Edinburgh jeweller

I am very fortunate to be one of the early testers for Art Clay 950 , a product currently available for pre-sale from Metal Clay Ltd and launching on 1st September. I wrote about my experiences with it in a previous blog post here . In this post I want to focus on the enamelled pendant that I made. Making the pendant I used a Quick Art template and the Quick Art stylus from Metal Clay. I rolled the stencilled section out at 3 cards thick. It was easy to cut out the stencil using the stylus which has a really fine tip. My previous needle tool made that quite difficult because the needle was thick so it was difficult to get a neat line. I dried and filed the stencilled section. I then added it to a 2 card thick layer of wet clay. Once dried I cleaned the edges with baby wipes to ensure no join was visible. Firing I fired the pendant on an open shelf on vermiculite in the following two part firing schedule Once your piece is completely dry put it on a ki...

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...

The Washington at the B&B Ever since I discovered silver clay I have wanted to add colour. I love enamelled pieces, from football badges to intricate brooches. I have used coloured resins and I did like them but I do like the effect of real enamel. When I saw that Joy Funnell  (whose work I wrote about here ) did one to one days tailor-made I decided to go for it. Joy is based in Hastings so I had the excuse to book myself into a rather lovely B&B called the White House . I had the Washington room which is pictured here. My pieces ready to go in the kiln  Joy's husband kindly picked me up from my B&B and then Joy and I were off! In the morning Joy taught me how to make silver clay pieces ready to be enamelled using deep textures, recesses and the enamelled accents technique to create a cloisenne effect. We ate a quick sandwich and fired the pieces, moving on to grinding up the enamels, painting them on and firing. I made two large pendants using all the...

I have been very fortunate to have a brilliant silver clay teacher in Julia Rai who I have now done two courses with and am booked for three more. Julia is the first person in the world to achieve Metal Clay Masters registry level 4 (congratulations!). Sometimes being at the top of your game does not equal a good teacher but Julia is excellent at both the artistry and the teaching! Now that I am getting more confident with the clay my thoughts are turning towards adding colour. I have always loved enamelled silver pieces and have wanted to learn how to do it myself. I was booked onto an enamelling evening class in January but it was cancelled, I presume due to lack of numbers. But then I found that a metal clay artist and enameller, whose work I really admire, also does tuition days and I had to go for it. Joy Funnell is a name I know through doing a google image search for enamelling. Practically every piece I liked and clicked through to turned out to be Joy's! She is a...