Catching up with myself...

Wow! - almost a week since I last posted anything here...where did that time go? It's a sure sign that autumn is here when time seems to speed up. I know there are the same number of hours in the day (never enough whatever season it is) but somehow time seems more languid during the long summer days - I guess we're naturally wired to cram everything into daylight hours and there are just less of them now.

Anyhow, just to reassure myself that I hadn't lost a few days somewhere along the way and had achieved something in this time I thought I'd show you what I've been up to...

I'm really pleased how these Ornamental Bronze Clay shells turned out. They came about when a friend saw the shell charms I have in my Etsy shop and asked if I could make her one as an ornament. I make silicone moulds from real shells and cast the clay from those. It sounds easy but I find thick pieces of bronze clay have a tendency to crack and the one on the right took several attempts to get it this good. The patina is achieved simply with a hand torch. I just love the Abalone shell - it's about 6cm wide and I keep looking at it thinking what a spectacular focal it would make...

I've also been honing my kiln enameling skills following the course I went on a couple of weeks ago - I'm really enjoying this and can happily lose myself in it for the day. I think I've just about got the kiln sussed for optimum temperature and it's great fun testing all the different colours. I only have opaques at the moment but I think I'll be ordering some transparent enamels soon...

I just love these, clear, bright pops of colour and simple shapes especially when teamed with single contrasting beads.

I've also been messing about with some Lampworking frit and glass strands to see what extra effects I can get - early days but onwards and upwards. You can see from the thicker black edges to some of these pieces that I've over-cooked them a bit. Truth be told, I did it once and I quite liked the effect so you can expect to see more - wrong or not!

I'm hoping that by the end of this month I can get a small range of enameled items into my Etsy shop. I'd like these to be fun, affordable items so it will probably be simple earrings and pendants to begin with and see where it goes from there.

I doubt I'll be doing much enameling this week though - the first part of it will be dedicated to starting work on my Bead Soup creation(s). I have a number of ideas in my head which I'll hopefully be able to translate to reality, but I'm sure there will be some twists and turns along the way. After that, I need to make a concerted effort to increase my shop inventory - busy, busy, busy!

In the meantime I'll leave you with some of the recent additions to my Etsy shop - August was a quiet month to say the least so here's to a better month ahead!

Have a great week all.

Lesley