sasha + max studio

Day 2 of my 2 day course at the Gaffa gallery - 30C weather and indoors for most of the day with a kiln running at 800C makes for hot work - maybe sweated off a few kilos! Some of these pieces will be worked into jewellery over the Easter break.  This pair of charms was made by enamellling a white base coat, and then cutting a stencil in a chevron pattern and overlaying the yellow - I'm very happy with these.  The flowers are very simple enamelled both sides - deceptively time consuming but worth it. Simple washer rings with colour both faces. And a pendant - did not have time to enamel the back face so this may become a piece for me. Now, if only I can win the lottery, buy a new house with a studio.... aah, we can dream . Many thanks to the wonderful tutor, Alida Capelletta - her work is beautiful, and she is a woman of infinite patience.

My Sunday was spent at the Gaffa Gallery , a gallery and studios in the Sydney city centre that has a jewellery focus. Wanting to do the enamelling course for a while, today was the first of 2 Sundays with the excellent and very patient teacher, Alida. We learnt the basics and made several trial pieces. It is not the sort of thing you can replicate at home in a high-rise apartment as your need a kiln and a serious extractor fan , but it is worth doing the get the creative juices going - mine have stalled for a quite a few weeks due to a sick mum (now on the mend after breast cancer, and doing very well) and some intense emotionally draining weeks at the day job. Here are my experiments, some successful, so not so much! Apologies for some of the photo quality - the afternoon light is fading here but I was keen to post on the blog as it has been a while. We played with plain glazes, glass rods and dots. I think that my favourites are the white pieces.  Next Sunday will be...