I am one of those crafty makers who just loves a new process, but three favourites for me are jewellery, relief printing, and drawing.
Jewellery I love: I make jewellery which I enjoy wearing, and will try out a new design to see how it feels to wear it – is it both pleasurable and practical? - and what kind of comments I get about it, before I decide to produce it for my store, making only a very small number of each design, all of which have unique qualities. My enamels are hand-painted, using finely ground vitreous materials, which are fired in a kiln at high temperatures, fusing coloured glass to copper. Silver pieces are sterling grade 925. I occasionally incorporate found and repurposed accents to my jewellery, such as salvaged wood or plastic details, when I am inspired by the colour or texture of something special. If I don’t love it, I don’t sell it.
Print on paper and fabrics: relief printing techniques are by far my favourite print processes. I work predominantly with carved or cut blocks and vintage letterpress movable type, on vintage press equipment. The immediacy of directly placing a block onto paper, or onto fabric, and then applying pressure to achieve an image, is just so satisfying. I work on recycled and sustainable papers and cardstock, with water-based inks, to produce a range of art and paper ephemera for my store. I find that hand-printing my work onto fabrics, as well as papers, gives another life and possibility to images, allowing them to become tactile decorations and gifts, as well as framed prints. I love vintage fabrics, and select lovely pieces from my personal collection to print on.
Drawing as a process and a product: well, drawing and sketching is an essential part of design. Sometimes a print or piece of jewellery will start out as a simple doodle, and at other times, drawing will be how I work out a process or create a template. I enjoy drawings in many different forms. In my store there are jewellery pieces which have drawing as direct surface decoration, and prints which have been designed and refined by sketching. I think of my paper-cut garlands as animated drawings, because the shadows which are projected by them have a very drawn and illusionistic quality. My paper-cut pieces are drawn initially using Procreate and apple pencil, which allows me to work freely and in a graphic style which is consistent with my hand-painted enamels. I also include digital downloads in my store, some of which are single images, and some repeat pattern designs. This is a simple way for me to share drawings, which customers can use as part of their own creative process, and I enjoy seeing the results.
