Damask Dragons

Now this was my final jewellery project of the year. And actually probably the most difficult one. Maybe not the most technically challenging, as that honour belongs to my tiny crash helmets, but certainly the project I had the most trouble getting my head around.

As you may have noticed, I rather like baroque style and vintage wallpaper, and have been basing a lot of designs around this. Having promised a friend that I would make some earrings as a Christmas present for his girlfriend in return for hooking me up with a pro photographer, I duly emailed him my designs. He came back with "Oooh, like that but a bit more dragony please". "Hmmm, interesting..." I thought. "Dragons..."

Now, I kind of suck at making things look like other things, hence my trepidation and slight procrastination of this project. I needed to find a way to keep the feel of the original design, and also make it look a bit dragony without looking, well, crap really.

So, armed with my sketchbook and pencils, I set off for a distraction-free weekend chilling out with my mum. After many hours of drawing and squinting at swirly shapes, I managed to come up with something I thought looked kind of cool, and happily the friend agreed, so I set to work. And this was the result:

I think they actually turned out pretty awesome. This is my favourite kind of metalwork to do, starting with a blank piece of sheet silver and slowly piercing out and carving the edges of the design. I can happily sit at my workbench for hours merrily sawing away. Some days you can go through corners and points for ever without breaking a single sawblade, other days you can break five of them in two minutes, just sawing a straight line.

Again, I've been indecisive about the photography style and have also done one on an earring bust just to show the scale.


So, I guess the lesson learned was that sometimes it's good to be dragged begrudgingly from your comfort zone, as what you end up creating could well be one of your favourite pieces...

New Shiny Things

Hello! And a merry Christmas to everyone :)

Now that presents have all been opened, I can share with you my newest shiny things, made for the boy's mother and sister as Christmas pressies.

First, some rather nice damask wallpaper inspired earrings, set with opals and finished off with some fab blue topaz teardrops that I've been wanting to use for a while...

I'm still rather indecisive about which photography style I prefer, so I'm just taking photos of everything in different ways till I make my mind up. Maybe I'll wind up using both anyway, so I can have a bit of variety on the eventual website...

And a little detail shot here for a better view of the opals, as the colours were so bright and lovely. I actually rescued the little opals from a quite hideous shiny thing I made a long time ago. They were just too pretty to be trapped in something so alarmingly ugly. I felt they deserved a better life...

Also, a lovely birthstone charm for the boy's sister, as he bought her a silver charm bracelet as a present when we were on holiday in LA last summer and wanted something she could add to it.

I figured I'd do a shot of it on a chain, as I already have shots of another birthstone charm I made on a bracelet.

So, what with the little shiny things above, the engagement charms and another pair of Christmas pressie commissioned earrings (more of which later) I had a bit of a mental December actually. My fingers went numb many times, my random right-hand eczema went bonkers and I had a few pretty late nights where my neighbours probably did not thank me for the hammering. I shall look upon it as revenge for their child's obsession with tunelessly wailing High School Musical songs for hours on end whilst I was working.

Anyway, December generally ended up with me having mainly forgotten about Christmas until, well, Christmas Eve really. You know those people that lead you to wonder "Who on earth does their food shopping for Christmas on Christmas Eve...?" That would be me. Ooops. But, mainly by fluke, it all turned out okay, and we had a lovely chilled out day of champagne, food, TV and snoozing on the sofa. And, to be honest, there's not much more you can ask for on Christmas day than that :)