Maybe that was summer?

Here in the UK we've just had an unseasonably early warm spell - wall to wall sunshine with lovely warm temperatures and the summery feel was further enhanced by the start of British Summer Time when the clocks are put forward, giving us longer evenings in which to enjoy it all.

It does tend to lull you into thinking that summer has actually arrived, but the ice on the car this morning soon put that idea to bed. But it did present an ideal opportunity to make a start on my post-winter tidy of the garden and start preparing it for summer and we took the opportunity yesterday to take a proper day off and escape to the Lake District for a day in one of our most favourite places.

Please click on any of the photographs for a larger view.

I love this particular spot, the lighting is always lovely as the path meanders through the trees, but it's hard to do it justice; sometime you just have to be there.

We usually spend a long week over the Easter period up there and always very much look forward to it through the winter months, but this year we're having to fore-go it for a variety of reasons; but largely because my husband has to undergo surgery shortly and they've scheduled him for next week, just before the Easter bank holiday weekend.

The sun was rather hazy initially as the early morning mist burnt off the sky, but through the trees that did give everything a lovely glow.

In order to minimise the time off work at a busy time of year and to protect his regular salary, we've decided that taking some of his recovery period from his holiday allowance is a better use of the time on this particular, unusual, occasion.

So, mindful of not being mobile for some time and not getting such an opportunity again for a few weeks and the really glowing weather forecast, we set our alarms early on Sunday morning, packed a picnic and headed to one of our favourite spots along Thirlmere near Keswick. The roads were decently busy on the way up and we expected a lot of other people to have had the same idea and thought it might possibly be busy, but we pretty much had that particular place to ourselves. In fact, we didn't pass another soul on our favourite lake-shore walk - we usually pass at least a couple of local dog-walkers, who love that spot as much as we do.

As the afternoon drew on, the light had a fabulous golden golden glow.

So, it couldn't really have been much better for us. If I'm really picky, the sunshine was hazier than it had been the day before when we worked in the garden and the modest spring cold I have was seemingly further irritated by tree pollen, but on balance, it was a pretty fabulous day. We did all of our favourite things - walked amongst trees, listening to the birds, took a few photos, ate a good lunch sat outside in sunshine, snoozed a little, read a little, walked some more, ate some more and headed home to a great nights sleep after all that fresh air. For me, life doesn't get much better.

The day had started with a decent breeze, but by early evening, it had either dropped or changed direction and Thirlmere was beautifully calm and the reflections were quite fabulous.

Further work with Copper Clay this week:

I'm really enjoying my continuing tinkering with copper clay this week - it has been a steep learning curve and it is evident that my tried and tested routines and methods with copper sheet and wire will need some revision when using the clay for components, but it does add a lot of new facets to what I can achieve and opens up a whole host of ideas to try - like my mind doesn't already overflow with more ideas than I have time to make reality.

Copper clay flat 'button' beads given an uneven shape and a light imprint of a flower design, double wrapped on a balled headpin.

New adventures in Precious Metal Clay

As mentioned in my last post, I was about to start tinkering with precious metal clay - copper clay specifically.  I have resisted somewhat so far for a few reasons; firstly, I wanted to ensure I'd already got a good grasp of basic metalwork before I went off on that particular tangent, I felt it was important for me to understand metal fairly well in order to get the best from it.

 My collection of first finished pieces using PMC/copper clay.   Two textured heart pendants with earrings, a 'painted' leaf pendant with bail, a fancy beadcap over a teardrop shaped glass bead, copper washers separating faceted carnelians, plain bead caps with large labradorite beads and a ring featuring little leaves and bud.

A highly polished and textured heart pendant and a little leaf pendant made by painting clay paste over a real leaf and adding a bail - which I did between layers of paste to integrate it fully on the back.

Secondly, I felt the silver clays were too expensive to just tinker with and until recently, copper clay, which I felt would work well alongside my other work, could only be kiln fired - and that wasn't going to be practical just to try it out.

But when I saw a new copper clay on the market that could be torch fired, it felt like a good time to at least give it a try.  I already had a series of designs and ideas in my sketch book, as well as components to supplement other work that I just couldn't buy or easily make by other methods.  So I hoped that it would work as well as the ideas I had in my mind and having never even touched any PMC before, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect and although I'd done a lot of reading, planning and thinking, I did open the packet for the first time with a few little butterflies in my tummy.

Rings are one of the areas I want to pursue more as I have all sorts of ideas for them - but I need to make several first to work out the correct sizing allowing for shrinkage etc.

I'm somewhat disappointed with how the ring looks in the photographs at this scale, as it looks very polished and pretty cute in reality and the photos really don't flatter the texture of the copper clay at all.

