A Ring of Two Stones - Sky Blue Topaz and Labradorite

This is a birthday ring, for this month, and I liked the idea of using a birthstone. Of all the shades topaz comes in, the sky blue variation is, for me, the most beautiful. It does seem to look like a little piece of sky, captured in stone, perhaps even the sky on a November day when the sun is as bright as it can bear at this time of year and the blue around it has that slightly chilled look, as if the heat from our star can't quite warm it to the deeper hues of summer.

The other most usual birthstone for November, according to information on the web, is citrine. And although I've used topaz and citrine together before (see the stones I bought and what I made from them), it just didn't seem to work right for this birthday or the ring I wanted to make.



So when I bought the rose cut cabochons I wrote about in this post, as well as the sky blue topaz which I'd purposely chosen, I bought gems in colours I hoped would match nicely with it. The lapis lazuli was too opaque and the iolite too small (fool that I was not to order it in a larger size) but the labradorite sat perfectly with the topaz. Against the sky blue topaz, the labradorite looks, to me, like stormy skies, with a hint of rainbow, the opposite to clear blue heavens but with a beauty of its own.

I made a simple ring in rectangular wire, with the design left open to be a little adjustable so I didn't have to reveal too much by casually enquiring after someone's ring size - let's face it, when isn't that a giveaway?

When I make this again, I may use a slightly heavier wire as I had to hammer this ring to give it a bit more strength - I didn't want it to be too adjustable... But I'm happy with the colours and cut of the gems against the silver and I hope the recipient is too. I also rather love the way the gems, especially the labradorite, look different in varying lights and I've tried to show that in the photos I've included here.

Circles in Square Wire Pendant

Made for a March birthday, this pendant also served to remind me how square wire is so effective, and also exceedingly nice to work with. Round wire is used more often in jewellery making, probably partly because it's easily available in so many thicknesses. It's easy to forget about square wire but I find it delivers a certain satisfaction during the making process, and also looks sleek and subtle in the finished piece.



I set the tiny aquamarine gemstone using a sterling silver Wraptite setting. This wasn't quite as easy to work with as the video I watched had led me to believe (mainly due to the 'fiddliness' of such a small gem (4mm) and a nearly equally small setting), but looked good in the end, and also provided what feels like a strong and secure setting for a faceted gemstone.

Aquamarine is one of the most popular gemstones for March and the stone I bought was really quite beautiful, full of vibrancy that bounced light around. It reminded me how well colour works with sterling silver.

Less than a word - singular letter jewellery

Since a special birthday often calls for a special gift, I pondered just what to make a close relative a little earlier this year. I'd already made her a necklace and earrings, and probably a bracelet too, once upon a time. I'd also made her a ring, which meant options were increasingly a little short in terms of originality. So I did some browsing, seeing if inspiration would hit me, and eventually it did.

Pinterest is always a wonderful source of ideas when your own mind just needs a jump-start for prompting and letter jewellery (does it have a better name than this?) is pretty popular right now when it comes to personalised jewellery gifts.

Some perusing later, a few sketches, a prototype in copper wire and a few more sketches, I came up with this...





Made with two separate pieces of silver wire (just to complicate things), a little bit of soldering and a lot of polishing. So far it's needed adjusting twice but that can only mean the recipient really wants to wear it...! Do let me know if you've made any letter jewellery lately, and have photos to share, or if you have come up with a better description of, ahem, letter jewellery... seriously, it must have a better name that that...

Silver, citrine, topaz and toil... the finished jewellery

Recently I showed some photos of the cut gemstone beads I'd bought for a project. Here are some images of the finished jewellery items themselves.

The plan was a to make a necklace for a very special birthday, falling in November, so being able to incorporate birth stones was important. I also wanted to make something wearable so, while it may look delicate, the soldering and strengthening of the silver through hammering means it's pretty strong.







The earrings were less planned and came about as I didn't have enough citrines to use for both items, but this also allowed me to play with the varying sizes of the white topaz gems. I was also able to use one of the little soldered silver designs from the necklace, and echo it in the earrings.



It was a time-consuming and absorbing project, and took a lot of preparation, but the final piecing together of the necklace especially was surprisingly quick. Hope you enjoy seeing the results of the toil!

Buying handmade when you also make...

Sometimes a cake just isn't right for a birthday. Muffins won't do. It has to be cookies, or biscuits if you're more traditional, in the UK, and just prefer that word. Last week I baked a batch of cookies twice (no, not the same ones twice, new ingredients the second time...), refining the recipe for the second batch, and then putting the survivors (freshly cooked biscuits always seem to make the kitchen an attractive place) into a sturdy parcel and dispatched them to the grateful recipient.

