Its the Etsy summer market and I am taking part with @Ideas Birmingham. OK I dont live in Brum, but at the time it was the nearest group , they agreed to accept a Stokie and they a a friendly bunch. So Here is the market line up. I'm off to the shed to make a smiling cat......

 Hi, 

I have made a couple of you tube videos which if you have found your way to this obscure corner of my world I thought you might like to see.

The first is a demonstration of me painting om the second layer of resist on an inch bird.

It has already been through the etch once, so that the eye, beak and tail feathers stick up more than the rest. So in this video I am using a nail varnish pen to apply the next layer of resist to create the feathers.

Click on the link below to watch on you tube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehvM_lxgOcE

The second video is me cutting out a baby dragon, this one is 17 minutes long, I didn't realise it took me so long to cut them out! I did manage to cut the whole thing out without breaking a saw blade, but then it is copper and quite soft as it has just been annealed. The brass ones are a little harder and take longer to cut out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6ks-BETfLI&t=33s 

 

 

As I have noticed a few people finding there way here recently I thought I'd do a quick pictorial how it is done sort of post.
First, cut the designs of of sheet metal and hammer to shape.

Three brass pieces already worked on a bit, and a sheet of copper ready to be cut up.

 All cut up, and roughly sanded to take off the sharp edges. The copper pieces are ready to be hammered.

After everything that needs to be is hammered out, the backs are coated with resist and signed. And the first layer of nail varnish resist is applied. There is a cactus appearing at this point, in an here's one I started a week ago way....
The pieces then go into the etch tank for 10 to 15 minutes or so to etch the first layer.

 

After the first dunking they are rinsed off and a second layer of resist is painted on, some of this is proper etching resist which is scratched to produce the pattern (the black stuff) . For others it is more nail varnish or in the case of foxes a mixture of the two. These all have to sit around drying before being etched again. The dog at the top and the badger in the middle will have a third layer of resist and visit to the etch so that the  legs have more depth . The cactus only needed one bout of etching so here is it waiting for its next stage which is being cut out more neatly.

After the second etching, the pieces are rinsed and the resists wiped off with white spirit and nail varnish remover. This is why you rarely see me with nail varnish on, it wouldn't be there long before being stripped off when I am cleaning up my brooches. I've tried wearing gloves but I just get holes in them . The top 3 pieces have had a bit of a brushing with a brass brush, the others are waiting their turn. So after this photo, I file off all the edges as they can get a bit rough in the etch and sand the backs and edges. Next the pieces are polished.

Not the best of pictures, but it was late and very dark when I took this photo just before soldering the backs on. After this this get a good clean, the backs are brushed again , then they are lacquered ready for sale.
 The cats and foxes are or are about to be for sale on Etsy and Folksy, the badger still needs to be patinated before going on sale. The cactus has been soldered to its pot and is still in the shed waiting for a final clean up, brooch back application and a paint. At the rate I am managing to do anything at the moment it will be next week before that is for sale.
So now you know how it is done , as they say on the tv.  My apologies for the quality of the pictures, my workshop is set up for making stuff rather than taking perfectly lit pictures.....

Workshop essentials

Last week I had to do some essential maintenance work on my workshop, or to be more precise the roof of my workshop. My workshop is in an extended shed, we bought one then found we had so much stuff between us we had to buy another for my own jewellery workshop area. Last year I had to get up on the roof and install a solid ridge . The problem with roofing felt on sheds is that it shrinks and gets brittle with age. This is exacerbated by our cat running around and sharpening its claws on the rough surface! Where the two sides on the roof join on the ridge there is a weak, unprotected area which got ripped last year , so we bought some guttering , turned it upside down , glued it in place with silicon adhesive then I glued two layers of roofing felt over the top , nailing and sealing the edges. Whilst I was up there, (and yes it was me not my husband, he claims to be too heavy to crawl around on roofs) I patched a few thin looking bits.

But this year his end of the shed was leaking again, and when I got up there, there was a huge patch of felt missing, blown off by the wind. So out came the left over roofing felt and felt mastic and I spent an afternoon scrabbling around on the roof, thinking what the hell am I doing up here, isn't this one of those jobs that you fondly believe will become somone elses when you first get married!

So I present my patched roof for your edification

No, it's not the neatest job in the world but the roof doesnt leak any more at the moment, so I'm quite pleased with it.

I also added a little essential internal modification........

