The inspiration for the project came from the metal flowers and leaves on the front entrance of the Clore Learning Centre at Hampton Court Palace. The techniques I used in the tutorial came from various artists that I have taken classes with in the past.  I learnt how to create the tree bark texture from Julia Rai while I was doing my Art Clay Level One certification class, the leaves using Carol Douglas’ moulding technique and I learnt the stone setting from Patrik Kusek and Anna Mazon.

It was very exciting to write a magazine tutorial, the hardest bit was actually keeping it quiet and not showing anyone what I was making. I also really liked the extra earring project, so I think I will make another pair for myself.

If you have the November issue of Making Jewellery Magazine, check out page 70, where you will see the Twig Pendant tutorial. If you would like to learn more about working with silver clay, the London Jewellery School runs a lot of metal clay classes. Further information on their classes can be found on the LJS website.

The weather wasn’t so great when we woke up in the morning, and part of me secretly wished we could just stay in even though I had been looking forward to this day out for weeks! I eventually dragged myself out of bed and we made our way to Hampton Court Palace and the moment I stepped into the palace grounds I was so glad we made the effort, after all, I love Hampton Court!

There were all day activities planned at the palace from meeting King Henry VIII and his courtiers to equestrian hunting games, falconry, music and of course the jousting tournament. The brilliant actors were in full Tudor costumes and were very funny, especially the lady who played Anne Boleyn.

I have only seen jousting in films or on TV and even though it may not have been at full force, it still had a lot of impact and was fun to watch and I felt like I had gone back in time. There was a great atmosphere and we were lucky that the sun came out in the afternoon. There were lots of families with kids around and I imagine they enjoyed it too cos the big kid in me really loved it!

You can see some short videos of staged equestrian hunting games and jousting tournament that I took on my Instagram.

While I was checking out the events at all the Royal Palaces, the Hampton Court Palace Festival came up and I thought it would be a really cool present, although a bit early. Going to the Hampton Court Palace Festival was meant to be a surprise, but I was too excited to keep it a secret so I told my boyfriend a couple of weeks ago what we would be doing and phew, he really liked the idea.

So last Saturday, we went to the Fanfare & Fireworks with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra at Hampton Court Palace.  The garden gate opened from 5:30pm, and we could have a picnic in the garden before the concert started at 7:30pm. Luckily, it stopped raining by the time we got there. It was windy and cold, not the perfect day for a picnic but at least it was dry!! A picnic and an outdoor classical music concert in the rain might be a very different experience, but I’d rather not try it just yet.

Lots of people were well prepared for the picnic and brought along their camping chairs and tables, some even had marquees or fishing/festival tents set up while we made do wirg our picnic blanket.  I ordered a festival picnic hamper that was catered by Jamie Oliver’s Fabulous Feasts. With the price of the picnic hamper, I probably could have bought lots (and I mean lots and lots) of amazing food from M&S, but it’s not like we have food prepared by Jamie Oilver’s team very often, so it was a very nice treat for both of us and we got to keep the hamper too!  Yay for the future picnics!

The Hampton Court Palace Garden is beautiful and the sun popped out to say hi now and then which was nice. I used to go to classical music concerts a lot when I lived in Taiwan, and this was the first time since I moved to the UK 15 years ago. The concert was in the Base Court, and there were lots of popular classics in the programme, including my favourite Elgar’s Enigma Variations – Nimrod.

The interval was an hour not 90 minutes like it said in the programme, but it was long enough for us to finish the rest of our picnic. This time we were bit smarter as we chose a spot behind a large bush to avoid the wind. I was bit worried that there wasn’t going to be enough food, but we ended up with some leftovers, I guess the 5:2 fasting diet has make our stomachs a lot smaller!

The firework display was in the garden after the concert finished and it was a perfect ending for the night. We didn’t have time to visit the whole palace today, but we have already planned another visit and I hope the weather will be nice so that we can take a boat trip to Hampton Court Palace.

So while the weather was so nice and sunny, we decided to visit Kensington Palace last Sunday and hope that we would bump into Prince William and guess what, we did! I wish I had taken a photo now but I guess he probably preferred to be left alone,  enjoying Sunday afternoon with his friends.

Kensington Palace is currently the home of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Princess Diana and Princess Margaret were former residents at the palace and Queen Victoria spent most of her childhood there. It is a beautiful place and there were a lots of wows and ooooohs as we walked through the King’s Staircase, the King’s State Apartments and the Queen’s State Apartments.

