Bright bling and glamorous gold!

If you've been following my journey, you'll know that I am on the Jewellers Academy one-year silver diploma course. This is a pretty intense course which will gives you a full introduction to metalsmithing - silver with a little bit of gold. This week we have been learning about making chains... not little tiny chains - there's machines and factories for those, we're talking chains with a bit of chunk!

And talking about chunk... let me introduce you to a new design which fits in with my 'touch of gold' collection that I am working on. And if you like the idea, read on to see how the design came about...

Touch of Gold bracelet

The chain I originally made was pretty enough... large silver links combined with small gold jump rings. I liked the colour combination but I felt that the gold was lost and didn't have the impact that I wanted it to have. SO, I had a bit of a think and I came up with a brilliant idea...

Introducing the star of the show: a rolling mill! A rolling mill is essentially two plates of steel on rollers which can be squished together using gears and then you can flatten your metal into new plate silver or gold. One of my plates is designed to make wire - can you see where I'm going with this?

I took all my lovely little golden jump rings that I had painstakingly soldered together AND I MELTED THEM!

I made a little golden ingot and then used my rolling mill to make a wire, then after some prep work, I forged it into a chunky gold ring. Now we were talking!

From then on, it was a case of making 10 more small silver jump rings and soldering it all together!

I know my soldering was a little on the lumpy side and it has taken me ages to clean up but - that's a whole other lesson learned.

The key thing is; I have a new design and it fits perfectly in with my Touch of Gold... affordable jewellery with enough gold to give you that special golden touch but not so much that it becomes out of reach.

This bracelet will be available to order very soon - if you can't wait and want to know more, just send me a message or pop a comment on!

In the mean time... I'll just keep giving my bracelet a good quality control check by wearing it and showing it off ALL THE TIME!