Have you been watching Loki on Disney+? I have! My husband and daughter are big, big Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) fans… although she’s only 8, they’ve watched all of the movies together (except Deadpool and Venom, which we thought was a bit age inappropriate), as well as Wandavision and the Falcon and the Winter Solider. …
Hello and welcome to my latest post – I hope you’ve been enjoying my little updates and projects! Today marks the start of a new series of blog posts that I’m undertaking, kicking off with this one, the simple ring band. It’s been about 3 months since I came back to the fascinating art of …
This week, I’m taking a break from wire jewellery because… my workshop is finally ready, my kids have gone back to school and I’ve made a spinner ring! So I now have a couple of days free in the week, which I’ve been spending obsessively in my workshop (read: glorified summer house! But I don’t …
Sunday evening and the kids are in bed (phew!). It’s been a funny Sunday. You know that feeling when you’ve hit the end of the week and you know Monday is just around the corner, but you really can’t motivate yourself to do anything? Yes? No? Maybe just me! Anyway, I got to around 2pm, …
Wow, I’ve just looked at the last time I wrote in my blog, and around 18 months. I only really have one excuse – I was busy having a baby. It’s amazing how much time these little ones take up! But I haven’t been completely quiet on the jewellery front. In particular, I decided to do …
My sister asked me to make her a new ring – very simple silver ring band. One solder join, no complications. Sounds like a nice easy way to get back into making jewellery, after my last disheartening disaster into mokume gane! I guess I should have learned to walk before trying to run! And it …
After months and months, I have finally finished my turquoise necklace! It wasn’t exactly how I wanted it – I had wanted to add two silver swirls to the chain, and also use the Spanish style chain. But… I discovered that the Spanish style chain is really hard to do! It needs a lot of …
I finally started to make my husband’s Christmas present. He’s my biggest fan (aah!), but he’s also a big Tottenham Hotspurs fan! So it seems only fitting that I make some Spurs-inspired cufflinks! Come On You Spurs! I’ve planned to use the Spurs logo, setting copper onto a sterling silver backing. Luckily, I have an …
Had a slight spanner in the works and had to deviate from the original plan to make a silver ring for my sister’s birthday present. But I think I’ve managed to make something better and that she’ll really love. To set the scene, my sister is a massive, and I mean massive, Phantom of the …
After a short hiatus from jewellery making, I finished the twins’ birthday pendants over the weekend (only a month late!). Filing the edges smooth in all the little gaps took a long time, but completely worth it! Check them out, pre-finished:
I added the bails (pre-bought from Cookson Gold) – sounds silly, but it didn’t occur to me that there were different sized pins on pinch bails. These bails were originally too long for my 1mm thick silver pendants. I found it was easily fixed, simply by cutting with flush cutters to get a perfect fit! All-in-all, I’m fairly pleased with the outcome – the two pendants look reasonably similar given that a) they are handmade and b) I am a complete beginner!
I took quite a long time finishing these off as I wanted a high-polish shine. For now, I have temporarily abandoned my Dremel, after making a bit of a mess with my sister’s ring. I will need to do some more reading on how to finish jewellery. In any case, I hand-finished with three grades of sand paper (150, 180 and 1200) – I have to admit, I think the 150 is a bit too coarse for what I’m doing.
I then took a burnisher to each of the pendants to get a really high shine. I’m not 100% with the finish, because I can still see marks and the shine doesn’t seem to be even – but it’s as good as I’m going to get for now, I think. I might invest in a barrelling machine to see if that helps with the finish.
So here they are, the final necklaces:
And here is what they look like on:
I’ve sent pictures to the in-laws, and they seem pretty pleased. I’ll have to wait and see what the twins think!
