy Birthday for last week!


Anyway, if you haven't yet entered my giveaway you have two hours left in which to do so! The draw for the butterfly pendant, jewellery making tool kit and felted bag will end at midnight tonight, and B will pull a name out of the basket tomorrow. Visit this post to find out how to enter, and good luck!

Messy messy messy

How on earth does my workbench get so messy so quickly?! I mean, all I do is work on several projects at the same time so that while one is in the pickle after being soldered or annealed, I've got another to file and sand. I suppose I could put tools away as soon as I've finished with each of them, but then I'd only have to get them out again 10 minutes later. Seriously, I do tidy up every day, but it doesn't take long for my bench to look like this:

If you look closely you can see the orders and commissions I've been working on over the last couple of days: a pair of cuff links (a wedding commission), a love bird pendant (the third of those I've made this week), a small daisy cuff (coming soon to the website), a larger version of my bloom necklace (another commission) and a pair of bloom earrings. I was merrily filing and sanding this little lot tonight and only realised how late it was when the news came on Radio 2!

Those of you with time on their hands may have noticed that a) I haven't shown you the latest 24k gold and silver designs that I promised you and b) that this is post 199. If you have read all 199 of them then I am impressed - I don't think that even my Mum has done that! Anyway, I thought that I'd combine the two and over the next couple of days expect post number 200 with lovely pictures of my lovely new designs (can you tell that I'm pleased with them?!) and also a

Giveaway!

I haven't done one for a while, and I thought that this would be the perfect excuse. I've got a pretty nice things to giveaway too, so watch this space.

A creative space

That's definitely what my desk is, a creative space, not a mess, honest!

I've been working in the shed for a couple of relaxing hours this evening, working on a couple of new designs and a magazine article. I've been working on about 6 designs at the same time as they all need hammering at some stage during their creation and I don't like to hammer after about 8pm unless there's something like heavy rain, a thunderstorm or fireworks to hide the noise. We get on well with our neighbours, and I'd like to keep it that way! So, amid what looks like chaos there are starts of designs laid out on my desk ready for me tomorrow. B's childminder is on holiday this week so I've only got a couple of evenings, B's two preschool sessions and any couple of minutes I can steal during the day to craft in this week. I've done all the soldering and non-B friendly work needed for all the projects on my desk, so I'm hoping that I can do a little work here and there tomorrow while B is playing in the garden. I'll let you know how I get on!

I hope you've been enjoying the sunshine today - assuming that you're in the UK that is, although I do hope that the sun has been shining where you international readers are too! I've been trying not to say this as it seems such a stereotypically British thing to say, but I can't believe how amazing the weather has been this spring. Yes, I know that we've had some very rainy days, but on the whole we have had so much gorgeous sunshine! Again, international readers (and google analytics tell me that you are out there!), you have to understand that usually this time of year is mainly rainy or grey (or both) and certainly not as consistently hot as it has been this past month or so. Usually our summer lasts about, oh, 5 minutes, so this truly is amazing! Mind you, the last time I wrote as much as this about the weather it was snowing, pipes were bursting and my pickle pot was freezing - have a look at the proof from earlier this year! The environmental science graduate in me is worried about the extremes in weather that usually temperate country is having, but the rest of me is reminding myself that this is more like the weather we had when I was a child in the 1970s/early 1980s, and that we should enjoy it. I guess I should hedge my bets, do what I can for the environment and enjoy the sunshine while it lasts.

Anyway, getting back on topic because I hadn't planned on writing all that when I decided to write this post! We went to a BBQ today that was part reunion for T's work colleagues as they have been split up into different teams across the city and part fundraiser in memory of a colleague of his who died horribly young earlier this year. It was a fun, relaxing day out and B had a great time playing with the other preschoolers there. We left about 4pm and 5 minutes into the journey home B fell asleep mid-sentence! He hardly ever naps nowadays and has never fallen asleep in the car at that time of day before, but he was so deeply asleep that I carried him upstairs to bed without him ever waking up. We decided to go with the flow and see what happened and he eventually woke about 7pm, had a bit of tea, a little bit of play and then went back to bed! He usually sleeps really well (usually 7pm til nearly 8am - yes, I know how lucky we are!), so fingers crossed that his topsy turvey day hasn't spoilt that. If I blog a bit of a grumpy post tomorrow you'll know why!