11 Dec 2010

All tied up in knots

I’ve blogged several times in the past about how working on one thing takes you down a particular design path – how one idea leads to another and you produce a series of related pieces, often on a theme. Thus it was this week. A returning customer asked me to make a pair of earrings for her that were an amalgamation of two designs already available in my shop – she liked one element of each design and wanted them combining.

Thankfully, with my recent discipline of keeping a detailed journal of my designs with sizes, gauges of wire used and the tools and methods I’d used to make a particular shape, I was easily able to re-create the elements in question, faithfully to the original design and without the very frustration that led me to that practice in the first instance.

Please click on any of the photographs to see a larger view.

The custom earrings I made this week – using the double looped rosebud knot, but with rosy buds at the bottom, where the originals had a wrapped stone dangling.

Once you’ve torn your hair out trying to re-make an old design and not been able to get it quite the same as the original, you realise the real value in disciplining yourself to maintain such records religiously. It was with some degree of smugness that I first flipped the pages to find my design ‘recipe’ for something I needed to re-make and a practice that has proven itself time and time again. The fact that my husband gave me a lovely leather bound book for just this purpose last Christmas has made it a particular pleasure to work in.

When I work, I always jot down the length of wire I cut and the diameter of any turns or loops and if I find I have too much waste, or struggle to finish the shape with too short a piece, I make the adjustment in my notes too. If I find that a particular method doesn’t work and I find working from the back, or anticlockwise, for example, cures a problem or gives rise to a better shape, then this is also noted.

Whilst fiddling with my double looped knots, I wondered how well they would work as a single loop with a rosebud knot at one end and I rather liked the results.

We’ve all done it, had problems making something, found a solution, then come to remake it some time later, fall into the same initial difficulty and can’t remember what we did to cure it the first time around. So my journal is used to note all such details, with sketches and diagrams where appropriate. I even note which tools I used if I found that one item worked better than another.

Having made a single loop pair of earrings (above), I wondered how heavy I could go with the wire and made this pendant in 1.6mm (14 gauge) copper wire. The loop is just over an inch (27mm) in diameter.

I’ve got into the practice of making scribbles on scraps of paper or in my sketch book as I work, which I treat much like we did with a ‘rough book’ at school – I do all my working out in that, then transpose my final version (which may have been amended or adjusted several times by the time I’m done) to my neater finished journal – so that it’s hopefully easier to make sense of at some time in the future.

The matching set of rosebud knot loop pendant and earrings. I’ve oxidised the copper pieces and then tumbled them extensively to get a nice gunmetal colour on the dark areas, then polished just the rosebuds back to highlight them.

I tend to sit down after breakfast, whilst I finish my coffee, before the day starts to veer away from my intended plans, and transpose all my scratty notes into the journal before I lose them, or lose my train of thought. The investment of time in doing this has proven well worth it on many occasions. I also have this thought in the back of my mind that at some time a long way in the future, my great-grandchildren may find it a fascinating treasure the same way that I do my grandfathers old sketch book – a little glimpse into my life at this time.

Now I was on a roll I wanted to see how they’d look in Sterling silver. I didn’t have the same gauge of wire, so these are a little more delicate than the copper version of the earrings, but I decided to leave these as shiny silver, rather than oxidise them.


And so it was this week with these custom earrings. I consulted my design journal to make the same knotted loop element again and once my fingers had remembered the technique required to get a nice even knot, I set about making several other pieces using the same elements, as above. Once you start with something, your mind just takes you where it will and I still have ideas left to try using the same techniques.

3 Dec 2010

Necessity is the mother of a new design

Anyone in the UK this week can’t have failed to have noticed the news and conversation dominating cold and snowy snap. It’s been unseasonably cold and with rather more snow than the UK is equipped to cope with.

