As a first project, I wanted to make some earrings for my mum as it’s her birthday next week.  I cut rough leaf shapes from copper, hammered a nail through the top to make a hole (my thumb took a few hits!) and enamelled both sides in shades of green.  Then I put a couple of jump rings between the copper and the ear wire and put a few glass pearl beads on.

Here is the end result:

They look nicer in real life!

Mum gave me a spoon to have a practice with, as I’ve actually never worked with metal properly before (cutting, forming, soldering etc.) and this is the end result:

I should have done a “before and after” really, shouldn’t I?  Well, I’m sure you can all picture in your head what a spoon looks like

Anyway, this was my first attempt at metalwork and I’m really pleased with it!  The ring fits the finger I intended it to fit, is ROUND and shiny and is soldered together.  The solder joint isn’t perfect because the metal wasn’t the same thickness or size at the points where it had to join (!), but I’m still pleased with how it turned out.

I’ll be keeping it as a ’starting point’ to see how my skills improve over the coming months as I do more metalwork & silversmithing.

So, first thing this morning, I logged in again and found exactly the same discrepancy and no explanation of the cause.  So, I gave the bank a call and it turned out that someone has had a nice shopping spree at my expense – to the tune of over £400!

I can’t believe it – am absolutely devastated.  The bank has cancelled our cards (it’ll take 7-10 days before we get our new ones) and is “investigating the transaction”.  Apparently we’ll get a call from the Fraud Department in the next 3-4 working days and they’ll give us a timescale for getting it resolved.  We won’t see our money back until their investigation is complete, so we’re down £400+ for the foreseeable future.

What’s amazing me is that there doesn’t seem to be any fraudulent activity monitoring system in place for current account holders that would have flagged this up.  I can remember ordering a takeaway online once using a credit card – the transaction was declined and within minutes I had the CC company on the phone to check it wasn’t a fraudulent transaction!  When we confirmed that we did indeed want to order the takeaway, they released the block and we were able to order without any problem.  I’d have expected something like that with the current account as well – a £400+ clothes shopping spree (we were told it was women’s clothes) should have flagged up as being suspicious because it’s TOTALLY abnormal for our account.

So, now we just have to cross all of our fingers and toes and hope that we get our money back quickly!

I’ve got some exciting projects lined up which I’ll be blogging about shortly – stay tuned

So, the other day I decided to turn a bit of scarf like this:

Into a set of two coasters:

The effect is brilliant – it looks like there’s a whole heap of mohair in there  The picture doesn’t do it justice – honest!  Available in the shop for £15 the pair.

The process is this:

1.  Do a layer of transparent resin to cover the base of the mould (which will be the TOP of the coaster)
2.  Once tacky, snip the scarf into individual strands of wool and layer it over the resin.
3.  Pour a teeny bit of resin on top so that the wool is JUST covered and no more. Have a look at it from underneath (taking care NOT to pour it over your face!) to make sure there’s an even spread.
4.  Once tacky/set, mix up some black resin and fill up the mould to the top.

Thankfully the great thing about resin is that I should be able to repair it with a bit of extra resin!  Here is it, still broken but laid out as it should look.

I’ve started the repair job, so we’ll see what it looks like in a few days!