Trying to make posters!

I'm trying to design posters to advertise my website and the jewellery I make - and it isn't going well!

I guess this just proves that my design skills are definitely jewellery oriented, and not so able in the "poster design" area.

I've managed to decide that the posters need the company name (fairly obvious) and the website address (again, fairly obvious) and I've decided the best way to draw attention is to put photos of some of the jewellery on it.

But that's really as far as my "design" skills manage for this particular task anyway.

Attempt one I thought was quite good until I printed it out as an A4 poster and found that the captions I'd put on the photos cannot be read! If it was an A3 poster they would probably be readable - just.

Here's a scanned image of try 1 - it's worth a laugh anyway. It was printed in draft quality so the image isn't great - sorry about that.

Poster try 1

Ah well, on to try two - 'cos being me - in photoshop I had "merged" the captions down into the photos so therefore cannot change them in any way!

So, try 2 - better, much better in that the captions on the photos are readable - but now I'm not sure I'm even going about the right kind of thing. Here's try 2.

Poster try 2

One thing I am happy about on try 2 is that at least the captions on the photos are readable - whether they make sense and are good I don't know.

Tomorrow at work (the day job) I'll get opinions on the 2 I've done so far. But I think it's going to be back to the drawing board.

Until next time
Anne

Sore fingers - but worth it.

So far my idea of doing something jewellery related each week is working - that's 2 weeks in a row that I've done something! Hopefully I can keep this up but we'll see.

Last Thursday I was thinking about the fact that everything I've made recently has involved beads - so colour choices for what to wear to work mean I can't always wear a particular piece of jewellery. I was also unhappy with the fact that nearly all the earrings I have made recently have been of the "long and dangly" variety - great for evenings out but they do get caught up between jacket collars and scarves in cold weather! I kept having to take one pair off everytime I put my coat on, and that got boring quickly. So, what this all leads to is, I decided to make myself a simple set of silver earrings for everyday wear.

Now what to make??? I've been toying with various chain maille designs for a while now, but something I've not really used is "flowers" - this is a set of 3 jump rings of the same size linked together and then laid on top of each other to create a flower as shown in this earring:



Flower earring

Having made the pair of simple silver earrings I wanted I was happy, at least for 24 hours or so.

On Saturday morning I was watching TV and my fingers started twitching - some might see that as a sign of madness or something, but I decided it was time to do some jewellery making.

So I spent a little while making 3 larger jump rings of 3 varying thicknesses of sterling silver wire - I had this idea of binding them together and using them as a pendant - but it kept falling apart. At that point I gave up for the day, it obviously wasn't to be. But I've kept the rings in case I can use them later - waste not, want not as they say.

On Sunday I was having a similar problem - couldn't really settle to anything, so I decided to have another go at a necklace. This time I decided to stick with the "flower" design I'd used for the earrings. Time to make a necklace to match the earrings already produced.


I decided to try different sizes of jump rings for the flowers - I have a set of mandrels with multiple sized sections so finding things to wind the wire around was not a problem. So the largest rings had a 10 mm inner diameter, then I just worked my way along the largest mandrel so the rings are 10 mm, 9 mm, 8 mm, 7 mm and 6 mm from that mandrel. I then decided I wanted one more size down, so the second mandrel was used to make some 5 mm inner diameter rings.

I formed the flowers one at a time - one in the 10 mm size and two each of the other sizes of rings.

Then I started linking the rings together. At first I was going to use small rings with an inner diameter of 2.92 mm - then I realised that you can't get 3 pieces of 1 mm thick wire in a 2.92 mm space - it doesn't work!

So I picked up the left over 3.25 mm rings I've been trying to find a use for. And they worked a treat. Originally I started linking the flowers together directly - but then decided I wanted more space between them, so used 3 smaller rings instead of one.

This is what it turned out like - and I'm really pleased with it.

Graduated flower necklace and earrings

Admittedly my fingers were sore after making this - holding the spirals of wire while you saw through the rings with a jewellery saw does tend to make your fingers numb after a while, but it was so worth it!

Bye for now
Anne

Inspired by Egypt

I've always loved Egyptian things - the pyramids, the temples, the art work and as you'd expect, the jewellery.

I visited Egypt itself a number of years ago and thoroughly enjoyed visiting the places I'd only seen on TV or read about. At the time I had no interest in making jewellery so was not bothered by not visiting the Cairo museum or any other location at which the ancient jewellery could be viewed.

But since I started making my own jewellery I've been toying with the idea of making something based on Egyptian designs. I knew I wanted to involve carnelian (my favourite stone) and something dark blue like lapis lazuli but didn't really know what I wanted to do.

Cornelian (or carnelian) drops

Recently I was at a jewellery exhibition and there were some stalls selling beads - one of them had faceted carnelian drops and dark blue tube beads labelled as "lapis" - so I bought them, a design was brewing at the back of my mind.

"Lapis" tubes

I carefully took my prizes home and my brain continued to work on what to do with them.

After a couple of false starts I sketched up a design for a necklace I liked (sorry, forgotten to scan the sketch or I'd show it to you now).

But then I stopped doing anything to do with jewellery making for a while - a combination of "winter blues" and lack of inspiration I think.

Anyway, with Christmas over with I was determined to get back to making jewellery again. So I sat down with the design for these beads and put the drops on to sterling silver wire with loops. Then it all sat around for another couple of weeks.

A couple of days ago I was fed up of having accomplished nothing recently so made the concerted effort to move on with this piece of work. And I managed to finish the necklace that night (it just proves what I bit of will power will accomplish), so I made matching earrings.