Whilst making dinner on Monday evening, we found that we had no hot water coming out of the taps and the boiler was failing to fire when expected, resulting also in fast-cooling radiators. After wafting a warm hair drier over the external condensate pipes (lagged during last December’s cold snap when they froze and stopped the heating working temporarily) in the vain hope that was all there was causing it, but we couldn’t get the boiler to fire and it was now leaking water too and showing a fault indicator. Time to call in the experts.

Please click on any of the photographs for a larger view.


It ended up a somewhat unusual fault that took some finding and we were consequently without a working boiler for several days. It just goes to show how pampered we’ve become and how much we take such things for granted. I’m old enough to have lived before central heating was commonplace and yet find myself totally disrupted by the removal of on tap hot water and warm rooms.


So my work routine was somewhat interrupted this week – my usual work area was far too cold to work effectively and as I take photographs on the end of my work bench, I couldn’t even comfortably get on with my backlog of those either. Maybe I’m just soft, but trying to grip cold tools with cold fingers just wasn’t fun – and as a Reynauds sufferer, actually painful – and potentially dangerous. Time for Plan B.

So as I had a birthday gift I wanted to make this week and various as yet unopened supplies, I gave some thought to a project I could work on with minimal space and tools, sitting somewhere warmer. I had this idea in mind anyway, so gave it some more thought as it would fit the bill; something I could work on at the kitchen table whilst remaining on hand to assist the repair man who visited several times to try and fix the boiler.

I wanted to make something in antiqued copper and using some brown Lucite leaf charms I’d bought. I had in mind a random, clustered necklace with berries and copper buds – something vine-like and autumnal. I wanted it to be busy and full and tinkle when moving and I had an idea that I’d supplement the leaf charms with some copper leaves of my own making.

So I started tinkering initially with a scrap of chain and the design evolved. I wanted to make it a party type feature necklace that would sit well in the open V of a blouse or top, so worked on the shape to make the central section deep in the centre and tapering back to the chain.

The Lucite leaves have been supplemented with graduating sizes of wrapped copper leaf spirals and hand formed leaf shapes. The berries are carnelian, jasper, goldstone, sardonix and green opals. I chose to use large balled headpins so that the buds would also become a visual feature too. I used several wrapping techniques to add some variety of shape and randomness to the necklace. Random of this nature is not something that comes easily to me, I always end up with a distinct and symmetrical pattern and that is the case to some degree here, but I tried to loosen my grip a little on being too precise.

I hand polished and filed all the cut ends of the metal components and oxidised the whole necklace and hand polished it back to an antiqued finish, to enhance the textures of the wrapping and spiralling and show off the red highlights of the berries. I hope that she’ll like it. I have enough supplies left to make one more, so will enjoy making another to put on sale.

22 Nov 2010

How did it get to 3 years already?! Sale to celebrate.

I noticed this morning that later this week I will have my third Etsyversary – the anniversary of opening my shop on US-based selling site Etsy. I can hardly believe that it’s 3 years already.

It’s clearly true when they say that it takes 2 years to establish a business – it’s only really been in the last year that I feel truly confident in the work I’m doing and the way my site is set up, my photographs, presentation, service etc. I still have a very long way to go and so very much still to learn, but I feel comfortable in saying that I’m now at least doing it properly – it now feels more ‘professional’ than ‘hobby’. I’m sure that I’ll look back in a year and scoff at these comments and their naivety.

At Christmas I sell more small items for gifts, so have made up some more Sterling silver earrings at lower price points for stocking filler gifts. For some time I’ve done a range of earrings between £11 and £12.50 that I offer as 2 for £20 which has been popular at this time of year.

I can’t recall the exact date I set up my own on-line shop – but I know that it was around the same time, as I faffed on for some considerable time trying to set up my own shop (which I’m equally confident in saying was pretty atrocious in the first incarnation), approaching it from different angles and never quite getting it to work how I wanted. At that point I then accepted defeat and just embedded my Etsy shop on my own site and set about doing it properly behind the scenes.