There is also a new exhibition about Queen Victoria, “Victoria Revealed“, where we saw the dress that she wore on the day she held her first Privy Council meeting in Kensington Palace, her wedding gown, jewellery and childhood doll collection. We also turned up just in time for a great talk about Queen Victoria’s childhood as Princess, the Kensington System and the day she became a Queen.

Kensington Palace gardens are beautiful too, I think we will picnic there a lot in the summer (*cough*, if the weather stays this nice!). We were going to have our lunch/tea in the Orangery, but the queue was too long. I wasn’t sure why the Orangery was so busy, so out of curiosity,  I checked the website when we got back and oh my, that is one lovely interior. We will definitely be back to have some afternoon tea there one day. We ended up in the cafe next to the gift shop for some Victoria sponge cake and tea to end our perfect Sunday afternoon.

When we got back we watched the film “Young Victoria” and “Mrs Brown”. I’d seen them before but now I know a little more of the history they both make a lot more sense now,  all thanks to Kensington Palace.

Ooooh, I used the Royal toilet too!

The weather wasn’t great on the day but it was nice to see the Tower of London in all kinds of weather conditions from rainy, cloudy, windy to sunny (oh yeah, there was sun!!). Anyway we always thought it would be more atmospheric to visit the Tower of London on a grey, wet and cold day because of it’s miserable history.

All I knew about the Tower of London was that Anne Boleyn was beheaded there however the Tower of London wasn’t just a prison but also a residential palace. Each tower in the Tower of London has different exhibitions telling the stories of the historical events that happened there. I didn’t check to see if all 6 (plus one spare) ravens were there but according to myth and legend, if they leave the Tower, both the Kingdom and Tower will fall.

Finally, I got to see the Crown Jewels too, wow, they are just amazing! Shame I wasn’t able to take photos of the serious bling but I didn’t want to be convicted of treason and get sent through the Traitor’s Gate to never come out again. :p 

As we were there, we had to try out the cakes too! The food in the café wasn’t cheap but it was very nice. I had lovely a roasted chicken and Yorkshire pudding for lunch and a large slice of cheese cake, yum!!

After our visit to the Tower of London, we were in the perfect mood to watch the TV series The Tudors and the movie Another Boleyn Girl again. Now I think I can pretty much name all 6 of Henry VIII wives and who got beheaded.   

We have been talking about this for a while and finally we are doing it! I suspect our holiday in Taiwan back in March, doing lots of touristy things, has motivated us to get out and about in London.

We drove past this amazing building one night and I was told it was the Natural History Museum. Then I kept seeing the posters in the tube station about the Sensational Butterfly exhibition, somehow, it made the decision of where to start our London adventure a lot easier, the Natural History Museum here we come! 

I have never seen so many butterflies, and they seemed to love the coat Iwas wearing that day so lots of them stopped by to say hi. It was also very exciting to see a butterfly come out of its chrysalis and dry its wings and we saw moths so big that they were larger than both of my palms put together.

The Natural History Museum is a great place to learn about all the gemstones too. I will definitely go back there with my notepad to take some notes soon for sure. I don’t use many gemstones in the jewellery I make but it’s so interesting to know their properties and their meanings. The gift shop sold lots of stones so I just had to get some; 2 bracelets, one using Carnelians and one with lots of Rose Quartz and a rough uncut, unpolished Rose Quartz stone! There were so many nice stones there though that I want them all!

Although I was only there for some tea, chocolate cake and the gift shop (joking!), we had a really fun day out with butterflies, gemstones, dinosaurs and drooling over a massive 2982 carats of Topaz, I think it would make a really cool paper weight!

Beside my teaching job at the London Jewellery School, I also worked in the office on weekends last year. Now that I see how much hard work the school director, Jess, and the general manager, Sunita, have to put in to get the school up and running on a daily basis, it makes me appreciate it even more every time I teach there.

I didn’t focus on as much online selling last year but instead did a lot of festivals, craft fairs and markets which I really enjoyed, even in the cold, windy, wet winter weather!

I don't always have this lovely view from my stall. This was at More London Xmas Market at the South Bank with We Make London.

 To keep myself busy, ha, not that I wasn’t busy enough, I also attended quite a few classes last year. Many, many trips to Warm Glass, learning from Becky and Claire about casting, mould making, images in glass and bead making etc. I also did Terry Kovalcik‘s hinged locket class at Craftwox and Lesley Messam’s poison bottle class at the Mid Cornwall Jewellery School. Going to classes is like a little treat for myself, and I love it. There is so much to learn and hopefully I will get a chance to write about the classes I have done too.

