It'll be lonely this Christmas

After the length of time it took me to make my brooch I was really excited to complete both a pair of earrings and a necklace at my class this week. In fact I was so excited I wore them all to work. But sadly on a lunchtime excursion (for kuchen) I lost one of the earrings. There wasn't even enough time to photograph the pair so here's the one lonely earring and necklace.


On the bright side the necklace on its own is very wearable.

Are we nearly there yet?

The brooch is finally finished. After a long saga of failed oxidation and scrubbing and yet more scrubbing the copper eventually turned black. And then it took just a matter of minutes to put it all together et voila:-


So now what? Well, I guess I'll have to try wearing it!

An excellent example of a displacement reaction

The aim was to turn the copper black. It worked but then sadly the 'black' rubbed off under water - not a good look on a rainy day. So I spent most of the class scrubbing the blackness off to the point where it now looks exactly the same as it did last week!

On a happier note I did manage to turn the small central bit (or carpel, if like Elanor you majored in biology) black using another dodgy looking solution. The addition of a pin is also critical to the effectiveness of the piece.

Next week I'll be putting the leaves in the dodgy solution (wish I could remember all that chemistry I did at school) and hopefully finishing off...

Spot the difference

After 3 more hours of work this is how the brooch is looking:


For those not sure how this is different from the last post there have been several steps to get here. I've soldered on a tube on the front to hold the flower in place and a tiny tube and a hook on the back for the brooch pin.

After all that soldering the copper was extremely flexible so I had to hit it with a hammer. The really important lesson I learned is that it is definitely not a good idea to hit the tiny tube with the hammer otherwise it's back to the blow torch!

See saw

The votes are in and counted so the once bag is soon to be a brooch. It took me 3 hours to saw these three bits of copper. I'll leave you to puzzle over what they're all for while I do my homework.

Kilts for Kids day

I was really pleased to learn that Kilts for Kids day has won the Institute of Fundraising (Scotland) Partnership Fundraising Award. I'm looking forward to this year's big day on 27th November and wondering what everyone's doing for it?

designjr is in business

I've finally sorted myself out with some business cards for designjr. Why is it always so hard doing your own marketing? It's taken me all year to come up with my own but for others it can be done in a few hours!