My Etsy Shop!

I’m home from holiday: a wonderful week in North Cornwall with a big group of friends in addition to our family…

…and after all the unpacking and sorting, finally managed to get down to my most important summer job: to open my own Etsy shop, Under A Topaz Sky, here.  All the jewellery I made during my 6 month course in Sheffield has been listed and is up for sale. 

I was quite surprised at how effective it all looked properly photographed and displayed together!

                            

 

 

Unfortunately the Etsy widget doesn’t seem to work on WordPress blogs, at least not without a lot of going round the houses but I’ve added a link in my sidebar and will look into it further when the beginning of term and all the extra work that generates isn’t looming quite so awfully.

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Bubbles book charm

This piece of gilding metal was stuck with round stickers and then run through the rolling mill to impress the pattern into it. They turned out oval, but I love the effect; like a scattering of bubbles.

Halved, drilled, corners smoothed round and polished into book boards.

A tiny book…

…with hand dyed silk pages…

…and coptic stitch binding in hand-dyed orange silk thread.

Then the closure.

A pop of bright blue from a coco shell disc bead held in place with a striped seed bead and finished with a gold coloured jump ring as a bale.

And in comparison with a penny (same size as a cent).

I also started the grid book charm with pages of a very loose hand dyed cheesecloth cotton in purple and green.

Unfortunately the very loose nature of the fabric made it really difficult to get the tension of the binding right, the fabric pulled into holes in places and the stitching inside was really untidy.

So despite the beauty of the fabric, back to the drawing board for this one. Indigo dyed cotton I think, for mark 2.

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Starting and stockpiling

Only two weeks of my course left which has sent me into a frenzy of starting and stockpiling pieces of impressed and reticulated metal so I have something to work on through the summer! So nothing finished but loads to inspire.

The bubbles and grid book charms in gilding metal have both been drilled, polished and sealed and are awaiting their pages.

Another pierced and impressed piece of gilding metal is ready for the sea glass centre.

A blue fragment from Seaham – the perfect shape.

Reticulation:

These are tiny offcut circles from another piece which I couldn’t resist reticulating. They need polishing in the barreller but they remind me of cornflakes!

I love to include text in my work and I experimented with leaving spaces in a piece of reticulated metal which could be engraved. 

A section of the larger piece cut for a pendant. This needs annealing again to get rid of the pink oxide in the folds of the reticulation.

Another piece reticulated into holes to cover a failed attempt to impress the brass with some embroidered fabric.

And more successful impressing:

The same diamond grid fabric as above but over a failed impression and with less pressure from the rollers.

Layering impressions of lace and a lacy fabric.

I’m going to have to plan my remaining two sessions very carefully to get the maximum out of them.

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