New adventures in bronze

Apologies again for the tardiness of my blogging recently; sometimes events just run away with you despite the best intentions. Thankfully, it's in large to being busy with orders, so I'm certainly not complaining. I still have a collection of photos from our holiday in June to post, but I haven't even looked through them all yet - I have a lot of the Olympic torch, but they'll need some editing as many are poor due to atrocious weather and the resulting low light levels.

Having done a considerable amount of work in copper, I don't know why I haven't worked in bronze - I think it perhaps looks even nicer left bare than copper does as it's a nice rosy warm gold colour, at a fraction the price of gold and you can do things with it that you can't with gold plated or filled.

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

Large feature bronze earwires with deep pink dyed stabilised Tiger Eye beads, wrapped on ball ended bronze headpins.

I did get a small sample some time ago to check how it melted etc., but never really had the spare funds when ordering wire to add some bronze to my basket. But as I was placing a large order for copper wire, thought I'd buy a small quantity each of a few common gauges to see how it worked.

One of my molten bud designs featuring lots of glossy molten bronze buds trapped in a double wire wrapped loop. The bronze does seem to take on a slightly pinker colour after heating than the raw wire, even though it's been extensively pickled and tumbled.

I've thoroughly enjoyed working with it - it's harder and springier than copper and a bit tougher on the fingers to work with, but the results are worth the effort. It especially melts nicely to make ball ended headpins and the molten 'raindrop buds' that feature a lot in my work. It also takes some more hammering to form shapes, but that means you have a little more control over your finesse, as it's slower to take form.

I got these gorgeous turquoise coloured translucent torpedo shaped semi precious beads with a square cross section and they look lovely with the bronze. I'm not sure what stone they are, but they look similar to some hemi-morphite that I've had before.

I was curious as to how it would oxidise and antique and finally got to try that with a few early samples I'd done just for that purpose. To all intents and purposes it oxidises just the same as copper - I did both copper and bronze pieces at the same time and at the point they were fully darkly oxed, they looked exactly the same.

Some turquoise magnesite beads with bronze headpins and earwires, after antiquing.

Once removing some of the darkness, the more gold colour of the bronze was evident and the antiqued appearance of finished pieces was much the same as copper, just with a slightly more yellow base colour. In fact, when they're first polished, the bronze and the copper look very similar, but copper mellow warmer within 24 hours of the initial polish, where bronze retains its initial bright appearance for longer.

A large faceted amethyst spiral wrapped in bronze, then antiqued.

I have some antiqued gold chain and wondered how well the antiqued bronze would match with it, so put together some earrings featuring some turquoise magnesite cubes on bronze balled headpins and the antiqued gold chain. After polishing, the two metals are a slightly different tone, but this is more evident in the photographs than in the actual jewellery when viewed life-size.

I think there will be a lot more bronze in my portfolio in future, it has been fun to work with it and I have no idea why it has taken me so long to get around to it.

Other recent work:

This pair of earrings were one of those designs that emerged from a problem-solving session and one that my sub-conscious largely worked out without seemingly much conscious intervention. The solution flirted away at the corners of my mind, tantalising me with snippets of thoughts that took a while before they popped into my mind, fully formed.

I had a particular brief from a customer and it became evident that I wasn't going to be able to do exactly what she wanted - which was something very small and fine and in copper and I didn't think that the idea she had would be sufficiently robust, so I'd been trying to combine methods that would give rise to greater stability at the small scale required.

These earrings resulted from that thought process and were somewhat at a tangent to the initial thinking and I don't know why I haven't tried something like this before. The outer diameter is a smidge over 15mm (0.6") and they're about 3mm (1/8") wide and once inserted in the piercing, they pretty much close around the lobe and look like a complete loop in wear. My methodology needs a little further thought as the pair I made in silver highlighted an issue that I'd simply been lucky with on the two successful copper pairs I've made.

The silver pair have been made for a gift, but I shall be making myself a pair too.

As is often the case, once I make a design, my mind either gets fixated on making more of the same, or lots of variants come to mind. I'm perpetually striving to find different and interesting ways to make nice beads into everyday earrings, as alternatives to straight headpins. I've spent quite some time in perfecting a method for combining my rosebud knots with beads and have a pile of new beads waiting to get some of this same treatment.


And finally . . .

