Pledging to buy handmade

I have this in turquoise, from 7071 design

I have read some very interesting and thought-provoking blog posts recently about the benefits and joys of buying handmade items. I would recommend the mindful spending posts on the fantastic Scoutie Girl blog.

Serotonin necklace from molecularmuse

I particularly love the idea of creative tithing, choosing to spend a percentage of your income each month on handmade and/or locally produced items. This idea really spoke to me because I can see the benefit to the artist and to me. The artist has the thrill of knowing that someone valued their design and work enough to invest in it which does wonders for self confidence; I know having perfect strangers buy my jewellery on Etsy has always made my day.

And of course, as a buyer, I love having beautiful things that have been hand made and not manufactured.

Feather necklace from MijuandYou

So I have made a point of buying something handmade each month. I don't tend to have an amount of money in mind as I suppose the tithing idea would suggest, I just buy something I love.

Here are a few images of things that I've bought from talented designers over the last few months.

Earrings by Joy Funnell

Comments

Making a hollow form silver clay ring

One of the benefits of starting the Make A Ring A Month movement is that I get to choose the theme each month! I had already settled on t exture as the theme for January and had a good idea of what I wanted my ring to look like. And weirdly it has ended up as I imagined it would (that doesn't often happen!). I decided to create a hollow form ring because I am a bit obsessed with making box forms at the moment. If you'd like to learn how to do that I suggest taking a look at this online course with Tracey Spurgin. I then carved into the silver clay to make the texture. I use the dockyard micro carving tools . I kiln fired the ring (I always recommend kiln firing rings as they need the strength of a long hot firing). I fired at 880 centigrade for 1.5 hours. Although I'll add here that I'm pretty sure my kiln is underfiring at them moment meaning that it is heating up to lower than the temperature it states. I need to do a proper kiln test f...

Silver clay on the BBC

If you are reading this blog then you probably already know that I make jewellery with a material called metal clay. It's not a well known material so I was really pleased to see it featuring on a programme on BBC1. The programme is called Countryfile and a metal clay artist called Emma Mitchell was featured, interviewed by Anita Rani. Emma talked about the mental health benefits of getting out into the countryside and getting inspiration from nature and natural surroundings. They picked leaves and other natural materials and used them to make moulds and silver jewellery. It's fantastic that silver clay was featured on TV as it raises awareness of the material. The metal clay world is quite small but I haven't met Emma yet although she is also teaching at the Y ou Can Make It metal clay conference in March so I am looking forward to meeting her there. You can watch the programme here on the BBC iplayer until 6th March 2018 (but only if you're in the UK unfortun...

Ring a month theme for February 2019

I've been overwhelmed by the number of people being inspired by the Ring A Month challenge. At the time of writing, we have 351 members in the Facebook group and 300 followers on Instagram. If you'd like to join in there's still time! Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/makearingamonth/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ringamonth/ I have decided to announce the theme for the coming month a week before the start of the month. This is to give people time to think about their designs, particularly those that are busy and have a lot to fit in. The theme for February 2019 is .... music and lyrics Here are some ideas to get you thinking about how to interpret the theme Be inspired by A song/piece of music you love A specific lyric from a song A style of music e.g. classical, metal, rap, funk etc A musical An instrument/s Music artwork (CD/LP sleeve or music video) A concert you went to (or wish you went to!) A music festival Choose ...

Edinburgh jeweller

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