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!

Inspirational Christmas Cards

Christmas is a wonderful time of year, not just because we get to eat, drink and be merry but because, for metal clay artisans, there is inspiration all around us if we only look.

There are so many textures on the Christmas decorations on my tree and I've been moulding away capturing them. The piece de resistance came this morning when I received a Christmas card from a friend that has a beautiful textured surface. The curly boughs on the tree are so lovely and I just know this will look so good pressed into some wet clay. I can't wait to see the results I get.

So don't forget to look carefully at those Christmas cards...your friends might have sent you more than just their Christmas wishes!

Photographing Your Jewellery

Within all the preparations for Christmas I'm sure, like me, even during the rush to get things done you're still casting your mind forward to the New Year and where you'll take your jewellery making in 2010.

One of the best ways to showcase what you do is to take good quality pictures of your pieces that capture their true beauty. In 2010, we'll be offering a jewellery photographing service to help you do this.


My business partner David Airey takes all the photographs of my jewellery and has had his work featured in Beads and Beyond Magazine, Create & Craft TV and has just been commissioned to photograph monthly step-by-step projects for Dolls House & Miniature Scene Magazine. We'll be offering a cost effective service where you can send your pieces to us and David will take 3 different high resolution images and send these back to you on CD, along with your jewellery. You'll have full ownership of the images to do with whatever you wish!

We know this service will save you a lot of time and expensive photography studio fees. In addition you'll have a set of fabulous images to promote your jewellery making and to give your promotional materials or website a polished and very professional edge.

Prices start from just £10 per item plus postage. Please get in touch on info@silverclaycreations.co.uk or 01422 241115 if you'd like to find or more.