Once again I have found myself way too focused on school work over the last few months to think about any projects outside of my assigned work. Since I don’t have many new things to first talk about, I would like to take this opportunity to share this older piece, it was a one-off "experiment" (from sometime in 2006). It’s a brooch that was cast from epoxy resin. It features a 4mm purple cubic zirconia suspended in the clear material, as well as imitation gold leaf. I wasn't sure how I felt about this piece at first, but it has grown on me over time and now I love it. I’m thinking about continuing this idea in a smaller, more polished form (this one is 45mm in diameter and the finding on the back is a cheap craft store finding) and in different 2D shapes.
This is one school project that I managed to get a photo of from this semester that really shows the contrast of the things I find myself working on in my free time and the thing I have to work on at school. Correctly fitting the gemstone to the setting and evenly spacing the silver components is of utmost importance. I find gemsetting to be very challenging, and was surprised with myself for doing as well as I did on this 4 claw construction and setting.
I hope to share more photos of my school work once the year is over, and my projects are returned to me. Please also take note of the new link to the left that shows photos of the majority of the work that I've done over the last three years.
Once again I have found myself way too focused on school work over the last few months to think about any projects outside of my assigned work. Since I don’t have many new things to first talk about, I would like to take this opportunity to share this older piece, it was a one-off "experiment" (from sometime in 2006). It’s a brooch that was cast from epoxy resin. It features a 4mm purple cubic zirconia suspended in the clear material, as well as imitation gold leaf. I wasn't sure how I felt about this piece at first, but it has grown on me over time and now I love it. I’m thinking about continuing this idea in a smaller, more polished form (this one is 45mm in diameter and the finding on the back is a cheap craft store finding) and in different 2D shapes.
This is one school project that I managed to get a photo of from this semester that really shows the contrast of the things I find myself working on in my free time and the thing I have to work on at school. Correctly fitting the gemstone to the setting and evenly spacing the silver components is of utmost importance. I find gemsetting to be very challenging, and was surprised with myself for doing as well as I did on this 4 claw construction and setting.
Over the past year, I haven't had much chance to post any of the projects that I made during my full-time studies at GBC. We mainly made and polished practice pieces in copper and brass to get a feel for the jewellery making process with less expensive materials, but nearer to the end of the year we were able to work with sterling silver as well as 10 karat gold (something that most first years don't get to do apparently!). I also had my first experience with stone setting.
The first image to the left is a sterling silver brooch that has leaves slowly emerging from the background. The second is a synthetic amethyst cabochon, set in sterling silver. Unfortunately I used the wrong tool and the area around the stone isn't as neat and smooth as it should be.
This is a custom piece that I recently made. It's a brooch made out of silver clay. I made it by first carving a stamp into a piece of linoleum, pressing that image into some clay, and then further refining it and carving in the centre symbol with a metal scribe. I'm quite please with this method and was honestly a little bit surprised at how well the brooch turned out.
