About Me

My photo
Bristol, AVON, United Kingdom
I am a jewellery and craft designer in Bristol. I specialise in handmade hammered sterling silver and copper jewellery, rustic earthy metal stamped jewellery. Name toe rings and textured rings

Saturday 15 October 2011

Little Red Robin Jewellery workshop day in Bristol


Today, Little Red Robin held their first Jewellery teaching workship in Warmley Community Centre, Bristol.  There were 7 students most who were new to jewellery making.

The students made some earrings using spiral headpins, eyepin connected earrings, hammered headpin beaded earrings using ball pein hammer and steel bench block (they enjoyed hammering the metal) and designed their own custom earrings too.

We then went onto making and designing a wired necklace with beadalon 7 strand wire some chose focal pendant and others symmetrical beaded necklaces to design.  We used crimps, crimp covers, wire guardian and findings to finish them off.

A short lunch break then back to our jewellery with the students finishing off with a copper or silver charm bracelet using techniques already learnt throughout the day. 

This was a very enjoyable day with all the students choosing lovely colour combinations and designing lovely items of jewellery. 

Next time i will take more photos with jewellery made by students and show as a gallery here on the blog. 

The bonus part of the day was that the community centre had an open day so tea,coffee and cakes were all available at any time!  and if you look closely you can see at the front of the picture my packet of cheese and onion crisps!

I hope the students enjoyed the day and that they may be inspired to be creative through jewellery or other hobbies (as some already do other crafts such as cardmaking and cross stitch) and return to future workshops i will run next year using other techniques.

I thoroughly enjoyed my day, it was quite relaxing, laid back and i was very impressed with their designing and colour combinations and their concentration to take it all in too, so well done to them all.

Jenny x

Monday 3 October 2011

WHICH DIRECTION TO GO

Hmmm i havn't blogged for ages now.  I have been busy with little jewellery ventures selling some jewellery.    Now i have a lull for 2 weeks and then my first jewellery teaching workshop aaaaargggh. 

I seem to have lost a bit of momentum with the Folksy clarification on "handmade" and "hand assembled".  Although our shop all bar one item was acceptable in our jewellery lines it has made myself and my twin sister think long and hard about what exactly we are going to make and design with our jewellery.

My jewellery started with 6 week jewellery course with different projects and so i have leaned towards beaded jewellery and some woven jewellery which i quite like too.  My sister has attended silversmith courses and enamel and her leaning is towards silversmith techniques which she will still be doing along with some other ideas she has.

I am now thinking along the lines of more metalwork in some of my jewellery cold connections but making my own from sheet metal to begin with and expanding my skills gradually.  All this requires new tools!  I do have a vision of what i hope to be able to achieve in say 6 months to 1 years time which is totally different to what i am doing now which i find challenging and quite exciting although i will keep my hand in with other techniques too.

I would also like to blog more frequently with tutorials and blog on my experiments too it just all takes time.

Hope to be back soon with more news
x

Jenny