'Hidden Detail' Rings

For my next project, I plan to make a series of rings that are mini sculptures or pieces of art. They will be 'mini sculptures' in the sense that they are interesting when off the body and have detail from all angles, not just the top view.

Because I will be using the Ocean (coral, shells etc) I want to focus on the idea that its surface is so plain and almost boring, yet below it is a world that is so complex and removed from ours. I will work this concept into my rings by playing with settings and differents stones, so the top view will be simple, and most of the detail will be on the underside of the ring and the shank.

Reflective Report on Soldered & Enamelled ring...

My aim with this piece was mostly to test a technical problem when working with enamel, which was whether I could torch fire and enamelled element once it has been soldered to something i.e. a shank.

The ring design as one similar to a pair of earrings I had previously made which were inspired by the shape and form of a clam.

Ultimately I found out that you can torch fire enamel onto a soldered object, but it depends on how the objects are soldered, and the melting point of the enamel. With my piece the enamel took a while to become vitreous and as a result of this the shank melted into the element on top slightly, and the area around the solder join became incredibly dirty. To clean the joins then became the next problem because most enamels get cloudy when they come into contact with acid, so I had to paint the acid onto the dirty areas with a brush… which worked quite well.

I learned that it is possible, but risky, to enamel soldered objects…

Soldering & Enamel

For a while now I've been wanting to test what would happen if I torch fired enamel on a piece of jewellery that had already been soldered together...



The above two photos show the ring before and after being soldered together.




These photos show the ring after the enamel had been torch fired. The enamel I chose usually takes longer to fire than the other transparent enamels, which is why i decided to test it on the solder joins. Once fired, the metal was more dirty than usual, and the top of the shank had melted into the ring slightly. Other than that, the Enamelling was successful and the solder joins were able to be cleaned by applying acid with a paintbrush to avoid acid coming into contact with the enamel.

Design Indaba

Design Indaba was amazing! It was such a wonderful experience to be able to display my jewellery and meet all sorts of interesting people.




The above pictures show how i displayed my jewellery. I used blocks of perspex to elevate my pieces and underneath I placed watercolours I had painted to give it some colour...









These are a few of the pictures I managed to take at the Indaba, my favourites were these little ceramic figures by Sootcookie Ceramics.

Design Book Cover...

New year, New design book!

For our first B-Tech project this year we're making ourselves design books, and we get to create the cover :)

Seeing as the cover will have to be 2D, I plan on using photos I have taken and using water colours to paint sections of my photos...


The colour and texture of the coral in the above picture is very interesting, i would like to explore this using watercolours in my cover.

Beach Holiday Pics...

These are some photos I took while walking along the beach up the North Coast...




The above funny little blue squishy thing was very strange. I've never seen one before! It was very pretty though. It looked alot like a glass bead, but felt soft and slimy.