Day one at jewellery school- what I actually made

Mosaic of photos taken during workshop

I signed up for this 4 week silver charm making course as i'd previously seen Sarah Hyam's work in her studio at Jubilee Wharf and was really charmed (no pun intended) by her work featuring mermaids and birds. A few weeks ago I saw a poster advertising the course and I decided that if I could get the time off work I would sign myself up for it. So this week was week one and in one morning I learnt how to cut, bend, heat, solder, and lots of other things in between. I started the morning knowing nothing about making jewellery and came away at lunchtime with a copper wire bracelet sparkling on my wrist and a set of hoops to possibly turn into earings.

The studio was full of really inspiring things to look at- out front is a small shop area with work from the artists who share the space, and in the workshop part of the studio there are all kinds of pots full of strange tools, boards covered in pliers and jars of multicoloured glass. As I have a bit of a obsession with hardware shops I was immediately off taking photos of the pliers and punches and things like that- not sure that was what Sarah meant by saying 'take a look around and see what's inspiring'.

In the photo (above) you can see my morning from start to finish- from the excitement of the pliers to the finished bracelet. Sarah showed us some of her work as examples and inspiration- I especially like the mermaid necklace. She took the small group of us through the process of working with copper wire (before we are let loose on the silver) to make S links to create a bracelet. We  hammered some of our links flat, and added 'blobs' to the ends of others by heating them. After joining them all together we put them in the 'pickle' to clean them up and then tumbled them for half an hour to make them all shiny.