Tea for two ......

"Tea for two, and two for tea,
just me for you, and you for me...."

A customer already has a necklace of two cups and saucers and when she saw my "Tea Series" pieces, asked if I could make her a tea pot to go with them and also a little word tag that said T 4 2! I'm sure they'll look great together and I like the abbreviated tag!


I made a tea for two lariat necklace a while ago...actually, now I come to look for a photo of it, I see it was a long while ago. I can't find a photo of it on it's own, but below is an old photo of three tea pot pieces I made in 2007. The tea for two lariat is the blurred part of the photo on the left where the teacups hang through the teapot! Glad my photography has improved in these last couple of years :=D

Fancy a nice cuppa?

Mum's the word - or Mom's the word!

Yes, I often feel like I have become bilingual - speaking English and American! What with mum and mom, and laugh lines and laughter lines and - way too many examples to mention!!!!

Then last night we were going out and were told there was a "no host bar". What on earth does that mean? Nothing to us!!! Luckily our electrician friend was here working on the kitchen and so we asked for a translation! A bit like when you buy tickets and they say "Will Call". Even though we know what that means now, we still don't get it!!!!

Then when we went for a walk to collect the news paper the headline on the front was "Furlough Friday...." Again - we are stumped!!! No idea what a Furlough is - but now we do!!!!

But all that has nothing to do with my new necklace - just waffling! Sorry.

Anyhow - here is a lariat style necklace I created for all those moms and mums out there. It shows three silver charms of children's toys - a train, a rocking horse and a bunny.

To bring back memories of your kids or possibly dreams during expectancy!

Presents and casting

Haven't been showing many new things on the blog lately - sorry for that. The reason is that I've been busy making presents for people - so can't show them until after Christmas! Had to ship them to Santa in plenty of time....

I also had a request this week to quote on making 200 charms! Yes, it was just earlier this month I was talking about moving into more commission charm work - and here is this request! So I've been figuring out how I can do this - and do I want to do this! I've spent the week learning alot about casting.
I tried casting once before on Little Bo Peep and it didn't come out well. There was a lot of detail on the piece, as you can see in the photos, but the cast pieces weren't as good and seemed to lose their form...... I think because the original piece was hollow......and I didn't get much feedback/advice from the casters. However some other metal clay artists gave me names of casters they had used.
It's an interesting process. I would make one master version of the charm and finish it fully. Then send it to the caster who makes a mold of it and then creates however many copies of it. Different casters then do differing amounts of finishing work for you - but I think with 200 pieces, I'd want them finished! I can't imagine polishing 200 tiny charms myself! That is not why I like making jewelry!!!

Anyhow - I have a better handle on it and feel more comfortable this time. So we'll see how this progresses. Even if I don't do this project, I spoke to such a helpful guy at a casting company not far away, that I think I'll try something with him....maybe get one of my pieces cast in gold for myself?????

Hope you are all dealing with the Christmas chaos and finding time for fun, family and friendship.

Mother's charms

I seem to be getting more and more commission work to make individual charms for people. They generally tend to involve creating a silver miniature version of something that is meaningful to the person or their friend - ranging from either a pet, to a child's favourite toy, to a silver version of a larger household item, to........

I'm thinking that commission charms is something I could get more into. I do like making things only once, and it's great to hear people's stories behind what they are choosing me to create. I'm doing one this week - but I'll write about that later..... Lovely story behind it....

Anyhow, in the meantime, I've created some simple toy charms that would be suitable for a mother's charm bracelet, or one could go on a bookmark, or key ring or.....

Here's a little toy train



















A plane




















A doll's house



















And a rocking horse.



















Sweet little reminders of your children.......

The silent charm bracelet

While I was at a metal clay conference last month, I was lucky enough to win a charm bracelet with all the charms made by different instructors. It's a great bracelet - but not one I can wear everywhere. You see it's really noisy! All that jingling and jangling makes quite a racket - even when I'm just moving my arm slightly - never mind if it is a longer motion!

So when I'm not wearing my prize - I wear one of my "silent" charm bracelets. A single charm on a solid bangle - like this one with Wattle the chicken on it. Yes, Wattle is a quiet little chicken - no clucking from him!!!

A friend of mine, Jo, is just starting a new e-commerce business called "choirgear" where she will sell all things to do with personal goods for choir and chorus members. She kindly asked to include some of my items too - so the silent charm bracelet will be one I recommend. It's a great resource so if you sing, do check out Jo's website. I sing a lot and am always carefully to not wear jangly stuff but hate having to not wear perfume!! For an evening out, I always want a little spray of my favourite scent, but have to forgo it for the sake of other singers who have allergy problems....

I make the bracelet sometimes with clips - so that you can buy different charms and they are interchangeable so if you aren't feeling like chicken one day...you could have bird instead!!
That way, as your mood changes with the day, you can add whatever charm you feel like.

Right now, I'm not having a particularly good day nothing really wrong - but maybe I need to be wearing my bottle of wine charm!!! Too early to have a drink - but maybe the charm will do something for me!!

But maybe the correct choice would be a teapot charm - a nice cup of tea - that would sort me out!!! Yuck! Hate tea!! (see my previous post about tea).

Anyhow - for those "silent" moments - consider the silent single charm bracelet!