New

Finished rings, ear studs and toe ring.

A couple of these and one of my holographic fluorite pieces are in an exhibition at Federation Square's Ignite: student showcase tomorrow 12pm-6pm in the BMW edge glass theatre. These are some of the many new pieces I've finished recently. Cast sterling silver with handmade shimmering gems.
http://www.fedsquare.com/events/ignite-student-showcase/

preparations

Shimmery lavender moons on milky blue heaven hoops with sterling silver ear posts. My previous moon hoops were made to fit stretched ears so I made these to fit normal gauge earholes.

At the jewellers bench in the studio...

My double ring with triple gems! Fresh from the casters before it's been filed, sanded and surface treated.


After its been cleaned up and whitened with depletition silvering or "bleaching" which involves repeatedly firing with a flame torch, dunking in acid "pickle" and cleaning with a scrubbing pad. My handmade jewels were added. Here I was trying out different ones, but I ended up swapping the smaller blue for a greenish one.

Silverspun

Click images to see them bigger. It's hard to tell from a photograph but in real life these stones are a gorgeous blue with purple streaks and a holographic rainbow shimmer underlay, that catches different colours in different lights and angles. Oh and they're naturally ultra violet reactive, so they actually glow. My exhibition work is about the magic of the earth, natural phenomenas.



Some sneak peeks at some of my pieces that will be at the Silverspun Box Hill contemporary jewellery graduation show on the 24th November at Thousand Pound Bend. I also have 2 other finished pieces and thirteen others I'm putting the finishing touches on currently.

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at the bench

setting a stone...

Pleochroism

I'm furiously working in the studio at the moment, preparing for our upcoming graduate show... some clues to what you should expect to see there from me.

In continuing my ongoing theme of crystals and materials that have different kinds of light effects... some Pleochroic pieces are in the works.

From Wikipedia:
"Pleochroism is an optical phenomenon in which mineral grains within a rock appear to be different colors when observed at different angles ..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleochroism

Basically, they're multicoloured crystals! They look different colours in different light and when you move them.. oooh magic.

An example of pleochroism:

horns

Making Alice

I like every version of the story, but these are a couple of my favourites...