I perhaps should have started with a few simple shapes or test pieces, but I had so many ideas filling my head, that I just dived in on working on something from the outset - I think I personally learn best and am most productive when I actually make something proper that I fully expect to finish and to work properly.

I've never been able to find solid copper bead caps the right sort of size for many of the things I make, but using copper clay will allow me to make my own to fit perfectly.  These are simple and quite small ones - the biggest drawback is the time they take to fire properly and the necessity to only work on a couple at a time when torch firing.

It proved to be a very steep learning curve, from how quickly the clay dries, to how brittle and easily damaged it is in clay form and how long it takes to fire and sinter properly and how bloody hard it is to get the firescale off!  Funnily enough, some pieces come clean with the first dunk in hot pickle, others resist everything from repeated pickling, tumbling and wire brushing and had to be hand polished clean.

This fancy bead cap was made from a sketch I drew some time ago - and proved a steep learning curve.  I fired it according to the packet instructions and I don't think this was long enough as the lovely little feature collar I gave it chipped when first tightening the wire wrap against it (I took it apart, trimmed the collar down and re-made), suggesting that it was too brittle and not sintered for long enough.  I'd be afraid that the points might break off, so this will remain in my personal collection.

The oxidisation process is a little different too - I've oxidised and antiqued very many pieces of copper - but the PMC doesn't take it evenly, or darkly and the LoS solution goes cloudy and pink making it hard to even find small pieces in it.  And some pieces were almost polished clean again after a quick tumble.  So that part clearly needs more thought too - having thought that I'd settled on a very reliable method that always gave good results, clearly PMC copper will need a slightly different technique from raw metal.

I absolutely love working with it - it's nowhere near as messy as I was expecting, having seen many illustrated tutorials where the copper clay artist illustrated had stained brown fingers and all their tools were stained and messy too.  I found it much cleaner than I was anticipating and it didn't even really stick much to anything other than itself - it worked very much like polymer clay, but needs to be worked quickly.  I found that for the most part, I didn't need to add any sort of release to my tools. 

I like that I can refine the shapes at the clay stage and get it close to a finished surface with much less effort than with the finished metal.  I like that I can either just roll it back up and start over if it doesn't work, or grind it up and reconstitute it if I don't like it once dried - so there's much less wastage than other techniques.  It drills and carves easily when dry and I'm really looking forward to putting some of my design ideas into practice.  I'm already delighted with how it's worked and can't wait to make some more pieces.

These earrings are perhaps my favourite finished piece - I made the undulating textured washers specifically for a design I had already made other polymer clay components for, but when fiddling with them to see how else I could use them, I loved how they looked with these Carnelian faceted rondelles, so I'll need to make some more for my other project.

The one thing that I'm not entirely happy with is that it doesn't photograph well.  The clay-like texture persists on the surface a little, even after firing and polishing.  When seeing even highly polished pieces in photographs, little speckles of texture dominate every surface, especially when seen on-screen so much larger than life-size - as tends to be the case when showing jewellery items in photographs.  I was very happy with the finish I got in some of the pieces after a little polishing, some before and some after firing, yet was bitterly disappointed with how they looked in the photographs, so this might need a different approach too.  So very much to learn, but it will be a lot of fun to do so.

Revisiting Polymer Clay

Some time ago when I first became aware of what was possible with the relatively new precious metal clays on the market, I resisted the temptation to do down that route as I had the very strong feeling that I'd get totally enthralled with it and at the time, only being readily available in silver, it might prove to be an expensive obsession.

Please click on any of the photographs for a larger view.

Four rough un-finished pendants made from a simple cane in dark red and gold with small areas of black and crackled gold.

I had some already crackled sheets remaining and decided to use them up on some simple 'faux dichroic' pendants, but most of them had dried too much already and were far too fragile, so I made some more as I hadn't yet used the green pearl ink I had bought some time ago for the task and had plenty of silver leaf left too.  Most of these are baked with a clear glass like layer of embossing resin to further enhance the glass-like look.

Instead, I decided to tinker with the rather less expensive polymer clay - initially, to see if I had the dexterity and necessary skills to potentially work with PMC.  But I soon got hooked on it in its own right, I especially love that you can mimic natural materials like stones and wood and the infinite variety of colour work possible with it.

I made several pieces using a faux speckled turquoise technique, having seen a fabulous [real] stone like this in a piece, but I think I possibly made the brown matrix areas too distinct.  Some of these will be used with some copper clay components I have in mind.