Sorry that the photo isn't the best one I've ever taken but you can see the important bits in it. So this is what I created.

"Inspired by Eqypt" necklace and earrings

Today I am wearing the set around the office, need to check that it isn't going to fall apart, and making sure that it has no "rough" bits. So far it's a success.

I'm hoping that I can create something jewellery related each week of the rest of 2011, even if only some findings to use later (ear wires, s-clasps, jump rings, etc). And I hope to be a bit more creative with my own designs this year rather than only copying other peoples designs. Guess I'll see how it goes.

Bye for now
Anne

Blue lampwork inspiration

While checking out the new lampwork beads on Little Castle Designs the other week I spotted some beads I wanted, so I ordered them.

I loved the blue colour of the beads and the swirl that Sabine (the maker) had put round the outside.

For a while I've had a long section of really nice sterling silver chain lying around the house and I've been wanting to use it for something "drapey" (if you know what I mean). So I decided Sabine's beautiful beads were ideal for putting with the chain.

I'm not sure what the official name for the type of chain is but it's a lovely spiral using very small links and I love the way it drapes when hanging from my hands so I wanted to make that drape part of the design.

I decided I'd also like to have some of the chain hanging loose as a tassle below a single bead. That led me to decide to make a pair of matching earrings also with sections of chain hanging down from them.

So these are the pieces I made:

Blue lampwork and silver

 

Blue lampwork and silver

I love the way the drapes on the necklave have worked out. I did have to swap the longer dangles I had on the necklace for the drapes to get the shape I wanted, and I am now thinking that I might shorten the central dangle in the necklace tassle so that the tassle has similar proportions to the dangles on the earrings. But I haven't really decided yet.

For now I think I'll leave them alone and wear them for a few days to see how they work. Also, to make sure that they don't all fall apart while being worn - don't want that to happen if someone ever buys them.

Until next time
Anne

What have I been up to?

It's obviously been a few weeks since I last posted here so I thought I'd drop in and leave a note for anyone who is interested.

Just after I last posted I went to California for a 2 week holiday. It was a good break to have as work (the day job as opposed to the hobby of making jewellery) has been a bit up and down in terms of good/bad feelings.

My brother and his family live in California so the main purpose of the visit was to see the family and catch up on gossip etc.

The weather while in California was slightly disappointing as it rained quite a lot, especially at weekends which did put paid to some of the family oriented outings, but at least it was warmer than the UK while raining.

But being inside so much did mean that the catch up on gossip went rather well. Large amounts of food and a moderate amount of wine were consumed over the break.

Anyway, I came back from California at the end of October.

Since then I've been looking for (and failing to find) inspiration for working with the silver clay or doing any other type of jewellery related work.

This was a bit of a problem for a while as I'm involved in a Secret Santa on a jewellery forum and the gift has to be posted by 7th December!

I have now managed to decide what I want to make for my Secret Santa recipient and have even started on the making of said gift, but it's not finished yet.

I won't be posting any photos of the Secret Santa gift until after I know it has been received - I just hope it is liked when it arrives.

And, of course, I can't wait to see what is made for me by who ever was matched with me. I tried to say something useful  about the kind of things I like/dislike (as we were asked to do) but really, I'll be happy with pretty much anything. It's just nice to get a special gift at Christmas!

Anyway, that's enough waffling for today.

Until the next time
Anne

Silver clay course - the results!

On Sunday I attended a course on using silver clay (precious metal clay) to make things (technical term there).

This is the second time I've attended a course held by Nic of Murano Silver and it was even more fun this time around as I've played with silver clay in the gap between courses.

This time I wanted to tackle 3 particular tasks: making and using moulds of buttons; setting stones; and bails for hanging from.

Nic was able to fit my requests into the course nicely without taking too much time away from the other two ladies who were there.

As I was there a short while before the others arrived we were able to look at mould making and using before they arrived so that was good.

We then started the course by making a two piece framed pendant (top left in the photo below) before Nic showed me how to set a 3 mm stone into the eye of the fish using a drill bit about the size of the stone.

The other stone in the 3rd pendant was set into a hole that was slowly carved by hand as we couldn't find a drill bit that was the right size, so I'm really chuffed with that one.

Fine silver charms

The 2 piece framed pendant has a textured background and a tiny heart charm that has been attached to the front.

Until next time
Anne

White Oak Jewellery website is live!

I've gone and done it - finally. Yesterday I paid for hosting space for the WhiteOakJewellery.co.uk domain name and this morning (at the horrendous time of 7 am) I uploaded the site.

Okay, I have to admit, it didn't work first time, but then it is the first time I've ever uploaded a website to the net so a few teething problems are to be expected.

But it is up and running now so I'm pleased with myself over that.

Now to figure out how to tell Google etc about the site and get them to start paying attention to it.

Then, one day it will hopefully start appearing on people's search results - although I know that will a lot more work on my part before it happens. Just 'cos the website is "out there" doesn't mean anyone can find it! That much I do know.

Full Persian bracelet

The other day I blogged about the full persian bracelet I had made - turns out it wasn't the full persian weave after all - I hadn't followed the instructions as closely as I should have done. But, by accident, I had made a Box Weave bracelet instead - I guess that is how new weaves are found/created.

Anyway, full persian or box, I still like the bracelet.

But it now means I can have another go at the full persian weave at some point - I'll just have to remember to pay a lot more attention to the instructions and accompanying photos.

Until next time
Anne