Design Challenges

One thing I've been dying to participate in for a long time is jewellery design challenges. Lots of groups have them and jewellery material suppliers frequently do them too as promotions.
They push you out of your comfort zones and make you design things you wouldn't normally have done. 
I haven't joined in before for various reasons - lack of confidence, scared of harsh judgement and too much to do already, but the group Metal Clay Europe on Facebook had one in January that I am really glad I went for.

The challenge was to make a piece mainly in metal clay with the theme The sun, Moon and Stars.
Brilliant theme.
The support is amazing and there was lots of fantastic entries. I love to see how a single theme can produce such different end results. And I will definitely be going for more challenges in the future.

This is what I did for it:
It's made from Art Clay silver, A dichroic cabochon, 3 yellow czs and two lab spinels - the five gems are tiny. Got a bit carried away with the silver balls - I've been recycling my scrap silver :oD
The back is engraved with a Cameo machine and says "By light of moon and ray of star". The diameter is 34 mm.
It was scary to fire an open piece like this. I supported the 'moon' with fibre blanket so that it wouldn't collapse. It held up beautifully, but the back suffered some distortion because it couldn't shrink evenly around all the silver balls stars (metal clay shrinks in the kiln as it sinters). It took some careful straightening and the back is still a wee bit wobbly, but I am quite pleased with it all in all. It's my first time using glass in a piece and I love how it sparkles in there.

On the Other Side

This weekend has been full of fun at the Folksy Summer School. I had a blast, said hello to lots of crafters and picked up a few tips along the way.

 As they always do nearly every speaker said: Remember to take good photographs. I agree it is so important when you sell online. The customer needs to know exactly what they get and you need to supply the feel of the piece since they cannot touch it before they buy. This is a tricky thing to do, so I went back home to practise some more.

One thing I have noticed both in myself and others is that we like to turn a piece over in the hand, but quite a few sellers neglect to show pictures of the back of the pieces. Are you one of those who turn the item over even though you know that side will never be seen by anyone but the wearer?

I'd like to make the back just as interesting although I haven't done that much in the past.Especially since I like when people play with their jewellery, warm it in their hands or absent-mindedly turn a ring while they think. Another thing to improve upon :o)

New in the Shop

I'm launching some of my new silver pieces in the next week. I hope you will like them.

You can shop from my own Blogger site, from Sheffield Folksy, from Dawanda and from Etsy.

Moulds & Stamps

This Sunday I have been playing with stamp carving and mould making. Working with metal clay you really don't have much time, so moulds is a great way to get a piece done while the clay is still workable.
While there's many gorgeous moulds out there to buy, they can not only be quite expensive, but they also steal some of my creativity away.
Making my own keeps my work personal and it's great fun. I've got pink shavings all over the floor :oD
I bought some very expensive silicone mould putty, but actually polymer clay works great as well.
Above moulds are made from Super Sculpey which is lovely to work with and only required 15 minutes in the oven.

Oh, and I had time to make my very first silver piece, complete with cubic zirconia. Really happy with the result.