I've only ever really scratched the surface of what's possible as I only have a small area to work in and it's necessary to work cleanly and I need to clear the area of metalwork clutter for a working session.  If I had a larger working room, I might dedicate an area to it and immerse myself even further into the possibilities.

I did a lot of polymer clay work in the past, but as other work had taken hold, I hadn't returned to it for a while, but I've also now found a copper PMC that can be torch fired, so all the sketches and ideas I have for PMC might finally get the chance to take form as it's affordable enough to be worth trying and would fit really well with everything else I do and the style of my work.

This faux turquoise technique used a turquoise 'basalt' stone textured clay [with fibrous inclusions] which I made a simple cane of with a black edge and formed a sheet that looked like speckled turquoise. 

Before I started on my ideas, I wanted to get out all my polymer clay tools and see if I was suitably equipped and do a little more work with it to get my eye in again and re-hone the skills I had before.  I also wanted to try out a few prototypes in polymer clay before committing ideas to metal.  I realised that I had quite a lot of open packets of clay that I wasn't sure how well it would age being stored for a while, so thought it was an ideal opportunity to use up the open materials, get my eye in and make some prototypes too.

This batch were a little disappointing, using a natural stone effect clay in agate and basalt finishes.  The little pebbles top right are for a specific design I have in mind with copper clay components, I bought this clay specifically with the design in mind - a copper and turquoise re-working of a design I've done in silver and black.

The prototypes will stay under wraps until the metal clay versions are finished and then I'll blog about them all together, but suffice it to say that I am delighted with the progress so far and can't wait to get to put them into practice with the metal clay - I just hope it works as well as the prototypes did.

I did manage to make a significant amount of pieces and components for more extensive projects.  The simple ones are now almost finished, but some will be used in conjunction with PMC components later too, especially the larger faux turquoise pieces.

The crackled 'dichroic' pendants have been fitted with Aanraku bails intended for genuine dichroic glass pendants and have been sanded and extensively varnished to seal everything in and protect the finishes.  The embossing resin looks very good when first done, but it's very soft and scratches easily without being varnished, so it needs that additional step.  I'm going to keep a couple of these for myself as I wanted the green specifically to match a shirt I have that colour and a couple are intended for gifts.  But now I have to find the time to photograph and list them all.

I used one of the smaller pieces of faux turquoise on an adjustable ring, a style that I've simply not tried before, but I quite liked the result.

Clearing the decks and sub-conscious solutions

I have an airtight compartment box that lives permanently on my work bench.  It originally landed there to keep finished items waiting to be photographed safe.  But in reality, I found that items just-made that excited me, didn't hang around long to be photographed, as I wanted to get them out there to sell.  

But the box did gradually fill over time with pieces.   The items that ended up in there seemed destined for a long stay.  They tended to be pieces that I'd either not quite finished and wasn't sure what they needed to call them finished, or I simply wasn't happy with some aspect of them. Sometimes just leaving a piece alone and returning at a later date, your sub-conscious just decides in its own time, what needs to be done, as has happened with some of the items described below.

Some of the jewellery items took up permanent residence in my box, purely because I knew they'd be a pig to photograph and I was procrastinating.  Hence, some time ago, I ripped the "To Photograph" label off and replaced it with "Procrastination Pieces".

Please click on any of the photographs to see a larger version.

These garnet and silver earrings fell into the category of 'pig to photograph' and I'd returned to them several times and not been happy with the results, but decided I would just have to persist and get the job done.

Looking into this box one day I realised it was now full of a lot of jewellery that would simply never sell sitting in there, so I decided to clear at least half of it out, one way or another and found myself in just the mood to tackle it.

I made this polymer clay cabochon some time ago and had it on a rigid silver plated wire choker, but knew it was going to be tricky to photograph. I hadn't wanted to put it on chain as the tube bail on the back tends to make a rasping sound as it moves about on chain, which I find irritating, so suspect others would too. So I changed it onto a silvery grey flexible PVC thong necklace, with hand crafted cord ends and clasp and am much happier with how it works - it looks good and is nice and quiet too!

So I considered each piece on its merits and assessed why I hadn't finished the listing process for that particular piece.  I just grabbed the bull by the horns and after a week, I've just about emptied my 'Procrastination' box.  Some items I just took the easy option and plonked a price ticket on and put them in my craft fair stock, they just weren't worth the effort of any further time.  A couple of items I cut apart to do something entirely different and with the materials.

A couple of pieces I combined the parts of into new pieces.  The pendant above was one such item.  It was much as you see it now, but with much fewer buds - I had another pendant with a similarly scanty supply of buds, so combined them and am in the process of doing something different with the pendant from the other.

This bud-wrapped pendant piece was another I wasn't sure about.   I originally had it hanging vertically with one large oval jump ring bail, but the buds weren't symmetrical around the hanging point, to it didn't sit comfortably with me, so after looking at it laid the other way round on my bench, I decided that joining the chain to it in two places, sat much more comfortably and works rather better with it hanging in the centre of a necklace rather than just as a pendant.

This etched daisy pendant has featured before in the blog as an early piece in my copper etching adventures.  This was the first piece I tried by making a resist from one of my own photographs and the printing method I used worked pretty well, but wasn't quite resilient enough for the process, so areas that should have remained clean were eaten away a little during the etching, giving a rather rustic appearance.

My husband always said he preferred this rougher version and thought I should put it on sale anyway.  It had got rather used to its home in my procrastination box, although I'd taken it out and looked at it many times, wondering what to do with it.  Two small events gave me the answer.  Firstly, a very good Stateside customer ordered one of my chunky copper pendants but asked for it on a much longer chain.  I tried it on once I'd finished it and thought it worked really well worn that way - which was something I wouldn't even consider for myself - as I'm just too clumsy and something long and dangly would be a recipe for disaster with me personally, I'd get snagged on door handles or the like.

I also bought new stock of antiqued copper chains and one was a lovely chunky copper belcher (rollo) chain which I thought was perfect for the long treatment with this chunky pendant.  So I've teamed it with a 28"+ chunky chain and it works very much better.  It was worth waiting for the right solution for it.

This little turquoise pendant was one I just decided to put on sale, as it was, with its flaws and reflect them in the price.  I loved the rough little turquoise nugget - but as the hole in it was drilled at a wonky angle, it was never going to sit very evenly.  Plus, I misjudged on the size of loop I left for the bail, so it can only take a fine chain and it doesn't move freely once on, so hopefully someone else will like it too and love it despite its shortcomings.

My work often flows in themes and I've made several pairs of earrings with a spiral wrapped around the bead and decided to try combining that with coils of fine copper wire too - these are Chinese Green Jade teardrops with spiralled coils of antiqued copper.  The pair below with purple glass hearts arose as a customer wanted me to re-make an old design with a variation of an Egyptian Scroll, to which I added some further wrapping and topped the hearts with matching rosy copper buds.  I've made a turquoise glass oval pair too, but am going to have my work cut out with photographing them both as the double articulation in them ensures that they're impossible to pose flat and I'm probably going to have to wrangle and tame them with Blutak and bad language!

Trying to think a little differently

It's all too easy sometimes to just pop nice beads onto a hand crafted headpin and make them into simple earrings, so I've been trying to think lately about different approaches to beaded earrings and other jewellery items.

Sometimes with a design the metalwork is the main feature, accented with beads to add colour or interest, sometimes a gorgeous bead needs little to detract from it and is best left simple and sometimes, a bit of fancy metalwork can lift otherwise fairly ordinary beads into something a bit more special, where both bead and metalwork compliment each other in an equal balance.

That was how it was this last week. In a recent move round of my materials (a.k.a. a vain and largely hopeless attempt to be more organised and tidy), I rediscovered all sorts of materials I hadn't seen in a while.  They had perhaps slipped my mind because they weren't that exciting - but they certainly had potential (and seemed all the more exciting for not seeing them for a while) and I wanted to try them in a recent design that featured more metal, where a modest looking bead works best.   If you have something detailed or gorgeous, you don't want it competing too heavily with its supporting metalwork. 

I made three pairs of copper earrings to the same design, one each featuring Green Jasper beads, Brown Swirl Jasper and Red Flower Marble.  The earrings feature a hammered paddle pin and spiral wrapping around the bead and terminating in a wrap around the paddle.  I was really happy at how they turned out, the beads worked ideally with that treatment and the oxidised Brown Swirl pair are already winging their way off to sunny California.

During my re-acquaintance with these past treasures, I also found some large oval beads in Mustard Jasper that I was never quite sure what to do with.  I started thinking about shapes and different types of potential 'headpin' or mounting for the stones and decided to try a design that I use with smaller ovals for earrings - using a hammered leaf spiral bent over the face of the stone to keep it in place. 

I did almost come unstuck, as I wanted a chunky feature spiral on the front, but didn't initially check that the gauge of wire that I wanted to use would actually go through the holes in the beads.  Thankfully, one stone in the batch did have a large enough hole, so my efforts to make the initial spiral weren't actually in vain.   I'd like to make some more like this, so will need to ream the holes a little larger first.  This is an especially robustly patterned stone, which I think looks like splodges of paint in a modern abstract painting.