A bella vacanza in Venice!

My love and I spent a beautiful week last week in Venice, Italy. Here is a photo of me looking out over the lagoon to the church of San Giorgio Maggiore. I didn't take one photo while we were there, which is one of the benefits of travelling with a photographer! I got to enjoy the scenery while Gary was capturing it. Please do have a look at his fantastic photos that can be found here on flickr.
As usual for us we spent a lot of time in and around churches (we have also visited Wells Cathedral and Winchester Cathedral in England this year). I love church architecture and art. I find it very inspiring for my jewellery designing, particularly for enamelling.
Our Venice church visit count was seventeen! The highlight of our church going was the Basilica di San Marco which I think is the most impressive church I have ever been into. The mosaics are just astounding, truly astounding.
We also visited the island of Murano, famous for glass. I enjoyed some window shopping looking at the gorgeous jewellery! We bought three glass balloons that are currently hanging from the ceiling right next to me as a lovely reminder of a really fantastic trip.

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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 ...

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