I’ve been working on a new collection for the past few weeks, and now that the pieces are back from being hallmarked at the Edinburgh Assay Office, I can start to show them off. The design features heavy hammer marks on thick silver wire. The pieces are oxidised with liver of sulphur, which makes them … More Latest Designs: Sweet Chestnut
I have made this pretty little collection of jewellery especially for the Coquetdale Art Gallery in Rothbury. All of the pieces feature warm copper hearts, combined with hammered and oxidised silver. There are two styles of pendant, post and drop earrings, a copper charm bangle, and a silver chain bracelet. They will all be available from … More Latest Designs: Little Copper Hearts
I feel as if there should be a drum roll here. For the past few months, I’ve been working on a brand new collection of designs, and I’ve finally reached the point where I’m ready to share the first few pieces. The collection is called SeaSong, and it combines my beach-combing finds with hand made … More Introducing SeaSong
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had been working with amber. I actually got a string of beautiful coin beads from a lady who was selling strings of beads by weight at a brocante (antiques market) in nearby Langeac. I wasted no time in de-stringing them, and found I had a wonderful … More new designs: autumnal amber
Having carried out extensive research (that’ll be five minutes on the internet then), I have discovered that the collective noun for seahorses is ‘herd’. A herd of seahorses. That just sounds wrong. It’s a word that doesn’t begin to do justice to these weird, graceful, beautiful creatures, and I’ve decided to go with ‘flotilla’ instead. … More news from the workshop: a flotilla of seahorses
One way or another, I’ve mostly been working on designs inspired by the bark of the silver birch tree for the past few days. I usually apply the distinctive texture using the edge of an old and slightly pitted hammer, but I decided to try something slightly different with the bangle pictured above. It’s made … More news from the workshop: silver birch
Making jewellery is partly about ideas and creativity, but a larger element than you might think is concerned with engineering and problem-solving. It’s fine to create a beautiful centrepiece for a design, but you also have to think about how to incorporate it into a practical piece of jewellery, that can be worn comfortably, and … More weekly photo challenge: connected
I’m experimenting with Mesh, a phone app recommended by WordPress. It allows you to create a gallery of photos from you phone (or iPad in my case) and publish it directly to your blog. Which is exactly what I’ve done. It’s been wet today, so I’ve been working on a couple of designs in my … More welcome to my day: silver poppies
The prompt for this week’s photo challenge is “muse”, and we are asked, “what subject keeps you coming back?” What I keep returning to, in both my photography and my jewellery designs, are leaves. I’m particularly fascinated with oak leaves at the moment. We have a lot of little saplings growing around the garden, and the … More muse
It’s still a bit early in the year for poppies really, but we ordered our Higgledy Garden flower seeds last week, ready for sowing later this month, and we included some poppy seeds this year. In the UK, poppies have been associated with remembrance since the end of the First World War, but they have a … More silver poppies
