All That Glitters Challenge – Making a “Bestselling Bangle”

Hi! Welcome & thank you for joining me mid-week! I’m planning an extra special weekly “All That Glitters” challenge for the next 6 weeks, to coincide with the brand new jewellery programme, “All That Glitters“, which started here in the UK last week. If like me, you’re fascinated by the world of jewellery making, then I’m sure you will have found the programme fascinating! (Sorry to anyone reading outside of the UK, unfortunately, the licensing does not allow the programme to be streamed internationally. Boo… I’ll keep my fingers crossed that you will get to see it soon!)

If you live in the UK, like me, then you’re probably familiar with crafting reality shows – we have a lot of them, from “Great British Bake Off”, “The Great Pottery Throwdown” and “The Great British Sewing Bee”. Where would we be without a good crafting reality show?! Especially over the past 12 months, when we’ve had to occupy ourselves at home! During the last season of “Great British Bake Off”, I set myself the challenge of baking one item from the show every week… we ate a lot of baked goods at home! Anyhow, you probably see where I’m going with this…

First Episode

The first episode aired in the UK last Tuesday, and I was so excited to watch it! The programme features 8 competing jewellers, who are trying to be crowned “Britain’s Next Jewellery Star”. Each week, the jewellers participate in 2 challenges. They are judged by 2 industry professionals across a range of criteria, including design, accuracy and creativity. Last week’s 2 challenges were the “Bestseller” and the “Bespoke”. The “Bestseller” challenge required the jewellers to design and make 3 commercial, 8-inch sterling silver bangles that could be worn together in a 3 hour window! Whilst the “Bespoke” challenge involved the jewellers custom-designing a pendant for a client, who wanted a necklace to wear whilst collecting her MBE!

I won’t put in any spoilers, just in case anyone hasn’t watched the episode yet. I can only say “wow!” after watching the programme. I’ve never really seen professional jewellers at work – the tools, the workbenches and the skills just blew me away! I feel inspired to keep learning and humbled that I have such a long way to go.

My Own “Bestseller” Challenge

For this week, I chose the “Bestseller” challenge. I decided to set a realistic target for myself, given that I’ve only been back at this for a few months (and my torch is a tiny Proxxon butane number!). For this week, I aimed to design and make a copper bangle, without a time limit!

Check out my video for how I got on!

Learnings

So… all-in-all, I’m really happy that I managed to produce something that looked like a bangle! And it only took me 4 saw blades and half a can of gas… When I embarked on this project, I was not at all convinced that I could produce a bangle. For starters, I’ve never made one outside of a class before, and from everything I’ve read, you need quite a big flame to be able to heat the whole thing up properly for annealing and soldering purposes.

I’m not a professional jeweller. I’m largely self-taught and feeling my way through all the different processes. So, if I had to make this bangle again, I would do soooo many things differently! I would definitely not cut the entire bangle out of one sheet of metal… In my defence, I knew my torch was little and I was trying to avoid too many solder joins. I’d cut the heart out of some sheet metal, and use an appropriate size wire for the bangle shank (so yeah, don’t do it the way I did it!). I think cutting the pieces separately will give you much more control over the uniformity of the pieces, and the overall look and finish.

I started making this bangle two days after having a really bad time of soldering. My confidence was low, really low. In hindsight, a bangle with a tiny butane torch was probably a bad way to try to improve my confidence. What my video doesn’t show you is the number of attempts it took me to solder this bangle together! (Thank goodness, I decided to go with only 1 solder join…). In total, I made 12 attempts to solder this thing together, before I finally got some easy solder to flow.

Reflections

Whilst making this bangle, I was reminded of a number of things from my past life as an internal auditor (yes, I used to work in an office!). Set yourself realistic targets! Don’t set yourself up for failure!

In my excitement after last week’s show, I wanted to go the full hog – 3 bangles in sterling silver. I wasn’t quite crazy enough to try and do the whole lot in 3 hours… that’s for another day! Anyhow, I sketched out a few designs on the same night, and cut them out in paper on my Brother Scan N Cut. Here’s the original concept for a set of 3 “love” themed bangles:

I still think they’ll look great together, but it’s a project for another day, when I have the skills and tools… But you can imagine how I’d have felt if I tried to make all 3 of these this weekend!

My Final Word

If I’m honest, I wasn’t going to make a bangle at all. I’m the kind of person who needs to feel like they know what they’re doing, before embarking on anything. My husband kept encouraging me to do it, and when I protested about the torch, simply said “So, if the torch isn’t strong enough, you can report on that finding”. Fair enough, I guess.

Was it perfect? No!

Was it frustrating? Very!

Did I want to strangle someone (my husband)? Yes!

But, despite all that, I encourage you all to try something new. Something that takes you out of your comfort zone, and helps you keep learning! Because I learnt a lot this week!