Just a little reminder that Craft Hatch is on this Saturday, September 11, from 11am-4pm
@ the City Library, 253 Flinders Lane, Level 1 Gallery, Melbourne.

Hope to see you there!

Tom and I will  also be at the October market too!

So this is how I've gone about making a stickpin stopper similar to this.

I start with some 2mm PVC cord and some 3mm chenier.

Anneal the chenier and feed the cord through.


























File the end to a taper and draw through a drawplate.  About 5 holes does the trick. (Mental note: buy a pair of draw tongs! These pliers just don't cut the mustard!)


























It now looks like this with the PVC held securely in place.













I carefully squeeze up the end with round nose pliers.  This is necessary to keep the PVC in place.   In my first attempts I just filed and emeryed the end round leaving the rubber exposed.  I found that when the pin was pushed in it had a tendancy of pushing the PVC out the end.













File the end round, emery. Mark and cut to length.







































Clean up the end and very carefully drill a guide hole into the centre of the PVC.  This is possibly the hardest part.  The PVC is quite spongy and the drill bit has a tendancy of slipping over its surface.  Drilling straight helps too, unless you like the wonky look of a skewif stopper!


























And we're done!  Macro photography for dummies using my magnifying light.  I reckon it works pretty well.


























Everything in its right place.

The finished product....

I'm working on making my own 925 silver endcaps with rubber inserts.  Will let you all know how it goes!

So here's how I make a christmas beetle out of a rectangular strip of titanium.

Step One. Acquire titanium.

Step Two.  Stick down the design.














Step Three.  Cut out the design.














Step Four.  Bend and fold!





















































Finito!  (Apart from cleaning up and colouring, of course!)

I'm happy to anounce that I'm now using Australian made, 100% recycled silver. The guys from A & E Metals produce a large range of mill products and produce recyled gold too!  They also cut most products to your specified dimensions.

I also got a nice sheet of titanium off them.

My studio mate, Tom Malchi and I are going to be at the September Craft Hatch run by Craft Victoria.  It's on on Saturday 11 September. Hope to see you there!

Reading through my usual blogs today I was surprised to see a link to my little blog at the top of the Melbourne Jeweller blog!

Thanks Karen, love your work!

So these are the latest things I've been working on.  Lots of creepy crawlies!  I'm really enjoying making these bugs because of the way that I've designed them.  They all start life off as a rectangular stip of silver that is then cut and folded into the form to minimise waste.

Been busy getting a workshop together since the exhibition.  It's pretty much up to speed now, bar a few big ticket items like rollers.  It's even pretty warm now that we've added some insulation.
That's me at the bench and Moby on the ground.

So this is the first post on my blog. First just a little bit about me. I''m a jewellery student based in Melbourne studying an Advanced Diploma of Jewellery at NMIT. It's all coming to a close very shortly, culminating in our graduate show. You can check out some pics of the stuff i've been on this year at the blog site. I'll post some others soon.