Gift Vouchers

Buying presents for people is always tricky – even when you love something it’s hard to be sure they will like it too. So, I have finally got round to doing my little bit to help with that particular dilemma - Alys Power Design Gift Vouchers – Hooray!!

Available on the website in £5 £10, £20 and £50 ( or any combination) or in any amount if you buy them in person, they can be redeemed against any piece from my existing stock or against a commission. You can spend them in the design studio or at any of my craft events or you can use them to order a piece to your own design – you can even use them to buy items from my website – more details online.

Out & About

I really enjoy the craft fairs and art markets I visit through the year. Spending so much solitary time in the studio is a luxury but it is so valuable to get out and talk to people, see them looking at and trying on pieces and get some feedback on the things I’m making. At this time of year I do as many events as possible and each one is always exciting and a little bit nerve-racking too.

The events list for Autumn/Winter is now full, I am out and about over the next few months and coming to an event near you. If you are looking to treat your nearest and dearest (or yourself) to something gorgeous this Christmas this is where you will find me and that perfect gift.

My work is also in three Christmas exhibitions in The New Brewery Arts Centre, Whisby Natural Worlds Centre and Rugby Museum and  Art Gallery (more about them later) or you can find it in all the usual stockists.

See you soon… xx.

Once upon a time…

This is a commission for a really lovely lady called Rachael. We first discussed it in March and it rattled around my head for a good long time before I made anything. She gave me a great brief and I knew straight away how I wanted it to look. But the trouble with using found materials is that sometimes you just can’t find the ones you want!!

I spent months collecting little bits and pieces  - a piece of a vintage brooch, some Edwardian black glass beads, and some folk art style charms – I even drew out the shapes I wanted the wolves to be as I couldn’t find anything that fitted my idea of the wolf in the story. But without the centre piece it just wouldn’t come together.  Eventually I found this lovely image of red riding hood on a Victorian Christmas card and she was exactly what I wanted and definitely worth waiting for. And we all lived happily ever after…

You can see more images here and find out more about commissioning your own piece here.

Yellow

I’ve never been a big fan of yellow. Or orange or even many shades of brown. I’ve always been more drawn to the cooler end of the colour spectrum, teals and turquoises, mossy greens and dirty greys. They feel more like my colours –  faded, muted, quiet colours that make you nostalgic for things you can’t remember. But then I saw this saplings wallpaper in sunflower from Miss Print

and this bag from Anthropologie

and this lovely picture from the wonderful parcelpost blog.

so I bought a new yellow t-shirt and put it on and made this.  A vintage enamel primrose brooch and enameled Russian butterfly pin with two vintage yellow glass beads on reclaimed chain.

Maybe it’s the unseasonably hot weather or perhaps I am warming to yellow after all.

Pinteresting.

At the moment I am becoming increasingly obsessed with Pinterest. Pinterest is a virtual ‘pin board’. You can use it to create photo boards of all the things you find and like online – or even upload your own photos of stuff from the real world!!

I’m really enjoying using it to create visual inspiration boards for my jewellery collections, it gives a new purpose to hours spent idly browsing online and when I find something that clicks in my head I can add it to a pinboard and hopefully build up a visual reference of all the things that influence my work. I also use it as an online notebook to store interesting and inspiring images to come back to later for things I haven’t even though about making yet.

            

You can follow me on pinterest here.

I have been very busy…

…over the last month or so organising this…

…with the lovely Vicki from Love U More. It has been a while since I organised something like this and it has been great fun so far, if a little manic at times trying to fit everything in. We have some amazing sellers lined up for the event and of course I’ll be there too with lots of new jewellery and a few bargains to be had as well.

The doors open at 7pm and the first 50 guests will receive a free goody bag and I’ll be putting in a little gift from Alys Power Design as well as a voucher for some very special discounts. I will also be giving away the vouchers with every purchase made on the night so make sure you pop along to claim yours.  Find out more about the event on the eclectic presents blog or find it on Facebook. xx

And Then I Made This…

This idea evolved from the now discontinued Family Album collection. It used vintage watch cases to display reclaimed vintage photos and was inspired by Victorian mourning jewellery. I am so drawn to old photographs, they hold so much character and each one has it’s own story. They capture a world which is filled with nostalgia and half memories even though I have only ever experienced it second hand. I don’t like to keep a collection going for too long so I decided to start working on new ideas and phase the Family Album collection out but my fascination with old photographs has pulled me back in.

This pieces uses an original photograph of two brothers see through a vintage glass chandelier drop. The picture is glued and then varnished on to the back of the glass and I then added a vintage silver and turquoise earring and a few vintage beads to finish it off.

I love the refractions of the images shown through the crystal and the way it distorts the image. In this piece I used the original photo but I think it might work better with a photocopied image which could be molded to the shape of the crystal and also sanded to give a smoother finish on the back.

