Happy Mothers day

Oh alright then , wrong side of the pond! but by strange coincidence I had my mothers day present on Sunday.
Above is an enamel made by the very talented Janine Partingdon
She produces these small enamelled pieces based around natural silhouettes and shapes. its mounted on a little white plaque and is one of my favourite handmade things.

....and when there is an days enamelling course at a local museum I dropped a heavy hint to j that a really good mothers day gift would be to go and indulge in making things! I spend a lot of time with my kids, sometimes its nice to have a day off! Anyway the first course in march was full but I got onto the next one.
The tutor was Carol Griffin who is super organised and generous with time and knowledge and coaxed us all through putting our precious little things into the 800 Celsius kiln.

Here are some of here examples, beautifully laid out and labelled.
Anyway onto the process.


First choose a copper shape

Next pick a coloured powdered glass. Look at all these neatly organised tray of materials. I was in heaven!Carefully sprinkle/sieve it onto the copper and carefully carry it over to the fierce little kiln!

and if you are any good with alchemy you can end up with these!

OK OK, so these are more of Carols samples but this was what we were aiming for.With a great deal of trepidation I started on this, a red flower with black beads but I put too much flux on to set the beads and its a bit cloudy for what I was aiming for..

..but that's OK as it was the first try and when I tried to enamel the back it went horribly wrong!

Tried again and used the blues and yellows. I really relaxed with it and went with what I came out of the kiln rather than triing to plan it. Really jolly pleased with this one, I have already worn it to school and showed it off!Then I wanted to play around with building up layers to create texture. This is a bit of a mmmmm one. I found it hard to get the thickness of the powder right.
Then started a new one with a stencil of trees and some careful advice form Carol. I am so pleased with this one, one4 of those things that keeps making me smile as I pass it!

As the tutor was photographing the work she said

"now that's a Janine Partington you have got there"

I laughed, my influences are very clear.

More info here

Another day off next week, off to the V and A for the Quilt exhibition.

I am finding it very hard to wait and may draw myself out a countdown.