Etsy update~!

Well, over this last week I have finally gotten around to updating my Etsy shop with some of the things I have made recently.

I'm always a bit apprehensive about listing on Etsy... it's the photos, really. As an avid Etsy buyer (!), I really appreciate what a difference good photos make to a listing, and I feel that I'm still not quite settled on what I want the 'look' of my own items' photos to be. Good light is always a problem in my flat, and getting an opportunity to find an outside space to photograph things can be difficult.

I made a light box from instructions that I found via Etsy, and I have to say that's helped a lot with eliminating shadows, and achieving diffused light... but I still don't feel I've found the perfect backdrop for the items. This time around I've used handmade paper. I'd really like to use slate, or perhaps some very fine matte emery paper (I'll need to find some first!) instead at some point - all the backgrounds I've used before have been quite light, and maybe I need to try something darker.

I've also been using the scanner a bit for some items, like cards, but I find it doesn't always do the colours justice, and if there's too much texture (for example on my beaded pieces) focus can be a problem too.

So, I'm still working on it - but I feel that each time I update my shop I learn something new!

This week I've added...

...some fiber embellished cards that I made with my embellisher - quite simple, but they really show off the beautiful threads (again courtesy of Sassalynne and Therainbowgirl!) to good effect.

...some jewellery I made with vintage findings, kumihimo braids, and felted pieces (again made using my embellisher, and then finished with handsewn beads and hand embroidery).

This necklace was made using a piece of a larger blue piece I had felted and beaded. It's mounted on a vintage brass tag, and strung on a lovely vintage brass coloured chain. I really like the texture of the pendant - it's very touchable!

I made these earrings from one of my 8-strand kumihimo braids. I have been trying to work out a way of incorporating the braids into earrings, in a way I like. This is the best I have come up with so far! I tied the braids into Chinese flat button knots, which I think shows off the texture nicely. One braid end is fed into a tiny bead cap so that the earring finding can be attached.

A few more photos!

It actually stopped raining for long enough today so I could take some photos of my summer school pieces in daylight outside!

Jewellery making summer school~!

Today was the last day of my week-long summer school in jewellery-making and metalsmithing, at the Leith School of Art here in Edinburgh. Typing is a bit sore thanks to the saw cut on my thumb (one of many!) but there are so many things to tell, I will persevere!

The course ran 9.30am-4.30pm Monday - Friday. We were a small group of 10 students, with a range of previous knowledge and ability - a real mix of people and backgrounds, which was nice.

A bit about Leith School of Art
Embarrasingly enough I hadn't heard about this place until I was searching for a summer school to go on, back in the spring (even though I used to live in Leith!!). It's a small art school, that runs evening classes, foundation courses, summer schools etc. The school is situated in an old church in Leith, and the building is great - lots of the original features have been kept, including the gothic arch doors and stained glass. There was a really nice atmosphere around the place, and it was busy with two other summer schools running concurrently to mine.

The course itself...
Our tutor was Jenny Deans, a local jeweller who trained at the ECA and now teaches part time at the school. She was helped out by Jo, who is another jeweller and currently artist in residence at ECA. They were both young, enthusiastic, really knowledgable, and above all, patient! The atmosphere was really relaxed and informal, which was a really good environment to learn and try out new things.

The first day, Jenny took us through a lot of the basic tools and techniques. We learned about using saws, files, hammers, mallets, pliars, drills and punches, as well as the essential techniques of annealing (basically softening metal so it can be shaped and textured) and soldering.

I was really amazed at all the different skills needed to produce something that when finished looks quite simple - and also how physical the whole process is - from getting hot and sweaty with the blow torches for annealing and soldering, to sawing (including fingers!), to hammering (including thumbs!), to filing. It takes a lot of elbow grease, but as a result finishing a piece is really satisfying. For most of Monday we played around with ideas and tried out all the techniques.

By Tuesday, we began to think about the actual pieces we wanted to work on for the rest of the week. We were pretty much given free reign to do what we liked, within the constraints of the available equipment (and our limited ability!!), but that still left plenty of options.

I decided to focus on trying to find ways to mix textiles/threads and metal for my pieces. I wanted to find out how feasible it is, and to see whether this is something that has potential for me to explore further, either at home or in future classes.

We were given the choice of working in unlimited brass or copper, or limited amounts of silver (due to the expense). I decided to try out all three, but to leave silver until last so I could hopefully improve my skills before dealing with the expensive stuff.

