Jewelry (or is it Jewellery?!?)

G'day fellow Bloggers...........

Important!; To whom it may concern:- This work on jewelry was done from around the 8th September 2011 to around the end of the term. The date of the post is not the actual date of Start/Completion.

You know, I've always wondered the correct spelling of the word Jewellery (or even jewelry). We all know what it is but there are always controversies over the spelling, i.e. the Americans spell it Jewellery but the British spell it Jewelry, both of which seem to be accepted by our modern society. This is starting to sound like a Language class, but surly by now you know where I'm going with this. Yes this post is on the art of Jewelry (I'll be using the British spelling of the word here) Making!

So...I'll give you a heads up here.....I have never done this before, so whatever you see here isn't going to be the $1,000,000.00 ring that you saw at Jared's. Nope, I'm not that good. But I will tell you that I did a pretty good job at making some fine jewelry.

Before I get into the practical and show you all of the pictures, I wanted to cover the basic theory aspects of it like the ground rules and guidelines and materials for this jewelry making.

General Materials:-

1. Roll of jewelry wire - you should chose your jewelry wire carefully as they come in many different gauges. The lower the magnitude of the gauge, the thicker and stiffer the jewelry wire. The jewelry wire that I used was a
2. Tools to cut and manipulate the wire - you will need some different types of pliers to achieve certain types of patterns when working with jewelry.
3. Hot Glue - a glue gun may come in handy is you want to attach other miscellaneous objects to your jewelry.
4. Lastly, you can use just about anything to add creativity to your jewelry such as:-

• Broken Glass (edges must be smooth)
• Pebbles
• Coral
• Coconut shells
• Bamboo (dried)
• Drift wood (very common and can produce very beautiful furniture)

• Plastic from broken items
• Aluminium and copper sheets
• Papier Mache
• Toilet Paper rolls
• Donkey eye (if you live in Trinidad and Tobago, then I don't know why you wouldn't know about donkey eye; It is:- 

• "A seed resembling a donkey's eye that is often found on Trinidad's east coast beaches (eg - Manzanilla). The seed gets so hot when rubbed vigorously that it can almost burn skin." -  http://www.amazing-trinidad-vacations.com

 As always there are some basic predefined steps in doing art:-

1. First you must crate a theme, like a slogan or phrase
2. Then select suitable materials that would complement your theme
3. Then select a client or clients that would suit your theme
4. Lastly examine your various jewelry and packaging and choose a design that you like

Here's a few more tips and guidelines:-

The finished product should not have loose ends of thread, wire or glue hanging. Elements can be attacked using metal epoxy, twine, soldering, jump rings, brackets, knots, etc

Now you might be wondering, "What exactly is a jump ring?"

A jump ring is simply a metal ring that is used to make chains, jewelry and chain mail. They are made by wounding wire round a cylindrical object to create coils which are broken off one by one to make individual rings, that are in turn, interwoven to create the jewelry.

TECHNIQUES THAT CAN BE APPLIED

1. Soldering
2. Boring Holes
3. Gluing
4. Wrapping

 After arming us with this basic knowledge of jewelry making, Mrs. Davis gave us our challenge:-

"Design 3 (three) item of jewelry as well as the packaging of the product (using paper sculpture techniques) and an advertisement promoting these three products"

So here are some pictures of the end product of my hard work:-

And here's some of the packaging that went along with them:-

 And last but not least...an advertisement that i put together for the Jewelry:-

And that's it. It took a while to get everything done, but it was all worthwhile in the end.

That is all for this post, but we are not through with the coverage of Term 1 yet. We still have one more thing to cover i.e. the End of Term Art Exam which will be in the next post of my blog.

Until next time fellow Bloggers.............