Yes, I did feel good about myself. I'd made the effort, and helped make someone's day a little more special. And that made me wonder what it is about handmade things that make people feel pleased when they've created them, and does that feeling also translate into buying handmade gifts for others...

I have to say, when I buy homemade and give them away, I feel happier with myself than when I buy mass-produced from the high street (or worse, a supermarket). I feel like I've tried harder and haven't gone for the easiest option.

So even though I haven't made the item myself, my appreciation of the time and work that's gone into it, the fact that it wasn't created on a machine, along with hundreds of others that look identical, means that the handmade 'magic' rubs off on me as well.

I can't deny that I do sometimes feel the tiniest bit guilty that instead of buying handmade, I should have made it... I must confess to having a list of crafts, as long as the scarf I've not yet figured out how to knit, that I'd like to learn how to do...

But for now I'll muddle through, dabbling every now and then in other creative pursuits, but trying to focus on the many-faceted medium of jewellery... as I say, for now...

ps. The cookie recipe was this one. When I adapted it for the second batch, I added a little more flour and used both dark chocolate chunks and white chocolate chips. They're not massively sweet biscuits, but they are very mmmm...

Jewellery benches, squeaky chairs, and how to sit

Photo from Kotomi on Flickr

The perfect mental image of summer seems full of endless time, to be filled on light-filled evenings with jewellery making, blogging, finding new ideas and inspiration... the reality is a little different.

My lack of productivity on the jewellery making front, and the knock-on effect that has had on my inclination to blog about it (harder to do when you're not making much!) is, to a large part, down to the previously mentioned dodgy shoulder. Late last year a slight niggle turned into an awful couple of days of discomfort which has now settled down into a generalised state of unease. My lower back is a bit dodgy too. This isn't a great combinations.

It has brought into sharp focus for me the importance of having the right type of seating and table to work at. Yes, I know it's boring, and health-and-safety-ish, but when the lack of the right chair makes making hard, then you know that, sometimes, health-and-safety might just have a point. Sometimes...

For quite a while now (oh, okay, since forever), my jewellery making place has been an ergonomic nightmare. My work table is, well, a table, an old gateleg table my sister gave me when she last moved. Before that, my work table was another old table, a kitchen one with extendable sides. Neither of these look anything like an ideal silversmithing workbench. My chair is even worse, a hard plastic not-very-height-adjustable swivel chair, with awkward arms and an awful squeak when it moves. I put a cushion or blanket on it to make it more comfortable but it only does so much.

This really isn't sounding good, is it.

Even before my shoulder and back both decided they didn't like me anymore, I did not find either chair or table comfortable to work with. I just put up with them because they were what I had and, for now, that's what I'm still doing. This means making jewellery is slow, necessitating many more rests and breaks and back stretches and less full-on immersion in what I'm doing. I suspect that even with a bells and whistles workbench and a wonderfully designed chair, I'd still need the breaks. If it takes a long time to make a back and shoulder wonky then it takes a long time for them to heal.

I do know how I should be sitting, however, and where I should be sitting. It should be at a tall table or on a low stool - ideally, when working with your hands, those hands should be up close to your face so you can see what you're doing without having to bend, and not down closer to your lap, where your neck and shoulders will have to curl so your head can get close to your work. It's kind of logical and yet it's also easy to miss and/or ignore.

On my long list of silver smithing hopes and dreams is a workbench - you can buy a jeweller's bench, even a space saving one, but it's equally possible to make one (and try this one too, although you have to subscribe (for free) to access it) or to adapt one from a table - either of these latter ways means you can custom design the bench to fit you, so it's the right height and has space for all your tools.

As for me, without a nifty custom-made workbench creating is a slower process than I'd like at the moment but, thankfully, I've felt some inspiration returning to my addled jewellery mind, and by spending small pockets of time (literally a few minutes) at the workbench I've been able to make a couple of birthday gifts (a impending birthday is often a great destroyer of creative blocks of any kind, I've found!).

Look, no silver...

PS. If you want to see a few more examples of workbenches, then check out the Ganoskin Bench Exchange on the subject -  59 pages of bench photos and endless inspiration!

Love this very simple, but wonderfully effective, description of how to DIY a jeweller's bench!

Not sure how practical this is for full-on smithing but if you're short of space, and have someone to store your larger tools, then this article and this tutorial look fascinating...

Also, take a look at this Pinterest page - it's not all jewellery benches, or even benchs, but is still worth browsing through.

Do share your own working space - does it work for you, or is it just tolerable? We can but dream of perfect crafting areas...