Project 1 - Copper and kumihimo brooch

Before the course started, my main ideas had been to incorporate my kumihimo braids into a piece somehow. I wanted to show off the colours and textures of a braid against a very different background.

I really liked the colour of the copper metal we were given to work with, and thought that some of my braids worked in beautiful Sassalynne copper/teal threads would work really well with the copper metal.

I decided to try a brooch piece, where I could experiment with different surface textures on the metal, as well as being able to incorporate 3 different braids, learn how to make a brooch finding, and practice cutting and filing circular pieces of metal (very difficult!). I experimented with a few different ideas before coming up with the final version.

I annealed 3 pieces of copper, and then sawed out 3 circles, each smaller than the last, using a metal compass to trace the shape. Then I hammered the metal to give it surface texture - each circle with a different hammer to give the specific texture. Then I cut out more holes for the braids to be wound through. After that, the metal had to be annealed again, to soften it enough so that I could shape the circles into concave shapes. Once annealed and shaped, I hand drilled tiny holes in each disc so I could sew them all together. Then, finally, the last thing was to make and attach the brooch finding - essentially a needle and catch. This was by far the hardest thing I did all week (I found the soldering really difficult) and seemed amazingly complicated for something so ostensibly simple. With a lot of help from Jo, the assistant, we managed the difficult job of soldering onto a curved surface, and we shaped some stainless steel wire, which I filed to a point at the end, into the pin.

Once the hard bit was done, all that remained was to thread in the braids, and then sew the three discs together. It was a lot larger than I expected when it was finished, but I really like the colour combination and the different textures.

Project 2 - Felt and brass necklace
For my next piece, I wanted to incorporate something I had felted/beaded. I thought the simplest thing to start off with would be just to 'frame' the piece of felt in metal. I discussed it with Jo, who suggested sealing the frame with handmade rivets to hold everything in place. I decided to try working with brass this time - hard work!! Brass is much harder to saw than copper, and by this point my arms were getting really sore!

I cut a piece of felt I had made into a rectangular shape, and annealed, cut, and texture a brass back, and front 'frame' to sandwich it. The sandwich was sealed with handmade rivets of copper tubing in each of the for corners. The riveting was a really long process - 4 tiny 7mm lengths of copper tubing had to be annealed, then passed though tiny drilled holes in each of the corners. Then I had to open out the tubing with a scribe tool, to widen it and make the 'rivet' effect. I found this really difficult to do uniformly and delicately, so consequently the rivets in the finished piece were not quite as neat as I wanted! I hope this won't be so obvious when the piece is being worn though, as hopefully attention will mainly be drawn to the texture and colour of the felt.

After that, all that was left was to make jump rings to pass through the rivets, so that a chain could be attached (I didn't make the chain!!).


Project 3 - various earrings
After I had finished the necklace, I still had some time to make a few pairs of earrings, and to try out working with silver. I had the idea of using threads in geometric or woven patterns, to give added colour and again texture. The silver was really nice and easy to work with compared to the brass. The most difficult part was making the earwires for the earrings - surprisingly hard to get two exactly the same (and I need a lot more practice!).

*-~-*

I was really pleased that, over the course of the week, I had the time and opportunity to try out working with all the different metals, and to try a bit of all the techniques Jenny showed us. I was really surprised by how physical all the work was, and at the end of every day we were all exhausted! Overall it was a really interesting experience. Although I think some of the techniques and equipment aren't really feasible for me to use at home (acid baths and blow torches with cheeky cats? I think not!), it has given me a taste for how felt and braids could be combined, so maybe I'll follow it up with an evening class to explore that further.

At the end of today's class, we had an exhibition, where our class, and the other two classes all showed our work to each other. It was really interesting to see how different each person's ideas and approach were - there were some really lovely pieces made by other people in the class. Unfortunately I forgot my camera (this slightly blurry picture was taken with my phone!), but Jenny and Jo took lots of photos - I'll post more of them here once I get them.

Making a bag!

I fancied trying something new this weekend, as I've spent a lot of time recently with my embellisher, and I sensed that my sewing machine was feeling a wee bit neglected... .

A while ago I bought some lovely hemp silk herringbone fabric from InfiniteCosmosHemp on Etsy. It has been sitting making friends with the rest of my stash, waiting for the right time to fulfil its potential.

