You will probably have gathered by now that my inspiration comes from nature
bee it (see what I did there!) flowers, butterflies, birds or bees, you will
find lots of nature themed influences in my work.

I like to challenge myself to create new designs using different methods and
learn new skills, so today I moved from sheet metal onto Fine Silver Clay for
my bees.  Silver clay is an eco-friendly product it’s made from particles
of pure silver suspended in a binder that burns off under heat to leave fine
silver.  The product feels and behaves much like clay, you can shape it,
mold it and once it’s been fired you can solder it and pretty much treat as any
other silver.

These little fellas are entirely handcrafted from silver clay, you can see
from the pictures how I shaped and molded by hand then used a brush and liquid
clay to refine.  Once they were ready I left them to dry and then kiln
fired them to create fine silver.  I made 3 different designs in two
different sizes and once they were kiln fired and had become solid silver I
created little molds from them to allow me to ‘cast’ more with silver
clay. 

I have just used the tiniest ones to create some earrings and a bangle
giving them an oxidized finish to bring out the details and the slightly larger
one has been made into a pendant which I just polished. I’m looking forward to
using these in other items and using my new molds to create my own swarm, I
have just orders some copper clay so hopefully soon some little copper bees
will be making their way into my shop.

Thanks for stopping by to read my blog, I hope you enjoyed reading about how
I made my little bees.

Normal
0

false
false
false

EN-US
X-NONE
X-NONE

/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:””;
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin-top:0cm;
mso-para-margin-right:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt;
mso-para-margin-left:0cm;
line-height:115%;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”;
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:”Times New Roman”;
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

MaxPring
Hello and a very warm welcome to Max Pring Jewellery, here you will find a range of hand crafted artisan jewellery and accessories.My passion is for metal, I use mainly Silver alongside a little Gold, Copper and Brass. The main thing I love about metal is that it's so versatile, you can melt it, hammer it, bend it, stamp it, shape it, fuse it, add stones to it and if that's not enough you can texture it, paint it, heat it, etch it and polish it too.  You will see the majority of these techniques used in my work as I do love to play!. I find my inspiration from the lush Welsh countryside<em>, </em>living near Pontypridd in the Rhondda Valleys I have beautiful views across the rolling hills and a wildlife reserve just down the road. There's also a lot of old industrial sites where nature has stepped back in, but you can find some really old interesting textures and patterns on abandoned machinery so I'm never short of inspiration.I try to provide a range of items from simple designs that I make time and time again such as my wrap bangles and scarf rings alongside personalised items and one off artisan pieces, perfect if you like a little something different or want to give a gift with meaning.

Leave your comment