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Showing posts from November, 2015

A Distinct Lack Of Copper Studs

I've had some time recently to catch up with all those little jobs that tend to be pushed aside when I get busy. One of them is reviewing what jewellery I have for sale and making new stock to fill any gaps. Well one of the gaps I noticed was copper studs - they are fairly low in price so tend to sell quite quickly and I hadn't had much chance to make any new pairs. So I made some more! Studs are a good way of using up small pieces of metal sheet and I have a lot of those, especially etched and embossed copper sheet. I went for a variety of shapes - square, triangle, flower and teardrops. I do love a heart stud and they do sell well but my plastic heart shape template is a bit weird. The point at the top of the heart shape always comes out slightly off centre when I use a felt tip or scribe to mark the heart shape on the metal. I press that part down to stop the pointy bit moving but it nearly always comes out a bit off and can mean a lot of filing to get the two hear

New Sterling Silver Bangle Designs

In my last post  I mentioned that I'd been busy finishing a batch of sterling silver bangles so I could get them sent off to the London Assay Office for hallmarking. Well I did just that and got them back last week. After finishing them {they always come back a bit out of shape and with a couple of scratches when they've been hallmarked} and oxidizing the bangles that needed it, I finally got round to getting them photographed.  I made a few new {to me} designs including this hammered "bark" texture set using flattened 6mm and 4mm round wire. I got busy with the masking tape for this bangle... Creating this texture involved cutting very thin strips of masking tape then sticking them to the flattened silver before rolling it through the rolling mill. The textured areas are where the tape was and the raised smooth sections were the bits without any tape. I like this texture!  I was going to try to achieve the look by wrapping 20g/0.8mm wire aro