Custom Name Necklaces

I love doing name necklaces. As I may have mentioned previously, cutting things from silver sheet with tiny sawblades is one of my favourite things.

I made this one for a lovely London Rollergirl just before she moved away a few months ago now, but hadn't got around to uploading the pictures.

Tada!
Tricky font to work with that one, all fine lines and squiggly bits, but I like a challenge!

This is a more recent piece, commissioned for another London Rollergirl based on her team, the Suffrajets, logo - which looks like so:

And here's the necklace:

I've done a couple of pieces based on the same logo in the past, which can be seen here, but this was the first one where I got to use my fledgling engraving skills. Am self-teaching, which mainly means I'm taking large chunks out of my fingers with the gravers!

Anyway, some more custom things coming your way soon, but farewell for now.

Custom Shiny Skates

So, I mentioned that I’d been working on a couple of new personalised derby skate necklaces recently. Well, here they are!

Silver winged skate with a little shiny 23 and black and white gemstones:

This was made for a rollergirl from New Zealand – I wonder which league/team there skates in black and white...

And another custom skater number, this time on a separate chain from the skate:

I do like making the little numbers – they take a while to cut out by hand, then curve all the edges and engrave the detail, but it’s so worth it when they’re finished!

Now onwards! I have more moustaches to finish, a flamey heart to make a master for, and some pearl stringing to learn about.

Best get on with it then...

Personalised Roller Derby Jewellery

Having had a fair few emails recently about personalising my derby skate necklaces with skaters' numbers and team colours, I thought I'd create a whole new page on my website with different options available.

And here it is!


http://laurengracejewellery.com/personalised-roller-derby-jewellery/

You can pick your number, let me know what font you'd like and I'll make it in shiny silver for you.

Also, you can add semi-precious gemstones in your league or team colours. Like this:

Or indeed this:

Exciting, no?

Ooooh, Published!

I meant to write about this a couple of weeks ago, but in all the busyness of January, I forgot.

I was contacted by lovely Jayne of the Guild of Jewellery Designers, asking if I would be happy for my silver skate charm that I've been working on to be the subject of an article on their website, showing the process from inspiration and design through to the finished piece. Of course, I was indeed happy!

So, it can be found here (although my website is not yet finished, so you can't buy them yet!):

http://www.guildofjewellerydesigners.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=890:shiny-roller-skates&catid=35:general-news&Itemid=61

Words mainly by me, with a couple of tweaks from Jayne.

So there you go, my first ever article. Exciting, no?

In other news, my lovely friend Richard is visiting from L.A. next week. This makes me very happy, as it's been far too long.

A Small Shiny Roller Skate

I have finally finished my silver roller derby skate charm, hurrah!

This was a project I started way back in 2009, as I wanted to do a skate charm that looked like my Riedell 265 skates.

You may recall that my initial attempts at sculpting the boot in silver clay were somewhat disastrous and looked like this:

Which is rubbish, obviously.

Attempting to sculpt the trucks and axles was even worse, as silver clay is far too brittle to do anything delicate with.

So, I decided to ignore it for a while instead. Obviously, this wasn’t helpful to the overall getting it finished plan.

Finally, defeat was admitted and a modelmaker specialising in sculpting tiny things was called in.

And so over to the very talented (and also terribly patient) James Freckingham of Robotic Industries, who deciphered my scribbly pictures and paragraphs of wittering about wings and delivered me an adorable little replica of my skate. Hurrah! Here it is.

I decided to shorten the wings a little, so it looked like this:

Then off to the caster! Who may have wanted to kill me... Apparently it was terribly difficult to cast, many moulds were made, but finally my little silver castings arrived. Tada!

And, after cleanup, soldering, polishing and attaching wheels, my little silver skate finally looked like so:

Which was exactly what I wanted, yay! A small silver roller derby skate charm, which looked just like my 265s. Except my skates sadly don’t have wings...

A few different angles:

It turned out much heavier than I had thought – the charm weighs around 15 grams, which is a big old chunk of silver!

I also did a couple of special ones with sparkly gemstone attachments to represent league and team colours.

I think they look rather nice...

A Halloween Weekend

I do love Halloween. How could you not? There are ghosts and pumpkins and bats and dressing up and much silliness.

This year, we had a bit of a dinner party on Saturday – it wasn’t an actual Halloween party, but obviously this didn’t stop me from adding pumpkin lights and spooky candles and dancing about in a sparkly spider necklace and glittery bat tights. Apparently one of my dinner guests described me as a cross between Kylie Minogue and Marilyn Manson!

Anyway, here are my pumpkin lights:

I actually want to keep them up all winter. Could I get away with putting them on my Christmas tree I wonder, in a Nightmare Before Christmas inspired fashion? Maybe I’ll sneak them on and the boy won’t notice...

My ludicrous bat candles:

My fabulous sparkly spider necklace:

There would also have been some Halloween inspired cupcakes, but sadly my mixer suffered a rather dramatic death half way through dessert making. I had made some rather distressed looking sugarpaste ghosts that were going to hover on spooky graveyard cupcakes, but sadly it was not to be.

See...

All in all, it was rather fun. We made Spanish food, drank wine and played on the Guitar Hero game that had been delivered that morning. I discovered I am very bad on drums, but much, much worse on vocals!

So that was Saturday and then on Sunday night we went to see ALICE COOPER!!!!!! Amazers! He was doing a 2 night Halloween show at the Roundhouse, which is such a small and lovely venue. It was brilliant fun.

Usually my weekends are spent quietly ensconced at my work bench or watching Come Dine With Me, so it was all a bit hectic and I am sleepy today.

Much work needs to be done this week though. I have two orders for silver crash helmets from the US, plus a further enquiry this morning, so I need to get making things. Exciting!

Roller Derby Charms - New Photography!

Unhappy as I was with my recent photography exploits, my lovely friend Dan arranged for his photographer friend, Paul, to come over and take some new pictures for me. And he was happy to be paid in beer! I wish more people would work for beer, it would make my life much easier. Dear Mr Website Designer, please could I have a website? Here is some beer. Sadly, things don't work like that in real world. Sigh...

Anyway, I digress. Paul turned up with a massive camera (it turns out that yes, size does matter...) and a ton of flash guns.

And here are the results:

Much better, yes?

So, now I just need to get me one of those big cameras, some photography knowledge and learn how to build a website and I'll be sorted. Simples!

Silver Roller Derby Charms and Photography Fail

Thought I'd best have a go at photographing the new charms.


Sadly, it turns out my camera is a bit rubbish at capturing shiny things and refuses to focus most of the time. Eep!

Did a bit of research on the interwebs and have decided I would either like a Canon SX10 IS or a Canon G10. Currently, I cannot afford either, as they're both around £300, but I figured if I can clear out my wardrobe and sell enough stuff on Ebay to pay for it, that's like getting a free camera, right...?

Anyway, after much muttering and a large glass of wine, I managed to get a couple of shots that are kind of okay, and will do for now until I can afford a better camera.

So, there you go. I now need to learn how to be a jammer, as that helmet's my favourite I think. If you've ever seen me skate, you will realise how likely that is to happen ;)

Now I just need to finish the mannequin head and get some decent shots of the hats. It has progressed slightly and now looks like this:

Still needs some more work. That is what I shall be doing tonight, seeing how the bank says I'm not allowed to go out and all...