The necklace is a story necklace, the design developed from my research into the gipsy traveller pearl fishers.
The chain is made from rods of dried rowan berries.
Pieces can be added to the chain, like this pearl button.
I will work some more on it next week. I have an intensive college project this week.
This acorn is cuttlefish cast from a wee acorn.
This is the cuttlefish the acorn and a wee key were cast in. The key was made from a watch key imprint with some adaptation to look like a lock key.
Dougie, who works for Imprints at the college, helped me take a 123d scan of my mussel shell half; he then made it into a mesh for 3d printing and printed it. My contribution is the etched piece it sits on.
This is it printing. I may be getting it in ceramic too, so that I can try different materials with the sound transducer.
This is the inside, showing a rather nice build up of layers, a bit like how a real mussel does it, but quicker.
Tanith introduced me to sugar lift etching. The saturated sugar solution is this lovely maroon colour, it takes ages to dry.
Then you put on a hard ground; and when it dries put the piece in boiling water to dissolve the sugar and lift some of the ground. Then you put it in the nitric acid to etch:-
and this is what you end up with:-
I stretched and polished a ring for Peter, my sister’s partner – and got these lovely flowers as thanks.
I decided to re etch the mokume gane disc as I was unhappy with the finish. This time I etched it deeper and revealed more of the silver solder which I then patinated. It has a better texture and is a jolly bright blue.
I took the pressed mussel shell shape and started repousse with it:-
I liked the pitch bowl that you fix it in as well:-
The large berry vessel is drying well and no longer has flies:-
The small vessel selection are on display for the college open day.
This week we tried cuttle fish casting, which smells terrible, but is good fun. I did some keys and an acorn
juliacowie 