Excellent Service!

Hi everyone!

I'm sitting huddled on my sofa and I really think that autumn has arrived.  On my walk into town this morning I went through the park and noticed how much the leaves are turning on the trees and I don't feel like I've had summer yet! I'm sure that I can remember endless hot days during my summer holidays as a child!

So we've all said a sad goodbye to the Olympics and the Paralympics and I thought it was all fabulous. Lots of memories will stay with me from both games and there were plenty of inspirational moments and I certainly got through a lot of tissues during medal ceremonies.

Over the last month or so I've taken on two new stockists - Boo Gallery in Northamptonshire and Workshop 22 in Bristol and today I had to send more cuffs up to Boo as they'd sold out! Brilliant!

On another positive note, yesterday I heard about a really excellent service and I thought I would pass the information on to you all.  I hand pierce all of my aluminium shapes for necklaces etc, but if I'm using a repeating shape, I tend to use jewellery templates/stencils for uniformity.  I bought a new template last week and it arrived pretty quickly with a CD catalogue of all of the company's stencils.  I looked through the vast array with relish, but the shape I'd had in mind for a while wasn't available.  I contacted the company to ask if they'd ever had anything like my requested shape.  I was amazed to receive an email back saying that if I could send them a drawing they would make me the template I wanted for the standard price and in fact they would be happy to make one-off stencils any time for me.  How amazing a service is that??? So, here you go folks, check them out for yourselves!
http://www.technical-drawing.co.uk

So, what have I been making? Lots of lovely new things! Last week I finished working on the Cherry Blossom Petals Necklace below.  It's a really lovely lightweight piece of jewellery which has a soft tinkling sound when run through the fingers and is extremely comfortable to wear. Do you like it?  If you'd like to look at any of my other jewellery take a look at my website http://www.slicksilverjewellery.co.uk

Cherry Blossom Petals Necklace

After the anodised aluminium is dyed each individual petal is pierced out with a piercing saw, the edges filed and polished and then each piece is textured with a rolling mill, drilled and then assembled.

All in all - sore fingers!!

Cherry Blossom Slim Cuff


 

I also made a slim cuff to go with this necklace and I'm pretty pleased with the end result!

















I've also made quite a lot more this week but we'll leave that till next week.

Just to let you know, I working on another blog collaboration at the moment, which I really hope will come to fruition as it would feature a very talented young lady who practices an old craft that is not seen as often as it should be these days, so let's hope she agrees!

Ok folks, that's all for this week.  See you all soon! xxxxx

New Work and News!

Hi all, thought I'd start straight off with my latest news - following on from your suggestions for a name for the blue collection last week (and tons more suggestions on my Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/SlickSilverJewellery?ref=hl) I found that I really liked the Rebecca Adlington suggestion!  With that in mind I've contacted Rebecca via her manager and hope to hear back soon as I'd really love to send her a piece to wear and hopefully if she lets me have a photo of her wearing it I can put it up on here.  If the lady who made the suggestion would like to contact me at info@slicksilverjewellery.co.uk she might get a little something!!

Would you like to see what I've made out of this particular sheet?

Each piece has been saw pierced, filed, polished, textured, forged and cold connected!! Carrying on with the water theme I explored various shapes of droplet for these pieces of jewellery. Hope you like them.






So, what else has been happening? Oh yes I've grown quite a few more grey hairs following a text from my son who's travelling in Australia.  In the last few days apparently he's flown a plane, woken to hundreds of wild kanagroos outside his cabin, is off gliding (the whole 'no engine' concept worries me slightly) and is conducting some music later (yes that is his job!)  and he has yet to do his skydive - lordy, lordy!!

Another little bit of news to share with you all is that Workshop 22 in Bristol now stocks my work!

So that only leaves me with the exciting bit to tell you!  I'm in the running for a Great British Makers Award! Yay!!! What's more, you can vote for me! You all, out there, can actually make it happen!
All you need to do is follow this link which will take you to the Meet The Makers section at Seek and Adore http://www.seekandadore.com/MeetTheMakers.aspx then choose Devon in the dropdown menu, then hit the Facebook Like button beside SlickSilver Jewellery. How exciting is that?!?

See you next week lovelies!