Essential for Spot our cat that is, he likes to keep me company when I'm in the shed and recently he has developed the annoying habit of sitting on top of my fan heater and knocking it over all the time. So I put this shelf up in the corner under my bench . Its the warmest place in the shed, out of the draught from the door, a bit of foam to make it comfier and warmer and out of line with anything falling on him whilst I am sawing,filing etc. And when the fan heater is on in there I point it under the bench at my legs. And yes to the perfectionists among you it does slant a bit.......It was too dark under the bench to see what I was doing properly but Spot hasn't noticed and thats all that matters.

Now all I need to do is make some more jewellery!

So here is something I managed to make after doing these two maintenance works.

A spring chick brooch, somewhat neater than my building work!

Frankenrobot the mad scientist

    

                                      Frankenrobot

 It was a dark and stormy night when Frankenrobot lurched out of the castle looking for a subject suitable for his lateast research. He clanked and screeched along the road, his rusting legs much in need of a good oil. What poor unfortunate creature was facing its doom tonight?

The robot rolled his eyes, searching high and low for some living animal on which to work his evil experiment. It was getting much harder to find suitable material as his fell experiments had emptied the forest surrounding his lair, and Frankenrobot was obliged to roam long into the night.  

Any sensible creature was curled up as small as possible in the deepest burrow it could find in the hopes of avoiding unwanted attention.

  Even the last rat in the area was in hiding, hunkered down in a deep drain hole nervously chewing his tail. Luckily for the rat the robot's antenna were as ill maintained as the rest of his body the centre sensor was supposed to pick up on signs of warm life , but a chunk has rusted off the bottom which limited the robot's perception of depth.

AAAAArrrrgggghhhh growled Frankenrobot, his rubbery lips quivering as he gave vent to his fury.

He had reached the boundary of his domain, at the furthest point from his castle was  the graveyard, where he buried his failures . 

 The sun was now making a vain attempt to lighten the sky and Frankenrobot knew he must return home soon, then suddenly he spotted his victim

silhouetted against the sky too intent on watching the dawn come up and preparing itself to welcome the new day with a song...................................



Sorry it was just that this robot looked like it needed a history, not very christmassy is it?

 

Just take one pumpkin

And carve.....................

happy pumpkin

angry pumpkin

wicked elf pumpkin

scarecrow pumpkin

 

rat infested pumpkin

Its a good idea not to drop your pumpkin

 

Gently decaying pumpkin several weeks later

                          Happy Halloween

Enamel insect and flowers

Anyone who saw my last post about my brass bird, may have wondered why it was sitting on a real branch. When I first started it it was going to be sitting in a nest made of wire, but having made its legs and feet I didn't want to hide them . The idea I had was to make a Victorian taxidermy style diorama  ,  with metal creatures instead of stuffed ones.
So what follows are the close ups of the piece of bark that the branch is mounted on with its accoutrements.......
First I made an insect, this was intended to be flying in the air above the bird, which is why the bird is looking up but finding a suitable branch was impossible so it has ended up on the floor....of the piece that is.

Is body is enamelled top and bottom with a brass band around its circumference to hide the join, the legs are copper with beads melted on to the ends for feet.

I also made a copper worm which had a great dark wormy patina from heating, I'm so tempted to make some sort of a brooch with a whole bunch or these so they would emerge out of a pocket.....would anybody buy it though?

 

Then I made some plants from copper which I enamelled

and

I was particularly pleased with the way the leaves turned out, they are all enamelled on both sides, which in the case of the brass flowered daisy was probably a waste of time as you cant see the back, but working out how to make them was very instructive. I'm now trying to decide how to combine these flowers and leaves into a brooch.
And here is the picture of the whole thing for those who have not seen it on my facebook page.

My apologies for the state of the photos they were taken late at night the day before I sent it off for the exhibition when I realised I had no pictures of the finished article. I really wanted to have it all under a glass dome but couldn't find anything suitable that was affordable. I found a couple of websites selling old oblong domes, plenty of stock but no prices, I hate that. If you have a shop why not put the price on things? It reminds me of the thing that posh antiques shops do, where the assumption is if you have to ask the price you cant afford it. My attitude is that if I have to ask the price I assume you don't want to sell it.  
This was great fun to make and I'm thinking about what creature to make next, I spent a very boring day at work today stapling bits of insurance policy documents together whilst daydreaming about dragons, but don't hold you breath it will be probably after Christmas before I get a chance to make another project like this.