Embrace

This past week I have had off work, off of night shifts, awaaayyy from messed up sleep patterns….and guess what; It has been wonderful! I have really felt that I have used my time wisely and took to embracing my creative side (something which I have neglected since starting night shifts).

So here I am trying not to moan about how rubbish working nights are and trying to tell you about what I have done this week…

All the ideas I collected I tried to get down into my sketchbook, I have recently joined Pinterest (very addictive) and found lots of inspiration from posts on there. I have found lots of exciting things now lined up for the summer to keep me creative.

I have managed to do a little bit of my jewellery making and I dared to cut into the slab of silver I bought for myself (so brave!) but it was worth it in the end as I have managed to make two beautiful pieces so far; some earrings and a pendant.

Of course before I did all this I had to make prototypes, I originally had the earrings above to be just indented with ‘polkadots’ but I ended up blunting the nib of my soldering iron *sigh* so I went with drilled holes instead and they work fine for me.

Another prototype that I have yet to make into silver was something quite technical for my liking and my fella helped me to get the prototype to spin on an axel. With his ideas and mine a working prototype is ready to be turned into silver and that is all I’m going to reveal for now…hehe!

The spring sun has also brought us to be more creative with other things too and power drills and  saws and screws and nails were bought so we could try our skills at woodwork… This has proved very successful and we easily made a bulkhead for the van and fixed all sorts of things around the house from drawers to gates.

My ideas were flowing now and I found an unused fence plank in the shed and cut it into three to make into a picture. I nailed the planks of wood onto two other bits of wood to make a square wooden ‘canvas’, onto which I painted a picture…

I was very pleased with this and it is now hung in my hallway! Woop!

I have pleanty of new ideas to get creative with and as soon as I grab some time in the garden again, I’m taking out the modrock to try and create a jewellery hanging thing. This will really take me back to school days and more pictures will be posted I’m sure

Blog post

Cannot believe I haven’t posted on here since July! Let’s just say a lot has happened since then. I have definitely learnt lots at college and I am currently in my final month.

I was reminded the other week that we haven’t got long left as ‘students’ so I have been buying up any tools I need with my discount

At this moment I am sat on the floor at the station waiting to get on my train, I have started to will on the end of this course because it has become such a pain to travel to. I know I shouldn’t because I will miss my friends and I will miss learning something new.

I said to myself and consequently a lot of other people that I would keep up my blog during my course and post pictures of my progress…obviously that failed but I hope to post the best bits soon!

I was asked today about my career aspirations, fair enough its a full time course but I am only there two days a week and have recently managed to get a job so it is rather a funny question to ask some people who are in a similar position…
I replied that I wanted to concentrate on my job and not have to travel a long way every week so I could spend even more money on the level three course!

I think I have learnt a fair amount to carry on making simple things and to perhaps teach myself more.

How frustrating it seems I’m invisible on the floor, people are standing practically on top of me. I digress. My train is here.

Rivets and Lions

Finishing off the technical exercises for my jewellery course we had to practice riveting…very interesting to look at!

Something fun to finish off with was to make a lion pendant from different shapes of metal and to join them by rivets or soldering.

I added a mane so it would look awesome. I am still yet to finish it but hopefully it will look great once stuck together

Week 3 ~ Progression!

I am getting there after completing the first exercise, here are pictures of the second and third exercises…a lot more exciting and complex!

My straight lines and practicing wiggly lines from the first week!

Finishing my second exercise by sanding down my scribing lines!

Earrings?

Or pendant??

Third exercise, using cut-offs from our first exercise (the circle bits) we anealed the metal (heating up the metal with a blow-torch – to soften it for shaping)

Then using the doming block we hammered the metal (muchos fun!) Anealing every so often to make sure the metal was supple.

Flat turned into domed!

My design was drawn and sawn (Very tricky and I broke a few saw blades)

And voila! Mega pleased with it in the end (I had to fall back in love with it after hating it so much because of the pain in my fingers and the hard work!)

Jewellery course

I started a jewellery manufacture course not long ago and thought I should track my progress through a series of pictures…
We start with technical exercises so we can practice cutting straight lines and filing pieces of metal. This did get quite tiresome by the end of the day!

Baby Swallows

There is a nest in our carport that is housed by swallows every year and this year look what they have laid and hatched! I just had to get some photos, literally any sound I made they all squealed for food because they thought mammy was there!

Leather Necklaces

It seems silly to say but these necklaces took a lot of time to put together, I know its only stringing some beads onto a bit of string but it is the order in which you put them that makes it vital to the design looking good oh and also only a few of the small matte glass beads would fit onto the leather string!

After drawing some sketches, I gained the idea for the first set of pictures from bunting, I was looking at shapes and how I could integrate them into jewellery.