One of the most difficult aspects of demonstrating on television is knowing exactly where to pitch the level of complexity. I know that some very loyal viewers have watched my shows right from the beginning in May 2014 and I want to be able to show them new and interesting techniques. However, as kumihimo gets better known and more popular …
There has been a lot of interest in the designs I showed on the Jewellery Maker show on Tuesday and many people are eagerly awaiting these instructions. It has taken me a bit longer to get these written because I have been unable to rely on the YouTube recording of the show to support the written instructions. Unfortunately, since the …
Tomorrow I will be making my way to the Midlands to the new home for Jewellery Maker. The studio, workshop space and admininstrative offices are all moving to a beautiful country house set in lovely grounds and will start broadcasting from the new location from tomorrow. I will have the honour of doing the first Designer Inspiration show from the …
Graphic Quartz. Never heard of it? Nor had I until I received the parcel from Jewellery Maker containing the kits for my most recent show! Now that I have both seen it and worked with it I hope to use it a lot more. It is a wonderfully warm colour, with varied matrix structures visible both on the surface and …
I was given some lovely gemstones and lots of metal seed beads to work with for the Designer Inspiriation show at Jewellery Maker yesterday. I am the sort of person who gets most of their inspiration from the materials themselves, so receiving a weighty strand of Labradorite with some truly amazing optical effects was all I needed to get my …
I have had lots of enquiries about whether I am planning to do any workshops at Jewellery Maker, so I wanted to let people know that I will be doing two workshops this autumn. They are not available for booking yet, but Wendy, the workshop coordinator, is happy for me to give out the dates. She will keep a list …
It should be easy for a jewellery designer to have the perfect piece of jewellery for every occasion, but it often doesn’t work out like that! Choosing jewellery to wear for my television appearances can be particularly tricky. The Guest Designers are requested to wear jewellery made from the kits, but I am not sure I want the cameras to …
Cabochons and kumihimo may not be the most obvious partners, but it is possible to find a wide range of ways of working them together. The challenge with a cabochon is that it does not have a drill hole, so a secure method of capturing the stone needs to be used. In the past I have demonstrated ways of …
Perhaps most people would not consider a difference of 0.6mm as going from one extreme to another, but that is exactly what it is in beaded kumihimo! The second kit I demonstrated on Jewellery Maker this week contained 4 reels of the thick S-Lon (Tex 400), which at approximately 0.9mm diameter is a full 0.6mm wider than the cord used …
I have just finished putting the instructions for the first kit I demonstrated yesterday JM onto this site. This kit was all about fine cords, so it was a great opportunity for me to explore the potential of finer cords in kumihimo. The most obvious advantage of the S-Lon Tex 135 is that it will fit through most gemstones and …
