Bambuseae...

These are the pieces I'm really enjoying making at the moment other than the Fidget bracelets. Bambuseae means bamboo and when I made my first squares I had done the print to represent Normal MacCaig's poems 'Adrift' and 'Moorings' which talk about boats just kind of floating quietly on water. But, everyone said that the print looked like leaves - in particular bamboo leaves - so I started trying to find a more interesting name that "Bamboo Print Pieces". So I found out that it was from the Bambuseae family, and I liked how it was spelled - though I can never remember!

Though every time I see the name I get a Regina Spektor song called Baobab in my head and Baobab (Bottle Trees) are actually these bizarre trees with hugely thick trunks and branches only at the top making them look kind of like Disney's interpretation of Mome Raths or Beaker from the Muppets. Which is unimportant but just shows the weirdness of my mind that I can go from Bamboo to Muppets in three steps.

So, anyway, here are the pieces I made using roller pressed Stirling Silver.

So that's pretty much everything from Christmas, so now to get one with some new stuff!

Enjoy!

Peridot Tri-Corner Bracelet

(Stirling Silver with 3 Princess Cut Peridot)

Another in my tri-corner series, which normally have fidgets on them moving around the bracelet. But in this case I've used princess cut Peridots. It was a commission from my Grandpa for part of my Gran's Christmas present and Peridots are one of her favourite stones, so I chose the princess cut to match a ring she had made by one of my tutors/ex-boss a few years ago.

I'm still working on my sizing formula to make these bracelets, it's a little complicated, but I think I've got it more or less solved so long as I don't put my bracelet sizer to the wrong size to begin with. I did that at Christmas and ended up having to make two completely new bracelets. Which was time consuming, however it does mean that I have spares now to sell once I put on the fidgets.

Always a bright side!

(Need to take a better picture - benefit of it being Gran's is I still can!)

Visa Versa Fidgets

As promised, some of the pieces I made over Christmas. Visa Versa Fidget Bracelets are made of Stirling silver, with either the fidget elements or the bracelet being polished and the other frosted. Thus visa versa. I made six of them as part of a commission with round, oval and tri-corner fidgets on either a round or flattened tri-corner bracelet. They're really light and I've been working on my own formula for sizing - it's a little complicated. I'm wanting to do a lot more with this kind of design, I've designed a load of versions on Rhino3D, just need to purchase the silver to make them!

Enjoy!

A cheap Juno reference...

So my last proper posting was way back in July and that's just plain pathetic! The last piece I therefore posted was my mum's wedding ring.

A few things have happened since, but I'll start with a picture of the Eternity ring I made her for Christmas, which my dad asked to match the other as use the same type of stones which were in her engagement ring: diamonds and sapphires.

It was actually a really busy Christmas, which given I'd had a pretty busy few months prior is pretty weird.

My Masters finished in September and so I am now a Master of Design - I'm not sure why but every time I say that I feel as though I need to type MWHAHAHAHAHAHA! - and I'm not going to lie and say I'm not slightly relieved it's over, but I am going to say that I am missing my friends dreadfully and seeing people every day. However, I felt exactly the same when when I finished my Undergraduate degree.

I actually came up with some designs I'm really proud of, but still need fine tuning. My plan is to order some silver this week and get enough for a few new versions of these pieces which if I never take it forward with their given purpose I will take them forward just as jewellery. I even got an offer of someone who would take them on in their gallery just as pieces. Which was great.

The degree show was mad actually. We had two opening nights, the first with a couple of great lectures on design, which Mike Press used the photo of people in my glasses as a picture of the class...shame that not everyone in the class was in it and two undergrads were. I wasn't even in it! I really wish it had been all of us. It would have been a wonderful image to have to remember the year.

It's so weird being done with uni for good. I am genuinely terrified by the fact.

Since September I've been having some down time. Dad and I have made me a workshop at home, so I've now got my own private working space in which I can work away to my hearts content. It took us the best part of Sept-November to do it all, and it still needs tweaked but I am so grateful just to have been given the space. I love my parents for doing it!

December has mostly been taken up with trying to make things and doing commissions. I had 16 pieces to make on commission this Christmas, mostly for work and family but hey, work and money is always welcome wherever it comes from.

I've spent a lot of time researching and designing new ranges too, so I have lots of ideas. I discovered very late on in my Masters that I actually love using Rhino3D (a computer aided design program) to design pieces of jewellery. A lot of people use it to get things rapid prototyped prior to casting, but I really love it just as a sketching tool. I'm not brilliant at it, and I really despised it when we were taught it in 3rd year, but now I can voluntarily spend hours on it! Usually the hours between 11 and 3 in the morning!

God I sound like a geek!

Anyway, since Christmas I've been taking a little bit of down time. Partly because I was literally having a bit of a down period, the fact that I really am finished uni and not having seem my friends in months kinda making me feel a little blue. But, it is February today in about 5 minutes time and it's time to follow the advice of a scrap of paper my friend Jen left on my bench at uni at the end of 4th year:

GET BACK ON THE BENCH BOYD!

Last bit of new. I've decided to start a new Blog called Snow in a Teapot - don't ask me why I called it that, I don't have a good answer. Anyway, because this blog is about my personal work I never talk about the things that inspire me and those are the blogs I love to read. The ones which talk about design and craft and the things people are inspired by and are passionate about. So far I've just been formatting it and I've written my introduction, but haven't posted yet. I may disband the designeresearch blog, but haven't made a decision. Shall post in the next day or two, so if you read this, check it out:

Now to keep this post down in size I've posted Thumbnail pictures of a bunch of pieces I've made. However, I promise - honest to blog - that I will post the bigger pictures once I've posted this but most of them are already on my deviantArt page or my portfolio website.

So, ta ta for now, now that I'm producing more, I'll post more frequently.

Honest to blog!

Fidget...

Silver Bracelet with 9ct Gold Fidgets

Now, this was for my granny Betty. My dad wanted to give her something special and she's been threatening to steal my poetry bracelet since she first saw it, so I designed something brand new for her based on it.

If you knew my gran you'd know how obsessed she is with bracelets. She has them wrist to elbow some days and you can always hear her before you see her. The funniest part of making this was actually sizing it. Gran may where bracelets all the time, but if I asked to borrow one she'd have been suspicious. So dad and mum tricked her into trying on mine and then giving me an excuse to get out my bracelet sizer...the bracelet is tinier than all her others, but is still a little big. These are both easy and a complete bugger to size! I want to make a series of things based on this now, I just need the time and the money to buy the materials.

Kinetic Bracelet (Shoal Series)

Shoal Bracelet: Photoetched Silver with Kinetic Elements

Although the pattern looks more like some sort of animal print, it is in fact the same shoals of fish I have photoetched on other pieces of work, however I have added the same kinetic element as the Poetry series.

(As you can probably tell, I'm wasting time before my next meetings with tutors, which I am going to go to now...so I'll probably have even more doubts in my head as of fifteen minutes from now. Wish me Luck!)

Poetry and Motion

Poetry and Motion #1 - Etched Silver Bracelet with kinetic element.


Okay, wanky title - I admit that, but I haven't given this piece a name yet...in fact naming pieces is a process I really don't enjoy that much, but still I feel compelled to do it.