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:

The detail does not show in the picture. The shank i am testing out reminds me of a vase. I think I am going to explore further this vase idea!
Here's where I got my vase idea from. I placed my shank down on my desk and then realised!

close up of H2O colours drawing

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orchid studies- water colours

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Orchid in my garden

I love the spots!

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Orchids in My Garden

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casting electroformed hydrangeas

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electroformed hydrangeas

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electroformed hydrangea

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Set for some hard work

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1st step silicone molds of electroformed Hydrangeas

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I love my bamboo work bench!!!

So much stuff

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Food

So I am very interested with casting food. I made a silicone mold of a popcorn but not sure I like how it came ot but i bet it would look really cool enamelled in white. I am also making Marie biscuits which by the way originally were made in Durban in a Factory in the early early times(I will get the exact date) Obviously that is only one type of marie that was made in that factory, the name Marie is it's generic name so no one has the right to claim it. Marie biscuits are made all over the world!

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Plastic stuff

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Funny rings/pendants

I have already made one happiness ring. It is like the one on the far left. I am still waiting for my letter punches to arrive here in the post so that I can make more and different types including some of the little people with them. I ordered them from Ireland. The ring I have already made is stamped with Happiness on the shank.

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Edited post:

Here is the ring I was talking about above.

Drawing with wire

I would like to try drawing with wire and creating shapes and flowers that are out of preportion and i suppose I could say free. Free from their predictable shape and far more expressive and raw.

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dried orchid

This orchid that is dried out now was a wild one from marlene's orchids. I want to cast more orchids like the one I did in February and use their petals etc to make some interesting jewellery.

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Spoons

I have been wanting to make shanks out of the ends of spoons. My mom has got spoon colections and this idea came to me whilst we were having pudding and I was examining the silver spoon I was using. the spoon on the left which is not very clear we dated back to 1902. Nick has a book full of hallmarks and hteir time/ era and we found the hall marks and where they were from in on this spoon in the book. this spoon comes from sheffield in England.

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own work- Hydrangeas

This is another section of my work, my hydrangeas. I cannot wait till December whne I buy my own hydrangea bushes and plant them. They change colour according to the acid balance in the soil.

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Little people

I am doing many things at the moment and one of them is creating little people out of silver which I carve. I need to make more!

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hydrangeas in progress

Ideas of how to place the flowers onto the shank. I enjoy how they wrap around the finger but it would possibly only be comfortable on this finger.

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Enamelled hydrangeas

I really like the colours that came out on the 960 hydrangeas. They are not as bright as fine silver but more rich or deeper than fine.

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Silver hydrangeas and plastic ones

I have been making more silver hydrangeas but this time out of 960 silver to make them a little harder when they are finished. will see how the colours change! You can see the light green and ourole colour on the plastic hydrangeas aswell.

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Dyed plastic

I died this plastic with a dye that was purple and a dye that was green. The photo is unclear so I will have to take a better one but the colours came ot soft purple and soft green. It depends on what plastic you use

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Plastic sample

The hydrangeas that I cut from the plastic were from this bottle.

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Plastic hydrangeas

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Plastic flowers

So I have been experimtenting with making my hydrangeas out of another material and I have been using plastic. I quite like how they mix with the metal ones in this picture. I am going to die them to another colour.

An Electroformed flower about to be heated

I am going to heat this flower but am going to heat it with a flame that has very little oxygen to see if it will stop the lacker in side the copper shell from reacting and splitting the flower open in half

heated electroformed flower

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electroforming and heat: The flower split into two

The flower now has a brittle feel. I have come to a realisation that i cannot solder with these electroformed flowers so I'll have to think of a good way to attach them to the piece of metal(?) that I want to use. I need to make a whole lot more!!

electroforming and heat!

So i've crossed a problem in my journey of electroforming flowers, when i try to heat up the electroformed flower a reaction between the heat and the lacker takes place and the flower splits in to two, horizontally, leaving it looking very beautiful yet incredibly delicate. the funny thing is that it is the exact look i was looking for yet 100 times more delicate than i thought!

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Busy

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Plastic hydrangeas

I am trying dying plastic and recording which plastic I used to keep a record of it for future use! I enjoy the way that i can see through some of the plastics.

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Crit

I had such a nice talk with Brenda. One way I could strengthen my hydrangeas that have been electro formed and burnt away is by adding a layer of clear enamel to the back and the front of the enamel and to see what colour comes out they could be really beautifully enamelled! I need to stop worrying about the jewellery form that is going to be created around the hydrangeas and just start exploring more with my electro forming by experimenting a whole lot more. There is no problem with my work being very delicate, who ever buys it if they do will just have to be careful. I need to not focus on the metal thickness es and just start enjoying my process of electro forming and the element of surprise in it!
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The process of my electroforming- techniques

So there are lots of chemicals, lots of science and a whole lot more. So I started out with tech's rectifier which is normally used to electro plate. I did not do science at school so this has been quite a challenge as I did not even know that somwthing called a cathode and anode even existed. I mixed up my electro bath chemicals, got my object lackered and then painted with copper dust to make it conductive and started the whole process. But the process never started as I could not get any amps on the amp meter, I could only get vaults. After sitting on the couch hoping things would some how get better, I phoned my dad to ask what the solution was but the only thing he could think of was to tell me to check if there was current in both the negative and positive conductors. After a whole lot of experimenting on possible reasons why the rectifyer did not have any amps. I by chance tried adding another piece of copper from the cathode to the actual object I was electroforming and the amps shot up! I was so delighted! obviously there was not enough connection. I then ended up setting the amps to 2 amps and I completely burnt the flower causing it to get balls of copper on it that flaked off.

Copper conductive dust

The rectifier I am using

electro bath- becareful!

Conductive flower

Wait and see.......

The viability of my work?

wow big word... at the moment my greatest point of interest or concern (I dont like that word as i feel it brings a negativity to the issue) is how can I make jewellery that is sellable but still has my own hand made delicate feel in it that my work has at the moment. I feel like I need to create work that looks very delicate just like my hydrangeas do but is not really that delicate when handling it. I dont even know if it is possible because as soon as I start adding more thickness to metal it changes the feel of my flower. one of the main characteristics I focus on in the hydrangea flower is the delicacy of the veins and the thinness of the petals. I feel like I will sell these pieces of jewellery more if they were not so delicate but then I would be changing my jewellery and the designs that make my jewellery mine. ????

Other Jewellers that have used electroformimg

I am in the process of designing and trying to make a ring with a setting out of wax and then electroforming it but I have no idea how it will work. I have just seen on carrot box a lady who has been electroforming objects to make rings etc. look at the link below http://olgakosica.com/index.php/photos/album/25/photo/363.html
one of her rings with a setting is similar to what I am busy doing.

electroforming process- technique

The first electro forming I did was where I was taught by Kirsten at her and her dads workshop where she showed me their process of how they electro formed shoes for their business and she helped me elecrto form some leaves and flowers. I had prepared my very dried out hydrangea flower by dipping it in lacka (spelling?) and letting it dry as you can see below. I had already attached the copper wire to it making it part of the flowers conductor.

I love the crinkled up edges of a dried hydrangea! each flower has its own character as they each take a different shape when they dry.

Next I had to cover all the surface area of my hydrangea with conductive copper dust which can only be bought in KG's so Kirsten kindly gave me some! The flowers look so pretty in the copper paint! The sinker is to weigh the flower down so it does not float in the electroforming bath.

Now we had to wait to for it to dry..................