I am often heard to curse at how my lovely, albeit tiny, garden gets ravaged by snails - my plant selection is heavily informed by what they don't like the taste of. I have a gorgeous stripy hosta that looks like the leaves were made in lace. Only this last couple of weeks, I had to abandon a beautiful new mauve Campanula that was razed to a few tiny spiky stems in a few days. My husband came in from the garden commenting that the snails had seemingly got it and I replied that they had indeed pretty much had all the open flowers. "When did you look at it?" asks he . . . "there aren't even any leaves left". Looks like Campanula are off the list too!

Now normally, the snails only do their damage after dusk and when I feel brave I go out after dark, armed with a torch and re-locate a few to improve the odds for my blooms, but I went out one afternoon and there was this big bugger, brazen as you like, gorging himself right at the top of my poor bedraggled hosta.


And something pretty to calm you after that horror . . . that's better!

Bringing copper clay to life

Firstly, I must apologise for the delay since my last post, but between health issues, our annual 'summer' holiday (I use the word advisedly, it didn't feel much like summer in the storms) and being kept busy with some lovely custom orders, time has simply got away from me.

As I promised that I'd post this subject some time ago and I've already prepared the photographs, I may as well continue and complete the post, even though some considerable time has passed since I said I'd be doing so.

I'm going to show the many stages it takes to make a jewellery set like this from copper clay.

As previously posted, I've really been enjoying working with copper clay, a somewhat new adventure for me. I resisted for some time, until I felt I'd mastered sufficient skills with actual solid metal before taking myself off on a tangent. It's an amazing medium, it allows you to achieve results that would be either very difficult, time consuming or even impossible with solid metal forms. I read an article by an experienced jeweller that said she used PMC for things that she simply couldn't do by other means - as a supplement to metal, not instead of. So that has been my thinking with it thus far. To try things that I couldn't otherwise accomplish. Hark at me, like I'm an expert. Far from it, I'm learning at a very steep rate and still have a long way to go.

Whilst it's amazingly good fun to work with and you can do really interesting things with it (and I've only scratched the surface so far) - I don't feel it's a short cut to quick or easy results either. It still takes a lot of work to get good results. I suspect in my case some of that is related to the fact that I'm torch firing and not using a kiln - it takes longer to fire the piece in that each one has to be done individually and I suspect that the firescale on the copper I'm using is possibly deeper - and more time-consuming to remove too.

I thought I'd show some work-in-progress photographs of the various stages that a piece has to go through, not as a tutorial in any way (I'm simply not qualified yet to try and impart information on this subject), but purely as an insight as to how much work a particular finished piece represents. The particular design of the pieces indicated is a rather simple technique, pieces that incorporate sculpting and assembly of components can take much longer.

Most of the photographs are of a particular earring and pendant set, although some of them were taken retrospectively with another piece as I simply decided later that I'd missed some stages worth including.

The clay is rolled out to the desired thickness on a non-stick sheet, in this case, using some sheets of plastic as my spacers.

I imprinted the sheet of clay with my chosen texture - in this case, a spiral I formed with a piece of wire.

The shapes are then cut out of the sheet and shaped and formed, as desired, whilst still moist and pliable. They then need some time to dry enough for further handling. I choose to do some of the further work before the pieces dry to the stage of becoming brittle. At this stage it is certainly more clay and less metal (despite the rather incongruous sensation of being cold and metallic to the touch) and I liken it to dry pasta - firm and robust enough to handle, but you could just break it with your fingers if you chose, so it does need some care. I like to drill my holes and refine the shape a little whilst it's dry to the touch, but not dry enough to fire - it simply seems more brittle to me by the time it reaches that stage.

The left hand earring piece as I formed it initially from the moist clay and the right hand one is after some filing, rounding of corners and refining the shape and surface - as you smooth it, it does take on a more metallic appearance.

At this stage, I leave them on wire mesh to dry really thoroughly for at least a couple of days. I've had some pieces crack or pop during firing and the manufacturers advise me this is the rapid vapourising of any tiny water molecules remaining within the clay as I bring it to the flame to fire it. I'm not convinced that moisture is entirely to blame for all my cracks (and I've made some modifications in my workflow to address the issue), but I think it must certainly have been in the piece that popped loudly and broke away surface pieces as soon as it got hot.

I fire each piece individually with the torch, in accordance with the recommendations for the particular product I'm using. I can manage either a single large piece or a couple of smaller ones in each firing. I work in reduced light so that I can monitor the colour of the metal and the flame.

