A few pictures of my recent work

Here are some of my solid silver cufflinks with just one shade of blue enamel. I love how these turned out.

And some more solid silver cufflinks in the blended blue enamels are here.

I also made some rings in the same style as the cufflinks to compliment them.

Alongside my large solid silver pendants I have made some slightly smaller ones in which also feature the blue enamels. 

As you can probably tell I do love these shades of blue enamel! But I have been doing lots of experiments with pink enamel……and I have discovered that pinks are pretty difficult to get right! The pink enamels ate extremely sensitive to the kiln temperature and the time they are in the kiln for. Also I have found that when enamelling on sterling silver you must use flux with the pinks. Anyway, after many, many attempts I finally made this necklace with a stunning pink centre. I love this piece!

And finally I decided to stray slightly from my ‘blobs’ of enamel and I created this silver pendant with a blue enamel flower.

Enameled blue wavey ring

Here is a little ring I made the other day when I was experimenting with doing part-enamel on a ring.

Enamel and silver ring

Firstly I had to cut out a length of silver from a flat sheet. I am using 1mm thick sterling silver here.

Silver ring with enamel

Then using silver wire, I soldered random shapes onto the flat sheet at various intervals. After doing this I shaped the flat shape around my ring mandrel so that it became a ring shape. I tested it for size on my own finger as I was making it for myself. Once I had the size correct I soldered it and then cleaned up the edges on wet and dry paper so that they were even and smooth.

Next it was time to pickle the ring in my jar of safety pickle.

Time to prepare the enamel!

I used a couple of enamel colours on this ring. The darkest blue is LJE T330, then the mid blue is LJE T220 and the light blue is LJE T217. I didn’t use any flux as I find with the blues it makes them go all grainy. Perhaps someone could tell me why this is?

My kiln is set at 820 degrees Celsius and I usually fire for around 2 mins per firing.

The ring with the wet enamel, sitting on top of my kiln to dry out before firing.

Various stages of cooling down when the ring came out of the kiln. I fired this ring twice, applying more enamel after the first firing.

Next came the cleaning up, so back in the pickle. (the enamel I use is fine to go in the pickle and not be affected) Then I polished it up, not forgetting to wear my trendy safety goggles!

And here is my finished silver ring with blended blue enamel.

And here I am modelling it whilst playing my oboe.