I have also been wanting to try making a bag from scratch (pattern and all) for a while... so everything converged this weekend and I decided to give it a go!

I thought the hemp would make a lovely tote, because it's pretty heavyweight and durable-feeling, but at the same time soft and yummy.

I started sketching out my ideas, thinking about whether I wanted a plain tote shape (i.e. rectangular) or something a bit more interesting. I decided to go for a sort of 'bandeau' look at the top of the bag, with some gathering below to give extra shape. I went for two straps/handles, as I think this is always more comfy when a bag is full, and used other bags I have to give me an idea of how long I wanted to make them - not so long that the bag gives me bruised knees, but definitely long enough so I can comfortably put the bag over my shoulder.

I had made my sketch to scale on the squares in my wee notebook, so then I just scaled it up using graph paper (not too much maths involved thankfully!), and cut out a real-size pattern on bits of stuck-together graph paper.

Next I cut out all the pieces and started sewing them together. Probably should have stopped and thought about it a bit more before starting (!), but it kind of worked out ok in the end!


The hemp fabric was really nice to work with, and cut and sewed pretty smoothly.

Once I had finished the main body of the bag, I decided to embellish her (I think it is a 'she', although I am fighting a strange urge to call her Hamish) with a yo-yo rosette that I made a while ago (planning to make into a brooch which never happened).


I think she looks pretty cute! She feels like a good size when over my shoulder, but I guess the proof will be in the pudding when Hamish gets her maiden voyage fully laden.

I think I might take her with me tomorrow, for my first day of my metalsmithing summer school, and see how she fares :D.

Weaving on a peg loom

I recently bought a small peg loom - a wee hand made one with a maximum of either 9 or 12 pegs.


A peg loom follows the same weaving concept as other looms, but weaving happens vertically and the wooden pegs are used as the warp while the weft is worked.

I chose to work with a peg loom because I wanted to make small scale woven pieces that I could then embellish further by hand, with braid, beads, or by felting, to make small jewellery pieces or accessories.

By reducing the number of warp posts used, the width of the finished woven piece can be chosen. My wee loom has two different sides which take more or fewer posts, which affects how close together the posts are and therefore the tightness of the warp.

Each warp post has a tiny hole at the bottom, through which a warp thread is passed(which carries the woven fabric as lengths longer than the warp posts themselves are woven).

This next picture shows the loom with the various bits and pieces ready to go. The reel of crochet cotton on the left is what I used for the warp threads. The yarns on the right are for the warp (several different yarns will be woven alternately for this particular piece). I just used 4 posts for this piece that ultimately ended up about 6-7cm wide.

There is one more part of the loom set up not shown in the above photo - which is a block of wood that the warp thread ends are threaded through to maintain some tension whilst the piece is being woven.

Once all the warp is set up, I start weaving with the weft yarn. To create interesting colour and textures, with this piece I used a variety of handspun yarns from flawfulfibers of Etsy.

So in this picture above, the thin warp threads are visible, and the 4 different weft fibres can be seen. The weaving itself is very simple, just weaving in and out of the posts from left to right and back again, until the weft nearly reaches the top of the posts.

Then, I lift the pegs out of their holes, and gently pull down the woven material off the posts and onto the warp threads, keeping the tension in the warp threads with the tension block.

Once this has been done and I had freed up space on the warp posts, I carried on weaving until I had made a piece that was as long as I wanted it to be.

To finish, I pushed down all the weft onto the warp fibres, cut the warp fibres near the pegs, and tied them off in pairs to stop the weft unravelling.

The finished piece measures about 6.5cm x 8cm. I pulled the warp threads pretty tight when tying them off to make sure the peice was quite dense and so that I couldn't see any warp threads peeking through the yarn.


Here are some other wee pieces I have made in the same way:

Kumihimo

Today I thought I'd write a bit about Kumihimo, or the ancient traditional craft of Japanese braiding.

This method of braiding is said to be over 1,000 years old. Traditionally the braids were used to assemble samurai armour, and as 'obijime' and haori ties for kimono outfits. They were usually made from silk.

Kumihimo braiding involves using a frame (either a 'marudai' or a 'takadai'), and bobbins. I do the smaller scale version of kumihimo, which uses the 'marudai' frame.

The top picture shows my marudai, which was given to me by my Grandmother, who inspired my interest in kumihimo. In the picture below that, you can see the other equipment that you need to braid with - the bobbins (or 'tama'), counterweights, a chopstick, and of course the threads to braid with!

