More spankle colours and patination experiments

Here are a couple of new spankle bead colours for 2012. Navy and aqua (yes, yes, I KNOW ... more blue!) :-) I can't help it, I LIKE blue!

I've been busily restocking my Etsy shop after it got emptied before Christmas. The aqua spankles went very fast so I'll be making more of those.

I'd usually be working on new jewellery designs at this time of year and I have got ideas in my head but I've got a poorly hand at the moment, seeing the doctor about it this afternoon. It's been very sore in the mornings since just before Christmas. I think I overdid it on bending memory wire (it's very tough material). I thought I'd just pulled a muscle and with the Christmas break (and not doing much), I expected it would get better by itself but it hasn't. Beadmaking doesn't hurt too much for most of the beads I'm making but any hammering or filing is difficult; basically anything that involves rotating the hand is painful. I'm not having a moan about it (it's my own stupid fault for making 16 memory wire bracelets in one day ...) I just wanted to explain why there's no new jewellery designs so I'm not just writing this for sympathy (but any going spare would be gratefully received!) :-)

In the meantime, I'm experimenting with organic means of patinating silver that doesn't involve liver of sulphur or platinol. I don't like working with chemicals if I can avoid it, both of the chemicals mentioned are smelly and messy. To avoid doing the patination myself, I have been buying pre-patinated items and wire from Daisychain Extra, an excellent Etsy shop but one of my new year resolutions for Sooz Jewels is to make my own earwires and I can't expect someone else to patinate them. I am addicted to Jo's clasps, my customers adore them, so I'll definitely still be buying those!

So far I have run trials using uncooked and cooked egg yolks. The former doesn't work at all. The latter worked but the tutorial said it would only take 24 hours. My earwires and headpins needed 4 days imprisoning in a little plastic container with mashed up egg before it became dark enough (I'm after gun metal grey, something that looks vintage). After 4 days at room temperature, this was just as smelly and messy as the chemical means (but at least you don't need a Health & Safety sheet when you buy and cook eggs!) The patinated finish from the cooked egg method is also quuite uneven which is disappointing (I might do a photo when all my experiments are finished).

The instructions say to make sure the silver is very clean in order to get an even finish using the cooked egg method. I degreased the silver using alcohol, tumble polished with mild detergent, and then rinsed very thoroughly, only handled the silver using plastic tweezers. If the silver needs more cleaning than this, then I don't think this is the system for me.

I have read that you can use old kitty-litter (the ammonia produced by the decaying cat's urine is the thing that colours the metal apparently). Anyway, I don't have a cat, both my sisters have two but they live well over half an hour's drive away. So I've used my own wee (is that shocking?!) This is just out of interests sake to see if my urine is effective. Please be assured that even though the silver isn't directly touching the urine (it's just in contact with the fumes), I have absolutely no plans on using urine-patinated silver in jewellery that I sell!

I also have some silver hanging up in the shower to see if that will do it. These latest two experiments have only been running for two days though so I'll report back on results as and when anything happens!

And so my thoughts turn to the weekend, it's very strange for me to have a Saturday where there's no Art & Craft market to go to. Normally I'm running around like a mad thing on Fridays! The market starts back at All Saints on the 28th so I'll have to think of something nice to do instead; I hope everyone has a lovely weekend!

Couple of bracelets

I've just added two new bracelets to my website.

I don't make many charm bracelets; I absolutely love them but they take so long to make, they are a bit of a labour of love - it's very difficult to get back the amount I should charge for them so there's a real bargain to be had on my stall in Cambridge tomorrow!

This is a new hammered sterling silver bracelet, a double version of my random link asterope range of items. It's hallmarked 925 sterling silver by the London Assay Office, it's adjustable though I can resize to fit exactly if you bring your wrist along with you ;-) and it has a safety chain.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

Recycled champagne bottle and silver seed pod

I am planning on spending half a day tomorrow making some recycled glass beads out of the champagne bottles that were purchased for mum and dad's 60th wedding anniversary back in March by Uncle Arthur. I have been meaning to do this for absolutely ages but with it being such a busy time for my business, I haven't had chance. As I didn't go to the craft market on Saturday due to illness (I am completely recovered now, thanks for all your good wishes) and I have restocked my stall last week, I have some time to play around with new stuff til Saturday.

My Uncle Arthur had a stroke recently and is recovering, we don't think he's likely to be able to live completely independently again. His motor functions aren't great, he does get a little confused which is understandable but fortunately, he's still all there and knows who everyone is. I know he'd love to see the beads made up into some jewellery. I want to make jewellery for myself, my sister, Sandy, my mum, Auntie Mary who was so instumental in planning the party and something for Uncle Arthur to give to his grand daughter. For my other sister, Sharon, she makes her own jewellery and so I will give her a few beads so she can make something for herself. Hmmmm, thinking about it, I may need to spend more than half a day making the beads - from that little list, I'm going to need quite a few! I go a little insane if I spend more than three hours on melting recycled glass into beads - it gets a teeny bit tedious! I'll spread it out over 2-3 days I think.

The colour of glass isn't that great (broken shards of the bottles are shown on the right of the photograph above) but I think the new beads on the left that I made at the back end of last week will provide a nice colourful counterpoint. I'm calling the new irregularly shaped beads Plasma Doughnut Nuggets, these ones are made with a brown and gingery frit blend. For the Diamond Anniversary jewellery, I have some smokey quartz, rutilated quartz and opal gemstone chips and I think any of those will also combine well. See how it goes when I have everything on the table in front of me.

For all the people interested in the PMC seed pod bead that I made, here it is all polished up and combined with black waxed cotton macrame.

Lovely start

What a lovely start to the day! :-) I checked my e-mails and there was a thank you message along with some beautiful photographs from a bride for whom I made matching his and hers hammer finish sterling silver rings in the summer. I'll be adding the message to my testimonials page next time I update the website.

Congratulations Jancy and Simon and thanks for the photographs of the wedding - looks like you had a brilliant day! You'll forgive me for not publishing them all here but I couldn't resist showing off your rings. What a picturesque place for your honeymoon.

Have a long a happy life together. :-)

I just know I'm going to be in a happy, smiley mood now for the rest of the day despite the awful weather and dreadful forecast for tomorrow. Because I missed last week, it feels like ages since I've seen my customers and I've got lots of new things to show off!

Silver jewellery

This is a bit of a flying visit, I've put the new silver designs up on Jewellery section of the Sooz Jewels website. Two pendants and one pair of earrings; they're in hammered silver again, I love hammering silver (especially when I'm cross cos it gets it all out of your system!) I have a couple more things to add to the website but one of them was sold yesterday in the gorgeous sunshine we had in Cambridge all day before it even got added to the website!

The reason I'm in a bit of a hurry is that I have an appointment with mowing the lawn for the first time this year, it takes about three hours and as it's forecast to rain tomorrow, I need to get it done! My miniature daffodils are out, so they'll be keeping me company now the snowdrops are all over.