For the past eight Wednesdays I have been attending a night class in the Vanilla ink studios. Vanilla ink is a business run by Kate Pickering, a DJCAD jewellery graduate. Her business supports other jewellery graduates as they find their feet as designers; providing them with an affordable studio space for a year, alongside expert mentoring, business advice, and support.
So, my night class, as you may have guessed, was one in jewellery making. I love to learn new skills and I love rings so this course seemed like a perfect fit. And low and behold, the first night we learned how to make a ring – so perfect! It took far more finger strength than I would have assumed, but it was great fun to do. Having a finished product so quickly was really nice, and a great start to the course. The following two weeks were all about learning different techniques, making jump rings, sawing (embarrassingly and frustratingly, I broke around 12 saw blades, not my forte I guess), using the rolling mill (A king of mangle type device which flattens and stretches the metal), adding texture with hammers, soldering and so on.
Having learned the ropes, weeks four onwards were set aside for creating whatever we wanted. I chose rings, obviously. I started mocking up designs with copper, and was really surprised at how fast I was able to work. I broke more saw blades. Gosh. And decided what metal I wanted to use and how much. My silver arrived on the Monday of week five. I had made a bit of an error. I wanted two things, a piece of silver wire, that was fine, got that bit right, and also a more rectangular piece of wire. What came in the post was a really heavy, thick, rectangular block. Oops. Come Wednesday I had resolved to put this block through the rolling mill, which I mentioned earlier, to try and reduce the silver to a workable thickness. After rolling the metal about 40 times it was far slimmer and ready to become a ring. Everything was going smoothly, the ring was circular and it fitted my finger. Too smoothly. After a final blast with the blowtorch I picked the ring up (with tweezers of course) to drop it in the water bowl (this cools the metal down so it can be handled). However, the water bowl was not where it fell. It slipped out of my grasp, burnt straight through a piece of fabric and shattered on the floor. It was quite a dramatic sequence. With hopes that this would be the night’s only casualty I moved on to work with the silver wire. This was far more successful, only one broken saw blade but two finished, shiny rings.
I missed week six as I was unwell. I got sent home from Uni on the Monday, because I looked as if I was about to pass out. A week long rest and I was back in action. My penultimate jewellery session was very successful. I made five more rings, Two for me, one for a friend, one for a cousin, and one for Mothers Day. I had to do quite a bit of sawing. However, practice certainly does make perfect, as I broke not a single blade! I had gotten so into making the rings that I didn’t have enough time to polish any of them. Which brings us to week eight, which I spent sizing, buffing, and polishing my rings. I also soldered together some of my scrap silver to produce a kind of wonky and wobbly ring.
I really enjoyed my time in the studio and would definitely do another course, Kate is a great teacher and producing your own jewellery is really rewarding. The rings I made are pretty basic but they are so valuable to me.
The Photos I have included in this post were taken by Kitty, you can see more of her work on facebook.
Marigold 