After firing and quenching, my lovely smooth piece of clay looks pretty terrible - the firescale on the surface will need removing - and this is perhaps the most tedious stage of the process, although some trial and error has established a pretty good routine for me to get it clean again with minimal elbow grease. First I pickle and then tumble the pieces extensively to bring out the shine of the metal now revealed after burning off the organic binders.
Of course, the metal clay pieces are only components and I also need to make the accompanying metal parts too - in this case, I decided to go for some fancy feature earwires with a co-ordinating decorative spiral. I also make all my own jump rings and clasps for finished pieces.

The earrings are as such now complete and I've antiqued them to bring out the lovely aged warmth of time-worn copper, which is my own personal preferred finish for copper. I'm next going to add some colour to this particular set and after some earlier trial and error, had decided that antiquing first and then applying the colour gave the most pleasing end result. Before colouring, I removed the copper clay charms from the earwires to protect them.

I'd originally had it in mind to combine the copper clay pieces with enamels, but whilst researching types and materials, came across the US made product Gilders Paste, which sounded even better for what I had in mind. It's a solid opaque and intensely coloured wax type substance that comes in little tins and looks for all the world like old-fashioned shoe polish. It can be used and applied just about any way you can think of - you can do anything from rubbing it on with your finger to airbrushing it on as a wash mixed with a solvent. I decided that a short cut-down and very inexpensive paintbrush allowed me to stipple it well into the recessed pattern areas, giving good coverage.

It's specifically for colouring metal, but can be used on many other suitable surfaces too. I've found that it seems to work very well on the less metallic and shiny parts of the clay that were impressed and therefore not as subsequently highly burnished smooth. Still maintaining some of the porosity of the original clay texture gave it a good key to adhere to. I think for a good covering on the metal surface, it would need roughening to give it a better key and would lose some of the metallic sheen and therefore may not be quite as attractive for the effect I was after. On solid metals, I found that it scratched off too easily, but it adheres well to the rougher texture of unpolished clay areas. Solid copper would need a texture for key to work reliably - but I have some ideas for that too.

Once allowed to dry for a number of hours, the piece can be rubbed clean and finally polished - the Gilders Paste is robust once dry and should last well in wear. On these pieces, I stippled both a verdigris turquoise with a darker metallic green to give the appearance of patina but I didn't want a solid single flat colour. The photo below was taken between wiping off the excess from the surface before fully dry and the final buffing and cleaning.

Some finished copper clay pieces using Gilders Paste for colour:


And finally . . .

As I've been typing this, with the TV on in my office, the weather man declared that some places in Britain today (the 10th of July, may I remind you) were actually colder than they were on Christmas Day! So you can see why I had some reservations about declaring our most recent holiday to be our summer one!

Ladybirds and pine shoots

Further to my previous post about the emergence of spring flowers and the bright optimistic green of new foliage, I'm going to make a quick interim post with a couple more photos on that theme - and my next post will be the work in progress blog that I'm working on. I apologise for getting side-lined, but if I don't post photos I've taken here, they just languish un-loved as files on my hard drive.

We'd had such a lovely day last Saturday on our day out that we decided to avail ourselves of another favourable weather forecast for Sunday and do it all again. Just because we could.

Please click on any of the photographs for a larger view, or if your browser supports it, click to open in a new tab to see them at the size I prepared them.

The bright green new shoots of the pine trees had developed tangibly in the intervening eight days and were starting to stretch out as new branches. It also must be the time of year that ladybirds emerge and we saw more in that one walk than I've seen in a long time. This particular young tree was especially abundant and I was able to get quite close to take some photographs. I loved the abstract of them against the vibrant green textures.


We also saw more of the delicate Pink Purslane flowers I posted last week too - they do seem to like to nestle against fallen rotting logs and where they must get occasional patches of sunshine too. The day was largely 'fine' but we did get odd flashes of warm sunshine through the trees and it's always such a delight to me to see the patterns that form as it fingers its way between the trees to the forest floor. One of my very favourite things.

It doesn't take much to make me happy and re-charge my flagging spirits.

Spring green - such an optimistic colour

Firstly, apologies, I did promise that my next blog would be on the stages that a piece of copper clay goes through, but I need to retrospectively take some photos on another piece, for stages I overlooked when making the piece to be featured - a decision I only initially made once I'd started and progressed with the piece.

But we did get out on Saturday for a nice walk and some very welcome fresh air and I wanted to post the photographs I took, if only so that I can find them again.  That is, if the new 'streamlined' Blogger interface will allow me.  If it's as slow and tedious as the last post I made proved to be, I may well not include many images after all!

