Garden Art

This is the first in some garden art enamel that I've created. I have stencilled green leaves onto a black background on one side and then the other side has been enamelled in black and then gold lustre has been added with grasses being flicked through. I'll be adding to my etsy store just as soon as I remember to take the measurements.

New creation

I've joined Kristens' Share Your Creations Party today, and although it's not the best of photographs this is the latest creation for my Etsy store. I'm going to see if I can get a better photograph to list on Etsy. I don't think I quite got the idea of the name either and put my own name but I'm no wizard on the computer and at least I got the link back to Kristen's page OK.

Silver Day

Had a fab day on Wednesday with my friend Linda. She's a brilliant silversmith and came along to give me some tips. I very rarely work with silver (unless it's art clay) as I usually melt things but it was grea to actually have some success. We made a lovely pair of small ear-rings but when I tried to take a pic I kept getting flash back so can't put pic here but I'll try again. Also made a pendant and enamelled it in shades of blue and turquoise blue. The colours were lovely. I could be doing more silver in the future so watch this space. Thanks for everything Linda, it was a fab day.

Etsy up and Running

As you can see my Etsy shop is up and running so please drop by and take a look. Thanks to my li'l sis I even managed to get the etsy mini window onto my blog, so thanks li'l sis your instructions were easy to follow.
Don't know what happened to the etsy mini window it's no longer there.

I'm on Etsy

My sister has been telling me I should list on Etsy for a while and I finally did it. Hopefully I'll get a few more items on in the next few days, but for now I've only got a pendant and a set of buttons.

Mam and Me Enamelled

Had a great day in Shrewsbury today at the Enamel Guild. Pat Johnson was doing a riso screen workshop. We saw several of the screen print enamels Pat had made and she showed us how she achieved some of the results. We were then taken through how to make the screens and as we had been asked to bring some pictures that we would like as a screen it was up to us to make our enamelled piece. I had a lovely pic of mam and me when I was up visiting her a couple of years ago so I thought I would give it a try. Unfortunately the photo was quite dark but this is what I achieved and I love it.
I fired a black to the back of the copper and then fired two layers of dove grey to the front. The background was then enamelled with shades of dove grey, lavender and mid blue and then a spring green was added to give a constrast. This was fired again and when cool I sifted a black through the screen to capture our image. The result was better than I expected and I'll certainly be trying out more screens to see what I come up with.

Enamelled buttons

I don't know how many times I say 'doesn't time fly' because I just seem to go months without writing anything for my blog; but here I am again several months down the line and I've finally managed to get on to write something.

I've been quite busy lately with workshops and have been enamelling some buttons with different designs. I listed some of them on Folksy and my sheep ones sold at the beginning of the week so I was really thrilled. I do enjoy making them and I guess the weekend might just see me doing some more. I hand paint them so they are never identical.

This second set that I did had a scragfitto design and I wrote the word button on one of them.

The photos of the buttons are not the best but I do like these blue ones that I did. Infact they were some of the first buttons I made.

And here's just some pics of other buttons I've made. As I said, the photographs are not very good but it gives you an idea of what you can do with a piece of copper and enamel powders.

Well isn't it amazing how time flies by and whilst I've been checking other peoples blogs I haven't really spent much time on my own, just updating my everyday one now and again but not really looked at my Honeycomb Crafts one so here I am just to give you a little update.

Linda and I went off to Shrewsbury last week and spent the day with other like minded enamellers enjoying a workshop by Bonnie Macintosh. We were doing 'grisaille' which means 'grey' in French and it turned out to be a really good day.

Bonnie showed us some of the work she had done and explained the different techniques to us. We tried them all but the only piece I managed to take a pic of is the one below. It's meant to be viewed at a slight angle but I didn't quite get the pic right.

Bonnie had set up stations which held 4 different meshes of enamel powder and the idea was to sift the first coat then fire it and then add the second and fire and so on. I decided to do something simple and cut a stencil out of sun rays coming down onto a field. I was pleased with the result and will give it a try at the studio when I get some free time.