Bespoke Necklace in Coffee and Ochre Glass

Inspiration for the necklace

So sometimes you have an itch that you just have to scratch For me recently, I just had to make a beaded set of jewellery with ochre and yellow and coffee colours in it’s palette. Each bead is completely different to every other and there are 70 beads in total.

I wanted something to create something that would be comfortable to wear and would go with a number of different outfits (as there is nothing worse than having a piece of jewellery you can’t wear with anything), Also I didn’t want the beads to be too large…

You see lots and lots of clothes about right now with ochre in the palette and it’s also being used quite a bit in home furnishings, but very little jewellery, so obviously we need to put that straight!

I first chose a bundle of tasty glass in all the colours that I fancied the look of and held them up to the light to see what kind of effect I would get in the finished article.

I love this stage of the project as everything is ‘to play for’ and you feel that there are so many possibilities you could follow.

I used one of my favourite stringing techniques which is knotting the cord between each bead (this is a neutral coloured hemp cord that I got from Cookson Gold). You often see this method used on strings of pearls. It helps to keep the item comfortable and stops the pearls ‘chinking’ together.

The necklace is finished with sterling silver findings and a sterling silver toggle clasp.

Making the beads

I made the beads for the necklace in three separate bead-making sessions (each session took a good few hours) Each time when I got the new ones out of the kiln I compared them with ones I already had and checked that I had the right balance of colour variation, texture and pattern, light and shade and size.

Stringing the beads together

I tried a number of different ‘layouts’ before deciding on the final one. I wanted to get the variation of colour just right. I have grey, bright yellow, ochre, mustard, chocolate brown, coffee, cream and amber. All colours play their part.

Each bead is very different, but they all come together to make a quirky set with much interest and texture. This piece will soon be on the website shop. Many thanks for coming to my blog. x

The Inspirational Dragonfly

Dragonflies have been an inspiration to me since I was a child. I used the ‘Meadowhawk’ name and symbol for my handmade jewellery brand Meadowhawk Jewellery when I set it up back in 2013.

Meadowhawk is the name used for the Darter family of Dragonflies in some parts of the world and I loved the connotations of the word as it took me back to my childhood days of lying in thick long grassy meadows in Somerset and watching these majestic ‘hawks’ of the insect world dart around going about their business.

Wonderful dragonfly image by liggraphy from Pixabay

When a dragonfly flits effortlessly through the air pitching momentarily here and there I marvel at its grace, and I find myself completely awe-inspired. They seem to have an insatiable appetite for life.... attacking it with an equal measure of lightness and gusto.

Their mechanics are a source of wonder too. How do those beautifully engineered wings attach and work with such efficiency and power, when their mechanism of attachment is so delicate?

My handmade silver dragonflies are born

I had always wanted to hand-make my own tribute to the dragonfly in my favourite metal silver, and in March of 2017 my first large dragonfly was designed and fabricated.

I adore the substantiality of these large Meadowhawks, and love to team them with some of my glass beads for a real statement piece.

I confess I am a bit of a fiddler with my jewellery and like to hold and stroke my dragonfly when I am thinking, concentrating and contemplating. I find the feeling of the silver under my fingers a real comfort, and when when it warms to body temperature it feels like myself and my 'spirit insect' are one in the same.

And so the obsession continues with my dragonfly friends.

The silver dragonfly jewellery family grows

I have been working to develop and grow my 'English Garden Collection’ in the run up to Christmas 2019, and I now have a little mini-collection of baby dragonfly pieces including cuff-links, a pendant, and a ring. The smaller size allows the pieces to be worn more as everyday items of jewellery, but they remain imbued with the same strong emotional significance.

Having my dragonfly close to me whether it be the large or the small, around my neck or on my finger, helps me feel a little more strength, resilience and comfort inside. Now why should that be?

Let's talk a little bit more about the dragonfly's special characteristics and other reasons why it could be such a important icon? A little delve into the symbolism of the Dragonfly easily turns up several answers which certainly ring true...

They don't muck around when it comes to getting what they want. They have grit!

They are incredibly focussed on their prey and are brilliantly determined about getting it. They are not a ‘pretty pretty’, gentle butterfly type of an insect creature; when they want to, they go at it, and they mean business.

Busy dragonfly image from https://pixabay.com/photos/early-heath-dragonfly-dragonfly-2186186/

As a species they have commanded tremendous longevity and staying power. Dragonflies have been around for 300 million years, they have a successful position in the food chain, and they show no signs of leaving us any time soon!

They have an amazing capacity for change and transformation spending the first year of their lives as a water nymph and finally metamorphosing into the most brilliant of technicolour and iridescent insects in existence.

The remarkable unicorn-worthy colours also speaks to a certain majesty and magic. Once in it's final glorious form the dragonfly lives in the moment making the most of every second, embracing change, being consistently adaptable as life takes its inevitable twists and turns. I aspire to this so much - (some days I'm more successful at it than others!)

(On a lighter note they also take a bit of time to warm up in the sun before taking flight - in this respect I find myself similar to my kindred spirits... It usually takes me a good two teas and a coffee before I'm good for anything useful at all in the morning!!)

