Inspiration from Joy Funnell

I wanted to say a big thank you to jewellery designer and teacher Joy Funnell who helped me out last week in getting hold of some urgently needed 7gm packs of clay. If you haven't seen Joy's blog then you really need to. She's a metal clay artisan extraordinaire and all round genius!

Looking at the examples of Joy's work really brightened up my day and I was amazed at her skill and the sheer beauty of her work. Please, please, please take a look at Joy's moonlit sea pendant on the blog and you'll be astounded at what can be achieved with liver of sulhpur. Here are a few tips from Joy about resourceful ways of getting more colour from liver of sulphur.

"You can mix your LOS with hot coffee instead of hot water. This brings up some really nice colours. Using Cola instead seems to work as well. Try putting your piece into clear hot water to stop the action instead of cold. Hot water tends to being up more in the red range. If you are patinating earrings bend a wire so it will hold both at once and dip together to get similar colours on each one."

Thank you for some great advice Joy, I shall be reading your blog avidly in future.

Shrink Plastic Preview

I've been working with a wonderful medium called shrink plastic and it's fair to say, I'm getting pretty hooked. I'd like to say it's new, but I remember making lots of charms and keyrings with this stuff when I was a little girl and baking them in the oven.

Shrink plastic makes fantastic jewellery, here are some examples of pieces I've done recently. I'll be running jewellery making with shrink plastic workshops very soon and I'll keep you posted with dates as soon as I have them. it's quick, simple, lots of fun and the possibilities are endless!

More Dates for Create & Craft TV!

Just wanted to let you know that I've booked some more dates in my diary for silver clay shows on Create & Craft TV.

You can watch me at 10am on Sunday 24th January and also on Saturday 6th February, when I'll be demonstrating some fingerprint keepsake jewellery.

Phillipa's Beautiful Shiny Things!

I had the pleasure of having Phillipa from the North East on my introduction and advanced silver clay workshops recently. She's sent me some images of lovely things she's made that I want to share with you all. I love both pieces because they have an Art Deco feel about them and it's my favourite era of art.

Absolutely adore your work Phillipa. Considering you've only been doing this since just before Christmas, you're an inspiration to everyone who's learning or thinking of taking the plungle into silver clay jewellery making.

I love to show off the beautiful designs my delegates have made so please send them in so we can put a little gallery on the blog.

Create & Craft TV

Just before Christmas we were delighted to secure a deal with home shopping channel Create & Craft TV to sell our silver clay products and DVD.

My first appearance as guest presenter happened today (Sunday 10th January) at 12pm and whilst I'd been looking forward to it immensely in the run up, today I was a bag of nerves!

Fortunately, I was working with a brilliant presenter, Nigel May, who made the whole show so fun and easy going, that within minutes I was right into the swing of things and really enjoying doing all my demonstrations. Create & Craft TV has so many viewers who make cards and scrap books that I decided to try and incorporate this into the examples I brought with me. So here are some pictures of some of the cards I created for the show. complete with silver clay embellishments. I hope you like them.


Thank you to all of you who tuned in and e-mailed and texted me after the show with your very kind feedback, your support helps me more than you'll ever know. Today has been such a great adventure, I can't wait until my next appearance!