Hi I'm Helen and amongst other things I make jewellery! I also like raising money for charity so this year I decided I would make poppy-themed jewellery in aid of the Royal British Legion's annual poppy appeal.
I've decided to start blogging about how I make my pieces with a view to making some tutorial videos, or maybe offering workshops to teach others the skills I have learnt, so I thought these poppy pendants were a good place to start!
Having emailed the Royal British Legion for permission to use the poppy motif, I set about my design.
I have been playing with enamelling on silver for a while and thought that the vivid colours would lend themselves well to making some striking jewellery. I wanted the design to have a "naive" quality so decided on a simple white background with red poppy and black and green detailing, which would be largely applied freehand.
The first stage was to punch some circles out of 0.6mm sterling silver sheet.
The silver circles were slightly distorted during this process so I next had to flatten them.
As they were to be pendants, they needed a hole carefully drilling so the circles were centre punched and then drilled.
Next, the rough edges needed to be smoothed off. This was achieved using a combination of hand filing, sanding with two grades of wet and dry paper and a final buff with a Dremel wire brush attachment.
After this, the pieces were pickled to remove any grease that could prevent the enamel from adhering to the surface correctly.
Next a uniform coat of white enamel was applied to one side of the pendants and baked onto the silver circles.
A template was used to apply the poppy shape using scarlet enamel and this was then also baked onto the surface of the pendants.
Next, black enamel was applied to the centres of the red flowers, together with a little more randomly applied to create a 3D effect.
Finally, the green stalk and leaf details were added.
Any stray enamel was removed from the reverse of the pendants with a combination of two grades of wet and dry paper and the Dremel wire brush. This also polished the back of the pendants.
Finally, jump rings were made and attached to each pendant and they were ready for sale!
I've been really pleased (and pleasantly surprised) by the positive response to the pendants! I've also made brooches and earrings after many requests.
Thanks for reading. I'm hoping to get my website up and running as soon as I possibly can so I'd love it if readers of this blog could visit my site. Christmas is coming!!!!
