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.

Although I learnt to enamel on silver from Joy Funnell , I decided to take a six week enamelling course to brush up on my skills and practice. The college I work at, the Mary Ward Centre , provide so many fantastic courses that it is difficult to choose but I always find time to do at least one each year. These are some pieces that I made yesterday, week 2 of the course. Last week we were practicing on copper blanks. I decided to buy some blanks with holes so that I could actually wear them if they came out well! I got these triangular copper blanks from Cooksons  in a pack of 6. I am very happy with my first two pieces (the white with blue ones). They are both mistakes! The white enamel melted at a lower temperature than the blue which is why they look a bit blotchy. I like that effect though! The other two, I fired both of them for too long. I quite like the ceramic look of the third piece. I think I will add more colour to the fourth next week. Are you doing any classes...