My second attemp at glass bead making at Warm Glass.

Making mould for glass casting at Warm Glass

One day I will fire this! Made in Lesley’s class.

Before firing! Lockets made in Terry’s class, you probably can guess which one is mine.

It’s scary how fast time flies, and it’s already the start of May! Without working in the office on weekends this year (which was a hard decision to make), I have some extra time to try out new adventures, I’m sure you will hear about it at some point but I think you should like my Facebook page for more instant updates rather than waiting for my blog posts.

Crochet flower brooches and glass coasters were my choices this time, sorry friends and family, but do you know how much the price of silver has gone up! So no silver jewellery this time

Last minute Christmas shopping is stressful, but I can tell you last minute present making is even worse! My little Paragon SC2 kiln can only fuse one normal size coaster at a time, with a firing schedule of 12 hours per firing, it was definitely not good idea to start making the coasters 3 days before Christmas! I guess I may have found a good reason to get a bigger kiln this year and I need to get the present making production line going a week before the big day!

I made a pair of “American” themed mosaic style coasters for my BFF (lol) Michelle, unfortunately they really do have that “handmade” look as the edges were a bit wonky, especially in the photo. I also made a pair of dotty coasters for my boyfriend’s parents, although the colours I used were more Easter than Christmas.

 

I was madly in love with crochet once upon a time, it’s definitely a craft that you can do anywhere you want as long as you don’t mind getting a few funny looks. Anyway, it was time for me to finish some of my half-finished projects, including these large flower crochet brooches and then send them to their new homes!

My boyfriend also got something handmade from me too, since part of his present was going to Bruges for a beer weekend, so I made a little glass Belgian flag to put in the card. (Spelling Bruges wrong! Doh!)

I really like the handmade gifts I received too, Michelle made us some jam, which has disappeared rather quickly and 2 little ceramic star decorations.  So the verdict on a handmade Christmas? I love it!

The class started with Michael clarifying the terminology of a Goldsmith and a Silversmith. And well well well, 5 mins into the class and I had already learnt something new; a goldsmith isn’t just working with gold and a silversmith isn’t just working with silver. The difference between the two is the scale of the objects they create. If you have doubts, do feel free to Wiki it.

One of the most precious lessons I learnt during my five days working with a master goldsmith with 40 years experience is that it doesn’t matter how much you love Vin Diesel’s “The Fast and Furious” it definitely doesn’t work very well when you are piercing and forging. By the end, I found I broke far fewer saw blades than when I first started even though we were told that breaking the saw blades isn’t a big deal and every single hammering I did, I knew where I was hitting, rather than aimless banging. The moment “I GOT IT” was truly amazing!

Modifying my own goldsmith’s hammer was a very exciting experience too and I’m very happy that I did it as it’s really not something I would normally do and I felt like a pro after grinding my own hammer, not to mention forging a square wire into a pointy needle, that was also rather satisfying. Something I really loved about these 2 classes was that we had plenty of time to practice and having Michael explain the reasons why we have done things in certain ways definitely helped me to understand and remember the techniques more.

I’m already looking forward to Michael’s Masterclass at MCSJ in 2013.

Look!! The magic mushroom I found on the way to the jewellery school, but it looks so ”magic” I don’t think anyone should eat it!!

We Make London is run by a small team of like minded designer-makers, Mary from Dainty Pretty Things is the main event organiser, after chatting to her at one of Etsy UK meet-ups, I learnt that she runs We Make London craft fairs based on her passion and initiative and that she organises everything in her spare time. It’s very impressive!

This was my second We Make London Christmas fair, and I’m so happy that I got a stall and had a full table of space too! My usual “sales assistant”- boyfriend, thought his tough look would scare my customers away, so he decided to stay away this time and my best friend Michelle from Squirlgirl Millinery was very kind to help me to set up on the day. Michelle and I used to work together as visual merchandisers and we definitely made my little stall look very pretty! Not to mention, that she was much more organised than I am! Just check out the “behind the scenes stationary” she set up for me, she even put business cards in the bags, so they were ready to go!

I have added lots of glass fused jewellery and accessories to my stock, and these dichoric sparks definitely caught people’s attention. I sell most things online so it was great to see people’s reaction when they browsing my stall and it was also a good way to observe what type of products that people liked the most. The day went very quickly and I truly enjoyed it.

Thanks Mary and the We Make London team. I had a great time!