The Round the World Blog Hop

Recently Mossy from Silver Moss Jewellery contacted me and asked if I'd like to take part in an around the world blog hop. I'd not heard of it before but the idea behind the Blog Hop is for creative bloggers to write a post based around a few questions. Their answers offer an insight into their creative thoughts and processes. The blog 'baton' is then passed on to another creative and so on...

You can read Mossy's post here. I have to admit to a rather tardy publication of this post - Christmas and New Year rather got in the way......but as I'm now back to (almost) full speed here it is!

So here are the questions - and my answers:

1) What am I working on?

All the custom orders on my bench at the moment are for silver fingerprint pieces. My customers have sent me the fingerprints they want to include and I transfer them to their jewellery. The work needs to be done in stages, so I tend to get all pieces to one stage before moving on to the next. 

I'm also busy building up stock in my Folksy shop again after Christmas - I'm working on a lot of tree of life pieces at the moment.

2) How does my work differ from others in its genre?

No two pieces I make are ever the same! I don't really work in bulk designs - if I'm using gemstones they are often unique shapes which means that I can only ever recreate a similar design. With my wirework trees, the nature of the work means that every piece is different - the stone affects the ways the wires lie and as I twist everything by hand the tension varies which produces differences in the branches. And of course, no two fingerprints are ever the same. Nor are leaves for that matter!

This way of working can make things hard work! I list every item separately in my Folksy Shop so that the picture a customer sees is the piece they are buying (except for fingerprint jewellery or course, which is made to order).

3) Why do I write/create what I do?

I started out making only silver fingerprint jewellery - but of course silver clay is very addictive! I began to experiment with new designs and continue to do so all the time. Most of what I make is inspired by the natural world around me - what better inspiration is there?

Oak Twig Rings

4) How does my writing/creating process work?

I start most new pieces with a sketch of how I want the finished piece to look. Sometimes I create a quite detailed plan but sometimes I just experiment as I go. I can't afford to experiment as much as I'd like though as silver clay is quite expensive! I'm always collecting things when I'm out and about that have interesting shapes and textures that I might use later - I embarrass my children by carrying a collection bag with me everywhere! 

And now I'll pass the baton on to John from The World Outside The Window to answer the same questions. He's a writer rather than an artisan so it should be a bit of a change! In the interest of full disclosure, he also happens to be my husband! So you can imagine us sitting opposite each other working if that helps :)

You can find his blog here: The World Outside the Window

What you can do with just 1 leaf

Making my jewellery I use natural, found materials in a variety of ways. These three pendants are all made using the very same oak leaf in three different ways.

This piece was made by rolling out a slab of silver clay and then pressing the leaf into the surface to leave an impression. I then cut carefully around the outline to give the leaf shape. When the clay was dry, I sanded and smoothed the edges until I was happy with them and added a handmade bail to the back for the chain. When it was all ready I fired it in the kiln before giving it only a slight polish which has left it with a fairly matt finish. I've added patina to enhance the leaf texture.

Next came this piece. Again this was made by rolling out a slab of clay and impressing the leaf into its surface. This time, instead of cutting around the outline of the leaf I cut a free-form shape around the leaf. When the clay was dry I refined the edges as before and drilled the hole to take the jump ring. After firing, I polished around the leaf using a fine point on my polishing tool to give a shiny contrast to the texture of the leaf. Again I added patina to enhance the leaf veins.

This leaf was made entirely differently. I used silver clay paste to build up layers on the surface of the leaf itself. When it was thick enough and completely dry I fired it in my kiln which burnt away the leaf and left a 999 fine silver leaf in its place. I then drilled the hole and added the jump ring before tumbling to give a really great shine, again adding patina to enhance the natural texture.

As you can imagine - if you want to use the same leaf more than once, you have to make sure to work in this order! Once you've used a leaf with the paste method, it's all burnt to ash and you have a totally unique silver leaf that can't be re-created.

All these leaves are currently listed in my Folksy Shop.

A tale of Commission......

I often take commissions from clients to design and create a unique piece of jewellery for them, sometimes they know exactly what they want but other times they have an idea that I then need to bring to reality.

I had just such a customer recently - she was interested in the Evenstar pendant featured in the Lord of the Rings films. Now, I couldn't recreate this exact piece for her - that design belongs to the film studio and as such I would infringe their copyright if I were to do so. So we got talking about the piece as it featured in the film (and more importantly where it WASN'T featured in the book!) and she decided that she would rather have a completely new piece based on the book.

Now, where do you start on such a commission? Well, with the book of course ("oh dear, what a shame I guess I'll just have to read it again", I thought to myself with glee) so to the pages of my copy I turned.

If you know me at all, then you will know that I could talk for hours on the intricacies of the plot from Lord of the Rings, but I will not bore you with all the details now. Suffice to say we settled upon using this description of Arwen's pendant,

"a white gem like a star that lay upon her breast hanging upon a silver chain"    

This was a good place to start and left me with plenty of space to add my own ideas, so after lots of thinking and head scratching and crumpled up pieces of paper I settled on this idea:

The design features the impression of real leaves and an 8mm round moonstone cabochon at the centre. The customer loved the design and so I set about making it for her.You can see some of the stages of production along with the finished item in this picture:

I'm happy to say that my customer loved the finished piece - I enjoyed working on it so much that I was sorry to see it go really, it's given me lots of ideas for the future though!