Colourful Aluminium Jewellery

What a wonderful course. Lindsay thank you so much I learnt a lot.

Sad though I managed to start a heavy cold the day of the course so my brain was a tad cotton wool ish!

The other folks on the course were great. There were teachers, jewellery students, lace makers, artists. Just a wonderful mix of clever and artistic folks and so many wonderful ideas. Should have taken my camera because the creations were great.

Sorry folks you get to see just mine!


That is a bangle, we all made one of those, easy metal working skills and a large space to explore colour wise. Hmmmm not sure about this one didnt quite work as I thought it would!

Next a pendant, and finally I managed to learn to rivet properly and woot it worked. Thse are three 5mm spaced ovals. Lindsay thank you for teaching me this I always thought I was a dumbo at rivetting when I was learning but you made it seem so easy.

Last I just cut a load of discs and created a charm bracelet just to show all the different colours I used.


All in all a great course and now to get over this real nasty cold thanks to my boss!!

Firing of the kiln

Well I really thought I ought to write a bit about my kiln. I bought this old kiln over a year ago and OH and I put it in the garage and I thought I would use it over Christmas when I had plenty of time!

Christmas comes and I fire up the kiln - it being two years since I went on my glass course! But I still had my notes and I have been reading round the subject so off I went with this old kiln. First firing it did the test nuggets brilliantly but not the slumping. So we read a bit more and then I tried again. This time I hadnt let the kiln wash dry enough on my moulds and great bubbles appeared. LOL serve me right.

So this weekend being the third trial and a necessity as I was making a present for a friend's birthday. Fired it up! Sat and waited. Heard it reach temperature gave it a few monutes to soak (three records on my iPod) then opened the lid to crash it down. Wooo it looked as though everything had worked.

Finally the following morning I inspoected the horde and yep the slumping had worked and the small pendant had as well. For the bail of the pendant I used the glass bails you can buy from Warm Glass - it worked a treat but the hole is a tad small.

I gave the dish away but here is a snap of the pendant which I wore out for lunch on Sunday.

Well the kiln goes away for another few weeks cant have too much excitement and anyway I am going on a "Colourful Aluminium Jewellery Course" this weekend so sounds fun and hopefully I can make something halfway decent.

Monday 12th January 2009

Hi Folks

Thought I would put a few thoughts down here. Monday night and I have just finished sorting my photographs for a competition this weekend.

Fired up the kiln again at the weekend still trying to suss out its temperature and see whether I can really make these work. I made a couple of pendant blanks. will take photos at the weekend.

Started making the new jewellery pendant. I have the little cabs finished two red ones and an orange glass one. These will be inside small leaves. The whole should be quite a bit smaller than the large pendant that I finsihed a couple of weeks ago and finally wore out at the weekend.

January 2nd 2009

Just thought I would start a blog about my jewellery making experiences. Some funny, some disasters and some photos of those pieces worth looking at.