Please click on any photographs to see a larger view.  If your browser has the option, clicking to open in a new tab or window will allow you to see it at the full size I prepared it at.

My husband had commitments in the morning, but when he returned, the weather was looking pretty decent, so we hurriedly decided not to waste any more of the day and made and ate some lunch, got ready and packed some refreshments for later in the day and headed out to one of our favourite spots, at Beacon Fell in Lancashire.

The young pine trees were all exploding with vibrant new foliage.  Trees in the better light were further progressed, but those in deeper shadow still bore their little papery sheaths over the new growth of needles.  The green of the emerging needles was almost unnaturally bright and in stark contrast to the darker older growth.  As I understand it, they only grow in this manner as young trees, developing needles differently as they age?

It's a Lancashire County Council run forest park with a visitor centre, toilets, cafe that also serves ice creams (we had one and made like we were on holiday), lots of car parking salted throughout the woodland (and even using the main car park only costs £1 GB Pound per day) and an infinite variety of walking, with miles of well made paths snaking and criss-crossing through the trees and adjacent moorland - meaning that you can walk as much or little as you wish - with many paths with disabled access, there's something suitable for everyone.  It's our default 'day out' location as it's about 20 miles from home, has everything we need, is open all year and I suspect that we often head there, because the drive to it is a pleasure in itself.  Perhaps our favourite time is in winter; on crisp clear days, especially mid-week, when we often have the place much to ourselves.  Sunny summer Sundays, not so much.

This little group of beech trees were just opening into leaf and catching a ray of sunshine - very momentarily - through the dense trees.  The colour was pure optimism; the brightest freshest perfect green of a new generation, in sharp relief to the brown of their past-foliage underneath, which will go on to decay and nourish the tree for the future.

We've visited so often over very many years (Mr Boo was in a Scout party that helped lay some of the paths, over 40 years ago) that we must now have seen it in every possible weather and time of year.  But each time we visit, there's something different of interest and each season has its own particular pleasures. 

As I mentioned in my previous blog, I am especially fond of the wild species that grow at this time of year  - and especially those in deciduous woodland - the small delicate flowers that blossom on the woodland floor before more robust vegetation will steal their light.  We rounded a corner to find this lone little patch of delicate pink flowers, amongst the fallen, moss-engulfed logs, which I think are Pink Purslane, looking a little like a Stitchwort, but pink.

 
This weekends particular pleasure was that gorgeous emergence of spring flowers and early foliage, when everything is at its most pristine, with the promise of summer to come, but before leaves have been ravaged by weather and insects - when everything is at the most perfect and the colours most intense and vibrant.

In looking through my wild flower books to identify the plant above, I was struck by the gorgeous names of old fashioned English wild flowers, such evocative and descriptive names as Mouse-ear Hawkweed, Lady's Bedstraw, Nipplewort, Frogbit and Butcher's Broom.

Most of the ground in clearings and path edges amongst the coniferous areas had a new bright green carpet of Bilberry bushes with their gorgeous, almost hidden, tiny bell-shaped flowers in a delicate translucent red - what my wild flower book called "nodding globular flowers". I really couldn't do them justice and was struggling to even focus properly on them as they truly were nodding in the very brisk breeze, whole branches moving several inches back and forth, so this is the best I managed.  They're so pretty, it's well worth bending down and turning back a few leaves to have a look at them - they look like berries at a casual glance.

After our walk, as it was drawing close to the time that they lock the gates on the smaller in-tree car parks, we relocated to one of the quieter road-side spots with a good view, to have a bite to eat and a warm drink and we parked next to a field with a handful of sheep, each with a single lamb.  They must have thought that we were 'the man' that brings their supper as they all came galloping over, baa-ing loudly for their supper and were a little put-out that we obviously weren't who they'd hoped to see.

My work this week:

I worked on two significant - and rather different - projects this week - one was to create some more copper clay components for designs I have in mind.  It's the sort of work where I have to work in sessions amongst other work, as it takes time to dry enough to handle for filing and shaping, then it needs a little longer to dry thoroughly until it can be fired - then that process ends a little drawn out as I do them in small batches as I'm torch firing - then pickle and polish etc. etc.  This is a batch of finished components between filing and firing; I can't resist polishing them a little to reveal the metal appearance as it gives me a better idea of how they might look as finished.