It took some time to decide quite what would constitute ‘properly’ and in the end, after a lot of research and trail and error, I settled on a pre-made shopping cart called CubeCart. There are many other cart systems available and I did try several and since that time, there are now many more even easier options to choose from.

This design, my copper raindrops necklace, has been a consistent seller over time – I sold my first one off my neck at a craft fair. I made some more this week so that I can put them back on sale.

At the time I liked CubeCart because it was the only one that would let me make my own skin based on one of the defaults available just by tweaking style sheets and making new graphics (both easily within my skillsets at the time) and had multiple photos per item for sale. That seems a tad daft now, but at the time – three years ago – it was the only one easily available to me (i.e. free, included in my hosting package) that allowed multiple photographs, which for jewellery bought un-seen, I thought was absolutely vital.

My decision was heavily swayed by a site for an Australian jewellery seller that had a gorgeous on-line shop – just what I was striving for in my mind and which used Cubecart as its cart engine. It soon became evident that their site was heavily modded and way beyond my capabilities, but it proved to be a catalyst I was appreciative of – I needed to at least make some decision and get moving. And having something to aim towards was the nudge I needed.

I made an alternative style of earrings to match the copper raindrops necklace this week – as I’ve added a chain extension to the necklace back with a little dangle and this is the same principle, to match.

I also liked its simplicity. It’s certainly less feature-rich than other systems, but with the purchase and self-installation of a few commercial mods and the addition of a few free ones too – I added in many of the features I felt I missed and would improve the site and this is still very much a work in progress. It is easy to use under the hood and I’m still very happy with it and now have well over 400 items featured on the site.

I added an articulated variant of my Sterling silver leaf spiral one piece earrings this week too – for those that like a little movement in their earwear.

It’s now using an older version of the cart and would no doubt benefit from the upgrade to a newer version, but it’s rather a case of “if it ain’t broke . . .” I rather like its clean simplicity and customers say they find it easy to use and find things, so I’m leaving it be for now.

So, to celebrate my third on-line trading anniversary I’m holding a one week sale with 15% off everything in both my shops. The discounts are automatic and displayed in red in my own shop and if you apply Coupon code ETSYVERSARY15 during the checkout process (a welcome and long-awaited brand new feature from Etsy) from my shop on Etsy to secure the 15% discount.

15 Nov 2010

Why do the simplest ideas take longest to drop?

I wonder sometimes why it is the very simplest of ideas that take the longest to sink home. Sometimes an idea comes to you that is so deliciously simple that you cannot comprehend why it hasn’t popped into your head beforehand.

This is how it was yesterday, whilst doing something entirely un-related and not even thinking about this, I had an idea that was so simple, I have no idea why it was so long in surfacing.

I’ve blogged here (see the archive to the right for various articles) and written at length about small item photography and shown my own personal lighting set up for my jewellery photographs. My ‘fat ball bucket’ diffuser, whilst a source of some amusement, works incredibly well, especially as I’ve gradually modified it over time to address assorted problems and to increase its versatility.

It’s a permanent fixture on my work bench, utilising the magnifier lamp with a daylight ring tube that I already use when working – and which was recently replaced when the one I’d had for some time just died on me.

Please click on any of the photographs to see a larger view.

The diffuser bucket works well for most photographs and its integral background, when exposed correctly allows me to create ‘infinity sweep’ type photographs in a very confined space.

I use it daily and it makes my work much easier and its small size means that it’s always around for me to pop an item under to photograph without having to set anything up, which I might well find to be an even further deterrent to getting items photographed and offered on-line – a job I find sufficiently tedious that I don’t need anything more to put me off the process.

But whilst it works really well – in some ways it’s a tad too efficient. It uses only one light source yet gives me a good all round diffused and reflected light, which still maintains a little shadow detail to give items form. But occasionally the light is too flat and too well diffused. Some pieces need a bit more reflection and a bit shadow to bring out their form and show their details.

