michelle's jewellery: November 2010

Sunday, November 28, 2010

electroformed hydrangea Rings

I was not sure about these electroformed hydrangeas when I was making jewellery and trying to incorporate them into designs, but after usin 2 of them to make rings that fit together I am pleased with how they look on the hand. My first hesitations were beacuse I was not sure if the flowers would look too stiff or "formal in metal" but now I like the way the flowers look as if they have been captured.

Saturday, November 27, 2010

More Hydrangea pieces for an order

So I have finished the order for Denmark and have learnt alot. From having to ship the order, to receiving a foreign currency into your account, to bubble wrapping and to communicating, there is alot of info to find out and is not as easy as it may seem, but once you have done it once it will be alot easier for the next time! I was really weary about shipping my jewellery just using the speed services at the normal SAPO but turns out they are actually organised and you can insure the items that you send. I guess this will make life easier for my etsy shop as I now have some information on shipping costs/postage procedures!

From first order that I sent to denmark to this order now I feel that my jewellery has improved a whole lot. For instance, my catches on the bracelets were made with more awarness on the safety element of the bracelet to insure that it does not come off once it is on the wrist. I used a wider range of sizes of hydrangeas which gave the bracelet more of a feel of flowers being around your wrist and and I used alot of small flowers which i find distinguish the shape of the stylized hydrangea better, but there needs to be a mix of sizes which is what I did.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Enamelled delicate flowers

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Monday, November 8, 2010

Another order from Denmark, Yay!

I have got another order from Denmark for my Hydrangea jewellery so the fun begins again. the shop needs the jewellery asap so I have started today! Here is my beginings

I love the look of these hydrangeas when the paper burns away!

Fixing a pendent

I made this pendent last year and a sweet lady bought it but by mistake it broke so i fixed it for her! her name is also Michelle, funny that.

An order for little people silver charms

I had an order for some more little charms. They fit in quite well with the little silver people section I am doing in my B-tech.

Pretzels

I made a mould of pretzels and cast them with silver and poly uraphane.

fOOD

I have made little Marie biscuits! I found out that the generic name for this biscuit is marie and they are made all over the world! Marie biscuits have bben my favourite biscuit since I can remember!

creating hydrangeas from seperate petals

here are my 5 petal hydrangeas in the making, I solded each petal on last week and still need to finish the last 2.

Hydrangeas

I cant beleive it, I thought I was the only jeweller who makes real hydrangeas out of metal but it turns out Im not. This jeweller is doing the same thing as I am doing but I also use electroforming. look http://www.etsy.com/transaction/28202959 .

hand made or electroformed

So there is a big difference between the hand made hydrangeas and the electroformed ones. I do enjoy bith but the have two very different feel about them. I think it is kind of funny that my electro formed hydrangeas are actually 1 step away from being real but they dont have that soft delicate feeling of the hydrangea, where as my hand made ones all together have the soft delicate characteristic of the real flowers even though I have stylised them. but then I could have just 1 electroformed hydrangea on a shank and it would look like a hydrangea, wherte as if I were to take just 1 of my versions of the hydrangea that I hand make it would not have as much of a feel of the real flower. This brings me to realise that my hand made hydrangeas get that " feeling" i want to create by grouping them together, so then is that the characteristic of the flower I am focusing on if they need to be bunched together? all along I have been trying to get the veined detail on the hand made ones where as that is not actually the main characteristic that gives them that feeling of being hydrangeas! complicated!

from here I want to explore using the tube and putting the hydrangeas on it and setting a little gem stone in the top of it.

Here is my latest hand made hydrangea piece:

creating rings from moulds of my electroformed then cast Hydrangeas

So for so long I have been trying to create a hydrangea exactly as it is in real life except in silver without casting it as I was not satisfied with the loss of detail that happened when casting. I have finally acheived my goal (i have taken so long to blog about it, I actually acheived it a while back!). Here are my pics of my silver hydrangeas: