Cocktail rings and more

Last week I went back to the London Jewellery School for an evening taster class in cocktail ring making. A couple of years back, I'd learnt how to make cluster rings using ring findings but I still wanted to do this class because it uses wire wrapping to create the ring shank.

There was a lovely bunch of ladies on the class that night and Helen Stay, our tutor, was brilliant! We all managed to make at least four rings in the course of the evening, so it definitely was a great use of our time! I would recommend this class to anyone who fancies making a bit of jewellery. Because they're so quick to make and the raw materials are relatively cheap, these type of rings will also make a great addition to my Christmas market stall project.

I had some opened clay left from my Metal Clay course and conscious that it might dry out and go to waste if I didn't make use of it soon, I decided to try my hand at making another ring, but all on my own this time.

I had a number of ideas in mind but eventually I settled on something pretty simple, an open ring with some artificial rubies set in the open ends. Basically, I just made a sausage, wrapped it around a ring mandrel and then set a couple of stones in the ends.

Because of the shape of the ring, smoothing the clay once it was dry was the hardest part, I was so scared of breaking it! I then fired the ring with a little butane torch, and in the process found out my oven timer doesn't do seconds so I made a mental note of buying a digital timer for next time.

Once the ring was cool, I burnished then polished it (again no mean feat with that shape!) et voilà! My first metal clay ring made all on my own! Ok, it's not as perfect as I would have liked but hey, it's mine and it's a first!