I had a couple of orders for rings this week, so once I had my eye in and was set up for ring making, I made a few more to replenish my craft fair stock - going back to earlier designs that I haven't made for a while.  I don't know how I feel about making rings - I enjoy the process in itself, but worry about the whole sizing issue - perhaps because my fingers change size a dozen times a day and I rarely wear fashion rings for that reason.  So I worry about someone getting a ring I've made and not being able to wear it, even though I know it was sent the size they ordered - what if they measured wrong themselves, or their fingers swell as much as mine do?  Earrings a little longer or shorter than expected wouldn't be a deal-breaker, but a ring has to be spot on.

Of the designs I've made over the last few days, I think I might now offer a few of the more repeatable designs on-line and see how they are received.  I'm happy to sell them at craft fairs as people can simply try them on and choose one they like, but on-line has always felt more problematic and a little uncomfortable.  The wire wrapped rings are the ones I've sold in person in the past as they can be made with any bead with a hole and inexpensively enough for impulse treats.

I love the colour of these Czech pressed melon beads against the copper and have enough to offer these as made to order rings, along with the more delicate rosebud knot 'stacker' variant of my hammered band ring, as shown below.  I'll see how I feel about them in a few days time.

Woodland pretties

We did one of our favourite walks this Sunday, one we can do from the front door. Our son was visiting for the day with his girlfriend and it's a pretty spot at this time of year, so was an ideal pre-lunch appetiser.

Please click on any of the photographs for a larger view. If your browser has the option to open the image in a new tab, you'll get to see them at the size I prepared them.

Added later: I finally got to identify this plant, it just didn't appear in any of my wildflower books - it would appear that it's Water Avens (Geum rivale) a member of the rose family - I was wrongly thinking it was a geranium/cranesbill variety.

My husband and I did the same walk last Saturday and then it was bitterly cold in a very brisk wind (and we were jolly glad of hats, scarves and gloves) and was threatening rain the entire time and did in fact make good on that threat as we walked the last 20 yards to the front door. We'd commented that there were likely to be a lot of bluebells and that they were only just starting to flower.

After a week of sunny spells and lots of rain, they've positively romped away this week, along with several other woodland pretties; there were splashes of blue, pink and yellow amongst the gorgeous vibrant spring green emerging foliage and unfurling fern fronds. It was significantly more colourful than a mere 8 days ago.

It's one of my very favourite things, to see woodland flowers at this time of year, before the greenery has really taken off and hides some of the more delicate ground-hugging species.

The walk was pretty dark initially, but as we returned, the sun came out again and I was able to grab a few photographs toward the end of the walk. If we get a nice spell this week, I'll walk that way on my own and spend more time getting some closer shots, there are some side paths that meander through the trees, so I can get deeper into the woodland and closer to the patches of bluebells.

The primroses are a slight cheat in that I took these photographs earlier in the week. I especially like this patch as they're growing on top of a wall, so I don't need to grovel in the mud to photograph them and I also get to smell them too - they have a lovely delicate fragrance, which we don't always get to appreciate as they grow so low.

My work this week:

I've finished several pieces - and that's the fun part - getting them all photographed and listed isn't quite as much fun - but something I will have to face in the next few days. I was in the mood for making something with beads - after I'd bought some very pretty colours on Etsy for use with copper. Although, as luck would have it, I didn't use as may of those as I started out expecting to - I veered off on a tangent somewhat.

I was looking for some components in my box of assorted things that didn't quite make it into a finished piece yet and a combination of shapes falling together in front of me gave me the idea for this wrapped wire loop bail - allowing me to combine a spiralled wire bail loop with a large eye to decorate with beaded dangles. The central focal bead is an odd colour, it looks very orange in daylight (and my daylight photography light) and yet quite a buttery yellow in artificial light - and in which light, the greens I accented with the faceted Czech glass donuts are rather more prominent too. I topped it with a copper clay bead cap and matched it with a pair of delicate green beads on some matching chain links.

These eye links are a shape I made often, early in my jewellery making career, as fancy headpins, but I was trying to fashion an art deco/nouveau stylised rose for a particular idea and these came back to mind. So I've put together 3 hammered links in these antiqued copper earrings.

Another variant of the wrapped loop bail eye, adorned with assorted purple glass and amethyst beads and a single flower-imprinted dangle, made in copper clay.

I used the same 'eye' links in these feature earwires for these copper clay spiral oval earrings.

My next blog . . .


. . . will be a work in progress (WIP) report on this necklace and earring set. They're made with copper clay and wire, then antiqued and coloured. I've taken a series of photographs as I made them and want to show the amount of work and processes involved in creating pieces like this.