Week – 44

This week’s theme is ‘Simmering Summer’ and with that, sometimes comes enormous bushfires. A few years ago we had what was termed ‘Fire Storms’ that threatened our small city(more like a large country town) on several fronts at the same time. It raged through some of our suburbs. 300 houses and many other properties including historic were burnt to the ground and several lives were lost. This pin represents that firestorm racing towards our city through the native gum trees. 

I had a blast doing this piece. It was not meant to be a functional piece of jewelry as such,.but rather a mini sculpture,..an excuse to fiddle around with a few techniques I have been wanting to try for a long time. It is made from copper sheet and wire, and apart from the bird’s eggs it was all made from scrap that I had lying around on my workbench.  I wanted to see if I could cold connect sheet,. so I have a rivet located between the nest and the stem. I deliberately snapped off a bit of the flame so that I could see if I could rivet it back on and was amazed how well it worked. Last piece I made, I LOS’d it, but for whatever reason,. the LOS had a weird dulling effect on the copper and I was really wanting colours like I achieved here. These colours were achieved by holding the piece in the flame on my stove.

I’m enjoying working with sheet,. and one day I might bust out and buy some sterling silver sheet. I really need do buy some proper tools to work with sheet however.