Edinburgh jeweller

I've been working on some chain making over the last few months. This piece is made of bronze and silver clay links. The bronze is Goldie Bronze . This is a clay that you mix up yourself from powder. I mixed a 50/50 mix of hard and soft bronze clay. I shaped the bronze links and fired them in carbon as instructed. They came out well fired. The silver links are Art Clay silver new formula . I made the links, dried them, cut them, reformed them in between the bronze and torch fired each link separately. It does take a bit of work! I'm pleased with this as my first metal clay chain. Using the bronze makes it more affordable than just using silver. I also had a go at some more traditional chain making with copper and sterling silver. I did the chain making course at the London Jewellery School and enjoyed focussing on soldering for the day. We learnt to make our own jump rings, textured them and soldered them into a chain.

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Danielle LaPorte

Getting ready to start filing my wax ring Wax carving is quite a traditional way of making jewellery. You start with a lump of wax (you can get them in different shapes including for rings as in the photo here). You use files and sanding to take away wax to reveal your design. You then take your wax pieces to a caster to be cast in metal. I'd never tried wax carving and was intrigued by it as a method so I attended the beginners wax carving class at the London Jewellery School. We started out be looking at some samples of what can be done in wax. We then did some sketching to design our pieces. I chose to make a ring as I rarely make rings! Once we had our basic design we choose our wax (they come in one ring size so you have to file it to adjust the sizing). Then we spent a LOT of time sawing and filing! My ring in wax ready for casting In fact, I hadn't finished my filing and sanding by the end of the class! I had to finish it off at home. I hollowed out the to...

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