Forging ideas....

Have finally been able to get some ideas for my forging - thanks to a little pep talk from my brother (check out his blog http://james-lomax.blogspot.com), thanks James! I think I'm going to be using a design that has been inspired by the pattern I used to emboss my brooch with.

Will try and get some models made tomorrow so I can put some photos up and get some opinions. Think I am finally beginning to feel motivated for this module which is new to me as so far I have been so excited by everything. I think I just needed to finalise my designs! Fingers crossed!

www.sophielomax.etsy.com

I just signed up for an Etsy shop! I haven't put anything up there yet but will let you know when I do! Looks like I'll need to get making lots now!

So in the not too distant future, you will be able to view and buy my jewellery at

www.sophielomax.etsy.com

The Saturn Collection

The name to this may give you a few clues to what the collection might consist of.....rings! I am a huge fan of Links of London jewellery and have a Sweetie bracelet but was trying to come up with a new concept/design while still incorporating the movement of the rings.

I therefore made up with the design for a bangle and a ring. I soldered silver jumprings together and then placed them onto the bangle and ring. I love the final outcome and think I may keep developing the designs to include a necklace and some earrings. So you read it here first....my first mini collection.... The Saturn Collection!

Mass Production

The next project i had was based on mass production and we were asked to use casting and pressing techniques to produce two pieces of jewellery. I looked back over some old photographs from an art trip to Amsterdam in 2001 (wow that was a long time ago!) and came across this photo of a sculpture at a modern art museum outside Amsterdam....

After playing around with a few other images i settled on this one to use as my influence on my casting and pressing pieces. I experimented with aluminium and foam board after doing a few drawings, to get a more 3D affect.

Bridget Riley at the time also had an exhibition on at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, where i saw this painting;

I believe the painting is called "Study in Crimson" but it is the asymmetric heart that I circled in black that I was influenced by.

This helped me settle on a design for a ring (for the casting) and a pendant (for the pressing).

This is my ring, it weighs 30g!

The ring is solid sterling silver and was hollowed out when made in wax to help reduce the weight of the ring and therefore the cost of the silver to make it! The photos are not very good quality - sorry! - but you can get an idea of the heart shape. The hollowed part of the ring has also been oxidised.

This is the pendant I made from pressing,

The pressing process requires a lot of metal and I thought this would be quite expensive in silver so decided to make it out of guilded metal (I like the gold colour and it isn't too flexible, like copper). As you can see there are two different sides to this pendant, but what you may not be able to see is that they are held together with jump rings. I then wound ribbon through the pendant to make a web like pattern that echoes the design i made out of the aluminium and foam board. One side of the pendant has more horizontal lines, and the other has more vertical lines (I emphasised this fact by rolling binding wire into the metal before pressing and then oxidising the recesses to pick out the lines). To add a little more detail I attached small black water pearls by drilling a hole through the metal where I wanted the pearl to be, then threading a head-pin through the hole (the head of the pin on the inside of the pendant) and attaching a pearl with glue to the end to hold the whole thing in place - rather ingenious I thought! The chain I think may be brass but I have incorporated into it, the ribbon from the web in the pendant. This idea was influenced by a necklace by Lanvin.

Lanvin Swarovski crystal strawberry necklace

I was very pleased with my pieces as neither piece of jewellery required any soldering, which is very time consuming when things need to be mass produced. That reminds me, I need to get a mould of my ring made so I can get selling it!

Back!

Oh my goodness I haven't been on here in far too long! Its been a busy few months but that really is no excuse!

To recap on what I've been up to would take far too long right now so I will post a few photos of what I have been making and will make sure to fill the information in in the next few weeks.

When I last was on here I was in the middle of making a brooch for a module at the School of Jewellery.

The brooch is actually inspired by a Venetian mask which Art Nouveau "whiplash" style lines. The cabochon stone is an onyx and 2 white freshwater pearls sit either side of it. The aim for the design was to have the highly decorative 'petals' (which have been embossed with a lace like design) positioned against the smooth texture of the rectangular base of the brooch.

We were required to make the brooch with a double brooch pin as seen here. We were also asked to set a cabochon stone - I used a single bezel setting for mine, I need to work on the double bezels!

this is why i need to experiment!!

Today I went into the workshop on my day off to make my first piece of jewellery...or at least try. It didn't turn out quite how I expected it to though.

Here is the ring.....

I used 1.2mm silver which i originally tried to planish, but it didn't really work. I have a feeling the silver was too thick, I'll have to try it out on a thinner piece soon.

The silver detail was made from rolling the silver with some patterned metal disks, though one of the disks slipped the second time I put it through the press, which means some of the pattern isn't as clearly detailed as I wanted it.

Next time I think I'm going to roll down the silver to make it thinner - maybe 1mm instead of 1.2mm, and find something else to pattern the silver - maybe lace?

Anyway, its my first piece of silver jewellery so I'm still rather proud of it.

Met up with History of Art friends for lunch (did History of art last year) and they were all saying I should get a website, which I'm beginning to think is a very good idea. So hopefully, fingers crossed, I'll get a domain name sorted in the next few days and start putting a site together - will let you know when its up and running.

X

Oh! I also got a mink fur hat today from Cow, its beautious! Apparently Venice at the moment is full of people wearing fur hats - if only I could go!!

the beginning....

Ok, have finally got one of these! Please bare with me on this, its a little bit strange just talking about yourself but im hoping it gets easier!

Basically, Im in my first years studying Jewellery and Silversmithing (HND) at the School of Jewellery, Birmingham, and absolutely love it. I dont have any previous knoweldge of working with silver so its all very new but very exciting.

I hope this is going to a good way for you all to stay up to date with my jewellery design and making. Tomorrow Im making (hopefully) my first piece of silver jewellery (EXCITED) so will keep you posted. Wish me luck!

X