Thursday, April 27, 2006

No knitting content

I don't think I mentioned it but since September I've been attending a jeweler's course. (I've been doing lots of jewelery up till then but only using wire and beads, and I wanted to learn how to make REAL jewelery ^^). Twice a week I'm learning how to make jewelery out of silver, copper or brass, with setting stones and other techniques. I've learned how to solder, how to make a simple ring, how to set different kinds of stones (flat cabochones, triangular zirconium), how to make a brooch clasp, ect.
Let me proudly present my creations (done with the help from a teacher, but according to my projects! ^^):

This is my first ring, it's silver with a silver wire, very simple project but I like the way it turned out!


This is my second ring, soooo complicated (but I wasn't aware of that in the phase of designing...). The base ring is slightly tubular, not straight like the previous one, and the silver butterflies are soldered one be one, and then painted with a mixture of a special resin glue and oil paints.


My third project - leaf brooch. It's copper, with silver wire, it's been punched with a hammer to get that texture and then the leaves have been curled a bit towards the central line.
This is the reason of my two-month pause in doing anything with my right hand - almost 5 hours of sawing through the copper plate 1 mm thick to achieve the shape of a acacia leaf hurt my sinew, and sent me into the hand stiffener and for rehabilitation!...
It's big, about 15 cm long.


My latest project - bat necklace (okay, it is a necklace, you must believe me, we couldn't finish it last night because my teacher didn't have any neclace clasps, so we will add the cord later.) It is a silver wire soldered together, with a milky amber set in the silver frame. It's also quite big, it's almost 20 cm long and 10 cm high.


The next projest is a ring made of silver, with a cube of a stone called "piryt" (I have no idea what's the English name for it, but it's a very hard, dark grey stone, a bit shiny). I have shaped the ring already, now I have to make two faux rivets, glue-in the stone and polish the whole thing (which will happen in two weeks time, because next week there is a Bank Holiday in Poland and the classes has been cancelled).

When the course is finished in June, I'll have to leave three pieces I'd made for display purposes in the class, but I'll be allowed to buy out the other pieces for the prices of the material (which will be very cheap). I'm very anxious what the teacher decides to keep, I'd love to have my butterflies ring! ^^ But I still have two months to make more jewelery, so I hope he'll have more to choose from.

Knitting content in the next post I promise! ^-^

5 comments:

  1. I'm so impressed. Is there anything that you can't do? The butterfly ring is so beautiful.

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  2. OMG! OMG! Your jewelery is beautiful!!!!!!!!!!!!

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  3. Thank you for your kind words, but remember that these are the creations of a jewelers apprentice! ^^ They are full of imperfections, but I'm learning more and more with every project. Yet, my first and biggest love is a thread and fabric!
    Kendra, there is probably lots of things I cannot do, but I'm trying every one of them at least once! ^-^

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  4. Joanna, I agree with the others that your jewelery is absolutely gorgeous--apprentice or not. You are very talented!

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  5. What fun jewelery!! In high school we made our own rings and I loved it. I remember buying scraps of silver to melt down to pour into the wax molds. Sooo cool. That bat necklace is great!

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