Skip to main content

End of the teaching year reflections

Image
By
Our lilly pond, taken by Gary Ullah Photography
It is coming to the end of the teaching year for me. I've taught and trained for most of my career but for the first time this year I taught a jewellery making class.
I taught Silver Clay Jewellery at the Mary Ward Centre in London. It's an interesting experience. It is different from teaching an academic subject (I teach Psychology there as well). For starters everyone is doing something different and it's not always easy to keep track of it all! Also demonstrating techniques is fine but it can be a bit nerve wracking with everyone watching - you don't want to make a mistake and cut your finger! Oh, wait, I did do that!
I did enjoy the classes that I taught though. It's great to have the students for three hours at a time so they can really get engaged with it all. And it was lovely to see what they had made by the end of the course. They all learnt new skills and that's all you can hope for.
There will be more silver clay classes at the Mary Ward next academic year. For now I get to relax by my pond for a bit!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Making a hollow form silver clay ring

By
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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Silver clay on the BBC

By
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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ring a month theme for February 2019

By
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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more