Kiln trouble

I had a lovely workshop on Saturday with 3 lovely people, Lynne, Andrew and Val. They were such fun and they made some lovely pieces of jewellery. I took photos on my mobile and must try and work out how to get them straight onto my computer without having to put them onto a disk first.
We got halfway through the course and then almost a catastrophe - the temperature of the kiln suddenly dropped and it just wouldn't heat up again. Thankfully I had another kiln which didn't take long to heat up and we managed to finish the course, albeit a little late. Lynne had to drive all the way back to Huddersfield which must have been tiring for her.
Well it turned out that the element has gone on the kiln. I've ordered another one from my supplier who assures me it is easy to fit (I am not an engineer but how hard can it be - we shall see) and hopefully it will be here in the next couple of day.

2009 - my creative year

It was busy with the run up to Christmas and I just didn't seem to have time to blog and here we are now firmly settled into 2009. I've decided this is my year to be creative and to break free of my safety zone of just doing jewellery. I'm going to try different things this year and will hopefully find the time to post some pics too. I've just finished what is meant to be an enamelled feather. I had a lovely turquoise feather in one of my boxes so I made a sketch and then cut the shape out of copper foil. I shaped the edges a little and then enamelled with several layers of transparent and opaque colours. It turned out better than I thought and hopefully I'll be able to put a pic up soon.
I've got several workshops running over the next month and am looking forward to going away to conference with the Guild of Enamellers in April. It's up in a York so should prove a lovely weekend.