According to more shamanistic spiritual sources having a dragonfly as your totem animal can mean one can develop their ability to take things lightly even in the darkest of moments; "lightness in feelings and lightness in thoughts" . The dragonfly spirit animal invites people to keep a "light, positive outlook no matter what."

Well if that is what my dragonflies help me and their owners to do then I couldn't be happier. So here’s wishing you vibes of strength, resilience, hope, and the gift of clarity and a lightness of spirit to all for 2020 and beyond... - from me and my dragonfly family at Meadowhawk Jewellery.

Tranquil dragonfly image by Adina Voicu at https://pixabay.com/photos/dragonfly-dew-spider-web-morning-1729157/

Finishing my Sterling Silver Dragonfly Cufflinks

Handmade Sculpted feather ring in Sterling Silver

My latest project was to make a bespoke sterling silver feather ring for one of my dearest customers.

It is made for her thumb. Here is the finished piece.

I managed to take some pictures of the process as I went along to show you so here goes… The first stage is to cut the basic shape for my ring

The ‘spine’ of the feather needs to be soldered onto the sheet metal base; this happens before everything else.

Then I start to file and shape my piece of silver and start the etching and repousse marks. I like to spend quite a while getting this bit right.

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We next need to look at how the ring ends will meet, so I curl the metal around the ring former with the aid of my trusty raw hide hammer. In order to do this the metal needs to be softened (or annealed)

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Once the shaping process is finished then the ring is polished using finer and finer abrasive polishers until a mirror shine is achieved.

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Once I have made any adjustments in sizing (with a ring like this I often like to get my customer back for a fitting before I finally finish it), I need to oxidise the ring to bring out the light and shade in the metal. This treatment takes a short while, but then the polishing process happens for a second time.
This short clip shows the finished ring from all angles.

I was really pleased with the result and my customer was happy too. Many thanks for coming to my blog page. x

Handmade Industrial Styled Bespoke Sterling Silver Ring

I had the greatest pleasure recently to make a really interesting handmade piece of bespoke jewellery for a very special person. It was particularly fun as it was one of those ‘make it as crazy and impossible as you like’ briefs that gives you total permission to interpret the job any way you want.

I will take you on a whistle stop tour of the process:

Stage One - Have a Good Old Chat

Face to face is always best when starting a new bespoke project, but some of these chats will take place on messenger or Whats App as well.

Basically, I want to find out what my customer wants the jewellery to do. What is the function that the piece will perform? What role will it fill? Is it something that will be worn every day? Is it something for work? Is it a showy statement piece or more of a creature comfort?. Is it to mark a stage in life, celebrate a recent feeling or be a symbol of support, strength or leadership.

People want jewellery for lots of different reasons and it’s my job to understand what each piece is required to do.

Also I want to understand what kinds of styles of jewellery the person likes and already has, so I can see where the Meadowhawk Jewellery piece is going to fit in. What clothes does the person like? If it is a bead project, then colour will also play quite an important role.

Stage Two - Research

Then I make a few notes about the key parts of the brief and note down important things like ring size and whether my person likes a tightly fitted item or something with a bit more wiggle room. (This is pretty important where rings are concerned I have found...)

In the case of this particular ring (among other things,) I wrote down the following:

I then set about looking around for inspiration. Here’s my little mood board of collected pictures from all over the place:

Sometimes I take the camera on an image-hunt outing too at this stage to take some snaps for ideas and I set about rummaging around in my silver stores in the workshop to identify the types of shapes that I might like to use would to make the design. I also did a set of sketches of potential ‘looks’ for this ring. (I don’t draw well so excuse the scrappy pencil sketch.) The idea below was the one I liked the best:

Stage Three - Make

Yes it looks impossible, but that’s what a quite liked about it. It had an element of ‘chunk’ to it too, but also the fine piece linking the larger pieces gave it some ‘delicacy’ and light and shade which I found appealing. I set aside an entire day to saw snip and cut my pieces and start assembling and soldering the ring.

Late on in the day I decided to remove the second ‘floating wire’ feature and reposition where the wire went completely as I didn’t think it added anything and actually made the ring look more ‘twee’, and this ring wasn’t going to look twee! I also altered where the different texture effects were to be placed quite a few times before I got to something I was happy with!

At each stage I checked that the sizing was on target too, as adding texture to the silver also adds millimetres to the silver. (imagine rolling out a piece of pastry with a rolling pin or squishing in a pattern, where the pastry has been squeezed it splays and grows in size...)

Once it was soldered, sized and polished, the ring was treated to oxdise the silver and then re-polished by hand to bring out the highlights.

The finished bespoke sterling silver ring is pictured below. I’m so pleased with how it turned out, even though it didn’t end up looking much like the original sketch at all:

If you liked this post you may also like the post about how I create my sterling silver warrior rings.
Thank you for joining me here on the Meadowhawk Jewellery blog! x

Handmade Ladybird Glass Bead Character Bracelet

I have been working on a few characterful sets recently. This one is all about ladybirds…

I particularly like the design because of the little green guy going the opposite way to all the rest!