Depending on how thick/fat you want the braid to be, you either use 4, 8 or any multiple of 8 bobbins. I only have 16 in total, so that's what my braids are limited to (and to be honest, that's enough - it starts getting pretty complicated and easy to get tangled up!). For more complex flat braids, the bigger frame called a 'takadai' is used.

So, to make a braid, first of all you need to work out how long you want it to be, and also what you want it to be made from. I love texture, so I use lots of non-traditional ingredients in my braids, like chain, beads, wool, ribbon, and various different fibres. You also need to decide what pattern and form the braid will take - it's possible to make round, hollow, square, octagonal, flat, and wedge-shaped braids... and the list goes on. A real expert is Jacqui Carey (who literally wrote the book on the subject) - her books list lots of interesting braid types to try out.

Once you have decided on the braid type, you cut your lengths of fibres that you are going to braid with, one fibre per bobbin (although traditionally several strands of the fibre are used per bobbin - and of course the number you use affects the eventual size and thickness of the braid). Here, the number and type of colours you choose can really make a big difference to the final braid.

After cutting your threads, you attach them to the bobbins and wind the thread up around the bobbins.

Then you tie the loose ends together, and attach the counterweights (I use roughly half the total bobbin weight - but varying this makes for a tighter or looser weave of the braid). Now it's time to arrange the bobbins on the marudai - different braid styles call for different arrangements. When using lots of different texture in a braid, it's important at this point to think about the arrangement of each thread and how this will affect the braid overall. Each style of braid calls for the bobbins to be moved around the marudai in various different directions, working with pairs of bobbins as opposites.

The picture above shows 16 bobbins/threads arranged on the marudai. In the very centre is the 'point of braiding' which helps you keep track of which move you have just made when you get distracted by a cat or cup of tea, etc.

The motion of braiding is very rhythmical, and quite relaxing (as long as things don't get tangled!) - you just keep going until the desired length of braid has been made. Then you tie off the braid just below the point of braiding, and can remove all the bobbins from the threads. The braid is finished!

These pictures show some of my braids - mixed texture and same texture, of various shapes and sizes.





These pictures are of necklaces I have made combining various fibres with chain, for added weight and texture.


I love making braids, but I don't feel I've yet found the best way to show off their lovely colours, patterns and textures. My newest idea is to somehow incorporate small pieces of braid into metal as a jewellery piece - something I hope to be able to explore at my metalsmithing summer school next month :D.

First post...!

I've decided to keep a blog of my crafty exploits, partly to keep track of new things I learn and also as a place to store all the ideas that are currently jostling for space in my head and occasionally (often!) falling out and getting lost.


There are lots of crafts that I love.... jewellery making, sewing, kirigami, origami, kumihimo, weaving... . Not knitting though, unfortunately. Just don't seem to be able to get the hang of it, and always end up with a hole-y triangle-shaped piece.


There are a few Japanese crafts in that list (I also love Japan :) ) - origami is well-known; kirigami is its cousin, and involves cutting rather than folding of paper (think Christmas snowflakes you made when you were wee - ^^ ). Kumihimo is traditional Japanese braiding, which makes braids of various shapes, and whatever length you like. I braid on a frame called a 'marudai', with various numbers of bobbins (I think I'll go into kumihimo in more detail in another post).


My main problem is that I'm always getting my head turned by new ideas and crafts, so I think I hope that this blog will help me keep track of those ideas and hopefully allow me to come back to them all at some point. I have a wee shop on Etsy where I sell some of the things I have made in the past. I'd really like to decide on one craft in particular to focus on, and then specialise in that area.


Recently I've been doing mostly kumihimo - I've found some amazing thread sellers on Etsy (Sassalynne, Therainbowgirl) who dye their own threads and make thread selections which are perfect for making beautiful braids. I'm going on a metalsmithing summer school next month at Leith School of Art (very exciting!) where I hope to learn some techniques that will somehow let me combine the braids with metal to make jewellery pieces.


The most exciting crafty thing though is my new purchase of yesterday - a BabyLock Embellisher :D. It's amazing!! It looks like a sewing machine, but there is no thread or bobbin - just several barbed needles (mine has 7). It's basically a needle-felting machine, but it's so much fun! I've spent the whole weekend playing with it :D.

Anyway, more on all these things soon... need to go and watch 'Dexter'!

Bye!