Im back!

Wow, didn't realize that i had been ignoring my blog for so long. Sorry! But it has been a busy few weeks, first I was my friends Bridesmaid and i have now been running around organizing my display for the exhibition that I am taking part in at artspace in Durban. And while doing that i have been making jewellery.

Flavours is an exhibition by Durban emerging jewellers which is going to be held at artSpace on Monday the 13th July at 18.00 so please, if you are in or from the Durban area, come and have a look. The exhibition will run until the 1st August.
This is the exhibition that we have all been preparing for.

Below are a few new pieces that I have been making over the last few weeks.

These earrings are made of black wooden disks, the red beads at the top are real coral beads, then silver wire work on top with a silver flower.

This a bracelet that I made from stained wooden round disks and a T bar clasp, the T bar is decorated as a flower garden.

This a new wooden pendant that I made with forged wire and silver flowers.

New Pieces!

I have finished these two pieces, a bangle and a pendant. I have enjoyed working with wood and the things you can do with this material. I'm hoping that the vein on the bangle resembles of just looks like a vein plant.

More Private Work!

Over the december holidays I was asked to make a few different items.

First was a pendant for a family member, she had bought the stones on Bidorbuy. A website that as acutions every Wednesday in South Africa. She had gotten a blue topaz and an unusual shaped opal. Stunning stones. She wanted them set in white gold but because she couldn't afford white gold, so we set them in silver instead.

This next piece was half my design and half the customers design, she wanted a bracelet, but big, bold and chunky yet not a complicated design. She like a pendant I made in 2nd year where I made a dome and made glass beads to be suspended in the middle of the dome.

The bracelet is made of many dome and instead of the glass bead, I made silver beads that went inside the domes, once I had soldered the domes together, it became a battle to slighlty bend the domes to fit the shape of the wrist, it was a challenge but a good one and I think it came out very well and I love it so much that I want to make one for myself.

Above is my 2nd year piece.and the bracelet I helped design and made.

The next ring I made was also a challenge, for the first time in my life I got to make or should I say alloy Rose Gold. It was difficult but now I know the secret to making rose gold. The rose gold strip is placed over a silver band. But what had happened was that I had filed a grove into the silver band thinking that it would prevent the rose gold band from coming off the silver band, and then in the process I landed up making the rose gold band spin like a stress ring, was not what I wanted but when the customer saw it and started playing with it she was happy. So we didnt change it.

Private Jobs.

In amongst everything else with the end of year so and preparing for it I have been very busy in private jobs for my own customers. The first piece, A friend of mine owns a farm and carved a small piece of wood into a heart for his girlfriend and he wanted it to be a pendant, so I made the pieces to make it into a pendant. I found myself loving the idea of wooden pendant that have been carved and so I'm going to start trying to carve wood for myself or at least shape it.





The second piece is my best friends engagement ring, I was so excited when her boyfriend phoned me to ask if I would make the ring. I think that it just made it that little more special as her friend made it, He proposed last night at bible study infront of everyone and she cant stop looking at it and showing it off. I'm so glade that she likes it. This isn't a very good photo, but I have told her she has to bring it back so I can take a better photo.

More Wood!

I've sort of been on my own mission lately and trying to Incorporated new materials to my jewellery. When I made that first pair of wooden earrings I realized that I enjoyed working with wood and had more pieces that I wanted to make, its like designs have been pouring out my head, I have so many ideas there's just not enough time in the day to get them out and the more I working the more ideas keep popping into my head.
I been wearing my wooden earring and have been given orders for them and now I have to try keep up with not only my head but also the orders.
Below are a few more jewellery pieces that I have made. One of the girls that I work with asked for a pendant that matched the earrings that I made last week.

Pendant made of wood with small silver flowers riveted and a mother of pearl flower carved shell in the middle hanging off a brown organza ribbon.

Wooden earrings cut to a pear shape with small silver flowers riveted to the wood. They so light you forget that you have them on. I feel that they simple yet elegant.

This is another pair that I have just made, the only problem with these are that they are sightly heavy on the ear. They that the two different shades of wood giving them that contrast and they have two small silver flowers riveted and that the mother of pearl shell carved flowers.

The next two pairs of earrings are just plain silver flowers that I made into studs and little sweet dangle earrings. They very light and I feel they are a bit to plain for my liking but I have a few orders from friends and family for them. So they work I guess.

Ideas!

I went shopping the other day and found a whole lot of things that caught my eye. There are wooden disks, clay roses and some shell flowers. I suddenly had a few ideas that I needed to get out of my system. It was like they were hunting me. So here I start.

I have started playing with the wooden disks and disks of pierced metal and I started layering them to see what they would look like. I felt that it gave the effect that I wanted, but the metal disks need more piercing and more intricate patterns on the metal to show the colour of the wood a lot more.