The day the cow got cast.

Yesterday I started casting a cow to add to my Indian street scene, the base for moulding this creature was an old Victorian lead toy which was a British model of this animal . With a little help from the magic of Milliput the cow was given an Indian make over with a hump and horns . The next stage of this process is to clean him up with filing and then to gold plate the little chap. Thanks to Kerrianne for showing me the ropes and helping with the creation of this farm animal.

Degree Show Preview

Here is a sneak peak at whats to come in May . My first piece is a mixture of gold leaf, enamel, pencil and copper. Very excited about the next few houses that are being constructed watch this space!

Noah's Ark

These are images of early 19th century toys made from wood, tin and lead that have been an inspiration to my current enamelling project. This Noah's Ark (1830s) was the only toy allowed to bought out of the play box on a Sundays due to it's religious connotations. Tin toys began to make an appearance on the markets, shops and stalls in the 1880s. Germany in the early 20th century was the leading country in tin toy production this came to a halt when war began . Lead was used in toy production although it was halted to a stand still in the 20th century due to the damaging effects the metal can have on one's nervous system which can cause blood and brain disorders.

Enamelled Temple.

So this is my first piece almost complete (finally!) for my degree show it just needs a few more tweaks and it should then be finished. It been a learning curve with mixing stone settings with the different enamels and keeping the copper shapes underneath the colours as I would like them.

Hoop Bird

This piece was designed and made for our recent Christmas sale. It was one out of the three necklaces I created for the event along with a single bird on a chain and another bird sitting inside a cage with semi precious stones attached.

Dirty Martini and Wasabi Green

This weekend a few fellow jewellers descended on another Helen's glass making workshop. There were a huge amount of coloured rods that when melted and combined turned into beautiful glass beads. Helen made a tricky skill look very straight forward to master until one is having a go and realise its takes a huge amount of practice and skill to achieve the detail and colour combinations that are found in Helen's work. The stacks of rods all piled up together made it difficult to make one's mind up about which one to select for making into bead. I loved some of the names such as a light blue rod entitled Dirty martini or my favorite shade of green known in the glass world as Wasabi.

bright blocks

Here are some 3d drawings of the kind of scenes I want to create in enamel for my degree show.