Ah, Christmas… the most wonderful time of the year, and definitely one of my favourite times of year! I love the colours, the food and spending time with my family. Oh and presents! Both giving and receiving! Every year, my family has a tradition of asking each other what they’d like as a gift, and most years, I struggle to tell them anything. On the whole, I’m pretty content. This year, however, I’ve got a jewellery-based Christmas wish list!
My Jewellery Tools Wish List
I’m not normally one for a Christmas wish list. Our wedding gift list was enough to put me off for life! It felt so awful to have a list of things, even though I knew it was meant to help our friends and family choose things that we’d like and enjoy. So to help my family to know what tools I may be missing (or just desiring!) and also partly, to keep a list of tools that I’d like to add to my collection and have some way of prioritising them, I’ve made a list. So, here I go for a first stab…
- Crockpot – for pickle!
- Drawplates – I quite fancy making my own wires
- Texturing hammer – I’d love to add to my one, lonely texturing hammer and make cool textures on my pieces
- Barrel polisher – I still haven’t mastered hand-finishing my jewellery. Just wondering if a barrel polisher would make life easier…
- Doming set – I quite like curved jewellery
- Disc cutter – after hand-finishing the circular pendants for the twins, it would be good to cut out some of the leg work
- Vice
- Anvil
- Repousse hammer – at some stage, it might be cool to have a go at repousse (I’m thinking about making a seahorse pendant for my mum… ssh! Don’t tell her!)
- Scorifier, Crucible tongs, Skillet – I’m thinking it might be fun to melt down my scraps and re-mould into something else (especially all the times I go wrong with my jewellery…!)
- A proper workbench 🙂
- Metal Clay Origami Jewelry, by Sara Jayne Cole – this looks like a fun book and might encourage me to foray into Precious Metal Clays (PMCs)
- How to Make Jewellery, by Tatty Devine – really colourful book, and I love the Tatty Devine shop in Covent Garden!
- Laser etcher(!!!) – this one might be a long, long way away
Gifting
And for this year, I’ve decided most of my female relatives and friends will be receiving some form of jewellery, made by yours truly. This is no small task, mind you… there’s my mum, my mother-in-law, my 3 sisters, my brother-in-law’s girlfriend and maybe a small handful of girlfriends… I’m thinking very simple rings so that I can perfect my technique may be the way to go! And next year, I plan to take things to a whole new level… Although with this number of family and friends, I may have to start making Christmas presents in January! At least I can take advantage of January sales for tools and materials?!
