Lucky news!

Occasionally, I enter the odd competition or buy the rare lottery ticket, but I very rarely ever win. I’m sure many of you can relate.

Much to my amazement and delight, I got an email from Cookson Gold saying I’d won their August Shopping Spree competition from their new magazine! The prize was a hefty £200 worth of products from their website which I had the luxury of choosing!

Obviously, I was ecstatic at the thought of free Cookson goodies – amazing to get a good boost to my small-but-growing workshop and treat myself to some things I wouldn’t normally have the money to get. 

Cheesy shot of me with my winnings by my workbench

Choosing what to get in my ‘spree’

I was in a bit of a quandary trying to decide exactly what to get, and the right balance of bullion to tools. Did I splash it all on one big item on my wishlist, like a rolling mill? Or did I spend it all on silver sheet and wire, to shore up raw materials before Christmas? Or did I buy lots of little things to try and make the prize as big as possible?

I ended up with a bit of a mixture – decided to buy some tools, some silver and some little things. I’m especially happy with my new Knew piercing saw and Vallorbe swiss needle file set – I own cheap versions of both these and being able to upgrade for free to the best versions makes a huge difference, especially as I use both these tools on every piece. 

(I guess this is where all the advice about buying the best tools you can afford really rings true. I find the reality usually is, you can only afford basic because you need so many tools to start off with)

My prize...

So exciting - like Christmas!

Lots of packaging inside the box...

Yay, goodies! Tools at the top, silver at the bottom

 

So, I got...
- Knew Concept saw
- Saw blades
- Vallorbe 6 needle file set
- 7 hole disc cutter
- 1.5mm letter punches
- Solder cutting pliers
- Iron binding wire
- Silver sheet in 0.5mm and 1mm
- Loose belcher chain
- Silver wire - selection of square and round

Thank you very much, Cookson!!

Filigree and claw setting pendant

Oh dear, life has been a bit hectic recently - spending time with family, going on holiday, etc - so haven't really had a lot of spare time to blog. I shall make a promise to myself to try and post at least once a week!

In June, I made this for my nearly-Step-Mother's birthday, at an all-day workshop with Amy Surman. I really wanted to try making a claw setting from scratch, and thought I'd attempt filigree at the same time! This took about 6 hours - very time consuming but quite ambitious given the number of new techniques I was trying, and there are a crazy number of soldering joints in this one piece (probably 40-ish?!). Most of this piece was made using different sizes of wire (1.2mm-ish square wire, 0.8mm for the setting and some of the structure, 0.6 for the filigree) - I curled all the bits and just played around to see what worked, instead of following a design pattern exactly.

It was polished in a magnetic polisher - which is a nifty machine like a tiny tumbler, with tiny pins and which polishes in about 15 mins... and now I really want one.

Luckily, my nearly-step-mother really liked it, and appreciated how it was made specially for her - she has even asked me to make matching earrings for her Christmas gift, haha!