It's almost the 6th of December and christmas is nearly here!
If you love all things yuletide you will be loving the atmosphere and excitement at the moment. Its such a warm, cosy and sparkly time of year..Such a contrast to the month that follows.
Skull Update:
I unfortunately cannot guarantee delivery in time for christmas now so I am stopping taking orders until the 2nd of January. I don't want to have to say no to anyone because of how busy I am so the notice is that I will be back after xmas. There isn't any disappointment this way an.
Potential customers: A new year treat? perk yourself up for the cold months of Jan and Feb? Or Valentines Day perhaps? birthdays? The possibilities are endless and don't just start and end with Christmas :)
There will be new packaging next year and another range to go alongside the skulls. I cant wait for 2018!
A few people have been asking me about how I actually make my skulls. Do I cast them? Do I send them to a gem setter etc. The answer is no to all of the above.
I spent 5 years of quite intense study of art/design/metalwork and jewellery and I indeed can pretty much do all techniques. There's nothing wrong with cast jewellery, in fact I love it and may do some designs this way in the future but I also love jewellery that is made from scratch using very old/traditional techniques. Its the way a lot of us are first introduced to metalwork and is very satisfying to create a piece in this way.
I start each skull with a fresh piece of sterling silver (I source most of my materials from Cookson's)
I melt it to a rounded little blob and then I hammer it until i get a piece of flat silver around the size of a 1p with a thickness of 3mm (sterling silver sheet doesn't often come in this thickness so you DIY)
I then pierce out the basic skull shape and file edges and surfaces smooth and follow this with the more finer filing. This part is crucial for the final polishing stages.
I measure the eyes out. Drill the eyes which means keeping the initial holes smaller than the setting burr which I use on the smaller eye to create the flush setting.
Around this stage I drill the nose too and hand carve into the metal the mouth.
Only in the final stages do I add a bail and then complete any final filing before I spend roughly around 20 minutes giving the piece a polish with tripoli, followed by rouge for that final 'ping' like shine.
I usually set the stones on a different day. A day just reserved for them where I am clean (no dirty face and hands from polishing) music on and just a quite, chilled out environment so I can concentrate on setting the stone securely and perfectly.
It then goes into the cleaning tank for 20 minutes or so so that all the tiny smudges of polishing compounds dislodge and the piece is 100% clean and sparkly.
A sterling silver chain to the requested length is strung on and lovingly positioned into the box.
So there you have it. A LOT goes into just one but it is a very rewarding way to make someones precious jewellery.
In the new year I will be posting more on this and hopefully short videos too.
Thanks for reading :)
Louise x
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