Elephant Jewellery

So as you might already know I have started jewellery making. And as you also might already know I love elephants so combined the two together and look what you got.
In order to make these it meant lots of cutting out. meaning lots of broken saw blades in my case. And a little bit of silver soldering.

I first started off by doing my little scribbly sketches and then I went onto choosing one and cutting it out as a template were I cut around, using a saw I cant remember the name of.
Then after I had cut out the silver I used a hammer to make the circle-y texture. following that I cut out the grass then I filed and emeryed it down. After that I made the pin for the back but knowing me I cant really remember how I made that!

p.s. I haven't done barely any post for a while and though I would say its my fault I say its actually 40% mine and 60% my school so I blame it one them, as I've had a lot of homework at the moment!

Also Don't be afraid to follow me on Google+  and see how my blog progresses.
It would be so great to get some followers as I have almost been a blogger for a year now so it would be nice to get some feed back.

Thank you xxx

and

hope you like my little elephants

An extra large picture for and extra important post!

There are two main reasons as to why I want to raise money for charity...

1) I am completely in awe of Martha Payne and her blog "NeverSeconds". At a young age she raised a lot of money for a lot of people in Malawi! She a better Martha than I am for sure!

2) I would love to honour a friend who passed away because of cancer so I want to raise money for cancer victims!

I also bet you will be wondering why a strange owl is in the picture. This is because Posy (named by one of the viewers on this blog later this year) will be with me at each fundraising thing I do! so might appear in quite a few pictures on this blog.

Hopefully by around this time next year if I could raise lets say... £1,000. So lets see how it goes!

It is very Important people give me some advice as to how I go round doing this so please comment!

box !

Wood is a wonderful medium, I've used copper once in another resistant materials project however wood has something about it that I prefer much more than metal.

As you can tell this small box is made using veneer but if I were to be more precise I made it out of MDF with a veneer in-lay. To make it I used all kinds of tools: coping saw, tenon saw, files, wax, scalpels, band saws ETC (you get the point).

How I deigned and made the ducks on the lid....

I copied off a cartoon painting of ducks from when I was younger I then scanned it into the computer and traced around it on a design program called 2D design which was then sent to the laser scanner and the design (the ducks) were cut out three times each in a different shades/types of veneer.

To finish of the box I waxed and polished it!

My hard work was paid off when my teacher gave me an A* for it! Even though there may be a few little chips here and there on the veneer.

First Animation!

I apologise for not posting anything for a while however here is my new addition to my crafty scrap book...

I don't want to say to much about this as I think you should watch it and see for yourself. I personally think it could be improved with a little music and a few tweaks but apart from that I am impressed with my self for not only plucking up the courage to run for year rep at school but also I am proud of my self for doing my first stop motion animation.

As always if you have any questions or comments they are welcome. x

strawberry

This is a small, however cute bit of embroidery!

I made this for my mum because it was her birthday and at the time a strawberry was pretty appropriate for the occasion because Wimbledon was on ( whoo Murray! ) 

In order to make this strawberry it was pretty stress-free and would be great for a beginner in embroidery or for someone who doesn't have a lot of spare time as it was a simple and small design so was reasonable quick (bearing in mind that it was hand embroidery after all.)

And if you would prefer machine embroidery instead of hand embroidery that is always an option, plus it would be quicker! 

Mermaid

on holiday stitching!

final piece

 

I did this hand embroidered mermaid around this time last year. (Hence the photo of me sewing in front of the caravan on a summer holiday.) It was for my Bronze Art Award, which is an equivalent to the Duke of Edinburgh, D of E,  in the art world, consisting of four clauses I had to do with one of them being a new skill (mine: hand embroidery).
 

The way I got the idea of sewing a mermaid was, after doing some thumbnails, looking at my old picture books including my particular favourite “Can you catch a mermaid”. And so by using the front cover of the book I got inspiration for the position of the mermaid and the style of hair.

This mermaid is the first major hand embroidered piece I have done and ever since I have felt that I have improved in hand embroidery. In fact now I even sometimes choose hand embroidery over machine embroidery! I guess I love hand embroidery so much because it is a lot more relaxing. I often stitch in front of the TV, happy and content; but don't get me wrong I love machine embroidery after all it was my first "textiles love".

Now you may be questioning who Maggie is and why I was inspired by her so I will try and sum her up as best as I can in a paragraph, instead of a 8 page essay, which is easy to do bearing in mind just how incredible she was...

Maggie was my wonderful friend who sadly passed away. She introduced me to this wonderful world of textiles and without her I wouldn't be the person I am today let alone be writing this blog. She was my teacher as well as my best friend. So I dedicated my mermaid to her because not only do I owe everything I know about textiles to her but hand embroidery was her very favourite type of textiles.

Earrings!

 

 

Earrings

Other a small workshop at school once this pair of silver hooped earrings is the first (proper) jewellery I  have made and infact I am pretty proud of them.

Jewellery making all came about around a month or two ago when my mum and I decided to do a jewellery class every other week. This Is because I want to explore different crafts and art.

The process in order to make these involved some new techniques and media for example needle files, ------saws (and some other stuff I could describe but can't name). However some of they stuff we used I was familiar with because I had either seen or used them before in resistant materials at school.

The idea of doing the little silver flower and leaves was a pretty simple process I suppose. I did my usual research for inspiration as well as jotting down some designs. And I knew I wanted something along the lines of flowers (or birds etc) to make them unique because otherwise what is the point of making them?!

I've already decided that my next jewellery challenge will be an elephant brooch.

And finally I would like to thank Catherine for helping me and my mum with our jewellery making! X