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

Craft on TV!

Well hello folks and yes I did promise another blog collaboration, but yet again it hasn't happened - sorry, but other artists must be very busy!

Did anyone else watch Kirstie's Handmade Britain last night?  It's so good to see craft on mainstream television.  Particularly good to see Phiona Richards from Rare Notions who recently started following me on Twitter which was quite a coincidence as I'd been admiring her work only a few days before in Nicola Hurst's lovely gallery in Plymouth! Phiona makes the most exquisite jewellery and art from old and damaged books - who knows, maybe I can persuade her to be a blog collaborator in the future so that we can find out a bit more about her work!

What was a joy on the programme last night was seeing Kirstie Allsopp's total enthusiasm for the crafts she was trying.  It can only be a good thing for the handmade movement that this programme is making it look cool and is trying to show that crafting is also loved by people of all ages and both sexes!  I do hope that more programmes are made that look at handmade, not only as art forms, but as businesses.  Theo Paphitis' programme focussed more on the business side when he looked at Liberty, Habitat and Boots, but it would be great to see a series that took an individual craft each week and looked at the experts, new businesses and novices within each discipline with a view to mutual support and inspiration.  Any programme makers reading this???

On another front - this week I've returned to my part time day job which funds my business at the moment following my shoulder surgery.  This has also meant a return to making jewellery and as I said last week I've been experimenting with deeper textures and combining silver with my aluminium as a signature range.



This piece was handpierced from a small amount of double-dyed aluminium which was textured with grasses and features a handmade silver toggle clasp and a reticulated silver component to the necklace. It sits beautifully at a the base of the neck at a choker length.

Right I'm off to try to push another piece of aluminium to it's limits and I'll let you know what happens!!

See you next week!