Fun day at the museum

Yesterday I ran a workshop at Whitby Museum. They are always fun to do. I took the small group of participants around the museum looking at objects that had spiral patterns on them. I then showed them how to make a small brooch based on the Anglo Saxon ones in the museum collection and they each made on as an introduction to using pliers, cutters and copper wire. Then they all went off and had another look at some of the objects and made sketches and after lunch returned to make up their designs using a variety of thickesses of copper wire and beads.

I will be running similar workshops on the next two Thursdays. I will post some of the pictures of their work as a slideshow

Re-organising the studio

I have spent the last couple of days re-organising the studio. When I went to the Guild of Enamellers annual conference just after easter I collected a hydraulic press but decided not to assemble it until after the Open Studios. I finally got around to it this weekend and now it is safely bolted into position on the workbench and ready to use. Now I need to source some acrylic preferably from somewhere that can cut shapes.

I have also had an old kiln refurbished. This large kiln orig

inally belonged to the enameller May Yarker and I have just had it re-built by Corby Kilns

I am really looking forward to being able to make some larger enamels but will have to take a bit of time and care planning them as it would be a shame to waste such large pieces of copper. This kiln will take a panel approximately 30cm square but of course it does mean everything will be so much heavier to lift in and out. I have some of May's original tools and kilns supports and now just need to pluck up the courage to try it.

Recycling

I have spent a very damp day at the North Yorkshire Moors National Park centre at Sutton Bank demonstrating to those hardy people who braved the sometimes torrential rain to get over to the marquee and look at the exhibitions. There were representatives from the Ryedale Borough Council re-cycling service talking about composting; a display by the National Park, a woodturner with beautiful work and an organic grower. Here is my unfinished necklace. I particularly enjoyed showing the children how easy it is to create these flowers and had an enjoyable day even if everything seemed very damp by the end of it. I just need to light the fire and check all my tools are properly dry now

Back to work

I have had a lovely day away and today am back in the studio. I am planning the things I am going to make at the event tomorrow organised by the North Yorkshire Moors National Park at the Sutton Bank Centre. It is called 'Our awesome planet' and will be all kinds of people working in re-cycling. I will be making jewellery using different odds and ends of recylcled materials and will try and remember to take some pictures and post them

A few days away

I have been working hard over the last week but don't have much in the way of pictures to show. I am going away for a few well earned days off though now and next weekend will be at Warwick Folk Festival. Hopefully next week I will get back to the blog and let you all know what I have been doing!

I will be at the North Yorkshire Moors National Park event 'This awsome planet' on Wednesday 29th July at Sutton Bank; at Tockwith Show on Saturday 1st August and then running a short series of workshops at Whitby Museum on Thursdays 6th, 13th and 20th August.

Two days of teaching

I have had two really busy days running courses in my workshop here in North Yorkshire. I love the challenges some of my students set me by asking questions that really make me stop and think. Yesterday I had a student who was also studying for a degree in visual arts and had been doing a lot of work with ceramics. Anyone who knows me well will know I don't really have any affinity to clay (mud kind of stuff) as I don't like getting dirty! Julie had brought along a selection of bisque fired earthenware textured beads and wanted to know whether she could add art clay silver and torch fire them, the main problem being that she didn't have her own kiln just access to a very large version at the university where she is studying. I admit that my initial reaction was a very large NO thinking I didn't want flying shards of hot ceramic bits in my studio - especially while someone else was in there. Anyway, after a bit of thought (and lunch) I suggested we try by adding art clay silver overlay paste, drying the bead on my scientific hotplate set at about 60 degrees C and then turning it up to 200 degrees C to pre-heat the bead. I then set up a few fire bricks on my hearth to surround the bead from three sides and got Julie to slowly introduced the flame of the propane torch. I used long handled tweezers to turn the bead occassionally while she was firing and at the end quickly removed it putting the hot bead between layers of kiln blanket to slow down the cooling process. Success...... a bit of burnishing and one happy student with a silvered ceramic bead!

Flora and photo polymer plates

I have been experimenting with some of the photographs I have taken at Whitby Museum recently and trying to make them into photo polymer plates for using to texture art clay silver. This is all preparatory work for the jewellery I will be making as part of my Inspired by Heritage residency at the museum. I have used a variety of different types and thicknesses of plates but eventually decided that I like the thin plates with a steel backing. These seem to produce the delicate and still crisp image I am looking for. It has taken me quite a few days work though and lots of pieces that are not quite what I was looking for. Here are some of my photos converted to black and white together with some of the finished plates. There are quite a few steps to the process including printing high density images on ohp film so that they can be used as negatives when exposing the sensitive plates.