The texture and depth of this copper etching is rather lost in this well diffused image using my bucket diffuser. For some pieces you want to kill reflections, sometimes you need them, to show the piece accurately.

I’ve found this to be the case with the recent copper etched pieces that I’ve made. Because the etching is quite deep and oxidised to bring out the design, when photographed within my diffuser, it looks somewhat flat and the texture isn’t as evident as I’d like to see it. Some pieces featuring crystals etc. can sparkle quite a lot and the diffuser can also kill this too efficiently. I’m also aware that the elbow grease I’ve invested in my highly polished silver work sometimes isn’t obvious from photographs either.

Photographing highly polished silver is a perpetual battle. You don’t want the wrong reflections in the piece, but neither do you want to kill the hardp-worked shine you’ve given it. My habit is to give pieces my own reflections to give the impression of polish.

One of the features of my recently pimped fat ball bucket diffuser was to use the lid, lined with scrunched aluminium foil, as a further reflector. Placed over the top of the bucket, this lifts the light within the photo area by about a third of a stop and also helps diffuse the light further – it also solved the problem of items on shelves above my work area being reflected in shiny pieces through the hole in keep in the top (originally the base of the bucket) for taking overhead photographs.

The additional shine and shadow with using the diffuser and separate reflector is much better at showing dimensional detail like the soft edges (through polishing, they can be quite sharp otherwise) of this deep etching which looks rather flat when too well diffused.

So for pieces where the bucket diffuser isn’t the best solution, I’d got into the habit of removing the bucket and using this lid reflector to the left of my area facing the light and placing a piece of tracing paper stuck into a frame of mounting board to the right, in front of the light – this was actually a cheap photo mount (matt) that I’d picked up from a clearance bin.

This was the first piece I tried the new diffuser with – as the etch hasn’t yet been oxidised, I needed an oblique lighting angle to show the depth and detail of the etching and I also used the blank wall of light of the diffuser itself to reflect off the highly polished surface to remove all other unwanted reflections.

This set up worked quite well for larger items or where I needed more shadow, or where I wanted to hold the items for scale, hereby having much more space to get my hand in holding the item and take the photo with the other one.

With small earrings especially, I like to photograph them being held to give a sense of scale and this isn’t possible within the confines of my diffuser. This was taken using my tracing paper diffuser sheet and a scrunched foil reflector facing the light, and angled slightly downwards, to allow some of the limited light to be scattered back into the scene.

The frame itself was a little cumbersome and would occasionally fall over whilst taking photos due to the weight of the frame and its size. And the tracing paper within the frame would crinkle after extended use with being close to the warmth of the light and from being handled etc., so needed replacing periodically. My idea yesterday was to laminate a piece of tracing paper – making it lightweight and more robust for use.

So using a couple of A4 laminating pouches, I laminated a piece of good weight tracing paper that I usually use for pencil illustration work (so therefore slightly heavier than you’re likely to get in a tracing pad from a stationers) and a piece of very white looking tissue paper that I’d kept aside for such a use that already looked quite translucent.

Using my laminated tracing paper diffuser I still had good even light over the piece, but a little more contrast allowed the texture and polished surface of this copper etching to be illustrated rather better.

The tracing paper laminated well and is pretty consistently toned over the sheet as it was smooth (new off the roll) to start with – and this is slightly more opaque. The tissue, which had already been creased up and smoothed out, does show a few trapped creases, but considering the quality of the original, has smoothed out incredibly well, but went noticeably more translucent as it laminated. This now gives me two versions of the diffuser depending on how much light I want to allow through.

It’s worth noting here that the further your diffuser is from the light, the more diffuse the light will be. So if your diffuser is close to your light source, you’ll still see some shadow detail, but as you move the diffuser further from your light and closer to your subject, the softer the shadows will become. So knowing this gives you a little more creative freedom too.

The new diffusers are lightweight and easy to prop up with a clip or two and as I always work atop my pile of A4 backing papers, the two new diffusers will just stack in the pile and be available whenever needed.