I have been asked a lot over the last few years about workshops and tutorials on reclaimed jewellery and it’s one of those things at the bottom of the to-do list that I never quite got round to. But I think this could be a really nice project for a class. Not to technically demanding but with plenty of scope to expand on the theme and make something uniquely personal and very beautiful. Watch this space – if and when it happens you’ll be the first to know. xx

 

 

Growing New Ideas

 I have been busy this week doing lots of important things. Two new collections have been in development – Link and Sticks & Stones and a third one, an extension of this idea is on it’s way. Christmas season is getting closer and I’ve been applying for lots of seasonal events and exhibitions (I’ll let you know how I get on) and it always surprises me how long it takes to put a good application together.

I though for now I would show you a little ‘behind the scenes’ work from one of my new collections. Link uses hand formed sterling silver oversize links with different combinations of reclaimed and vintage chain, vintage diamante details and silk cord and ribbon. It’s deceptive in it’s simplicity – although each piece looks simple and straightforward, getting the right balance of materials, colour, scale and dimension can be a delicate process and one piece can go through many transformations before I am happy with it. Working things out in a sketch book really helps me to form an idea more fully in my head before I can start to experiment with materials. With such limited making time using a sketchbook means I can make use of any little scraps of free time and also record ideas as and when they come.

Sketched ides for two different Link necklaces.

Link shape ideas in sterling and oxidised silver

Colour themes for the ribbon and cord elements of the Link collections. Dirty greens and grey-blues with accents of  pinks and orange. The postcard on the left is by an artist called Kit Anderson.

A finished Link necklace.

today I bought this…

and I have no idea what I’m going to do with it. But that is why I love what I do. I can pick up random, interesting or beautiful forgotten objects and invest them with a new purpose. I can share the fascinating things I find with lots of new people and create work from an amazingly rich and never-ending source of materials and inspiration.

This one  is a set of size 8 font, Times New Roman type print letters. They are aluminium, so no soldering, and too soft to be used as metal stamps but I do love them. They are delicate and intricate on one end and the rest is smooth, blank and anonymous. For now they just appeal to my sense of nostalgia, aesthetic and potential so they will find a new home in my studio and who know what they could become.

Charcoal Casting

In the last week I’ve had a couple of contented studio sessions experimenting with recycling silver. Silver is a lovely material to work with and to wear but when buying from suppliers it’s hard to discover the provenance of the materials – a certain percentage will always be recycled because as a precious material it is never thrown away but the rest of it will be freshly mined which can have horrible implications for the environment and local communities and is something I’m keen to remove myself and my work from. Of course much more freshly mined silver is used in industrial processes than in jewellery making but even so, when I look at a piece of jewellery I’m wearing or indeed making I’m happier knowing that it’s making as little negative impact as possible. 100% recycled bullion is available from an American supplier, Hoover and Strong, who make a range of wire, sheet and findings in recycled precious metals as well as conflict free diamonds and fair trade gemstones but, as a small scale maker, the cost of buying, shipping and importing would add a massive overhead to all my silver work.

So, can I recycle it myself? I was looking for a low energy, simple process to reuse my scrap and recycle old and broken silver. It’s been something I’ve had in the back of my mind for a long time but I came across a page on charcoal casting in The Complete Metalsmith by Tim McCreight one of my metal working bibles and it inspired me to get started. I’m really pleased with these first cast rings - it’s a slight departure from my other collections (I’m fighting the urge to stamp words into them) but I really love the random nature of the casting process and it’s simplicity and unpredictable results.

It’s a new process for me and i’m only just starting out but I thought it might be interesting to show you how the silver goes from scrap and broken silver into brand new rings.

1. I carve the shape I want to cast into a block of charcoal.
2. I cut the scrap into small pieces and coat it in a weak borax flux solution
3. The pieces are arranged into the  carved channel
4. The silver is heated to 893°c. When the charcoal burns it is supposed to ‘purify’ the silver, preventing oxidisation but I found fluxing the pieces first helps them flow into a smoother shape. Especially as I start with quite jagged pieces of scrap. At this point it can all go horribly wrong – I use a soldering pick to manipulate the silver a bit if it’s going the wrong way and keep moving the flame away from the metal so it doesn’t over heat and ball up.
5. The ring is quenched in cold water
6. The ring is pickled in safety pickle. Not a very eco product but I’m using up what I have left and then going to see how I get on using citric acid which is a more natural product although slower to work.
7. The ring, formed but unfinished
8. The shape is evened out on a ring mandrel with a polythene headed hammer to not mark the silver. Usually I like to use old hammers specifically to leave their marks and textures onto the silver but in this case I want to leave the cast shape as natural as possible.
9. Any rough or spiky bits are filed away – for this I use a combination of round, flat and half round fine files. I don’t want to alter the shape of the ring – just make sure it is smooth and comfortable to wear.
10. The file marks are sanded off using a high grade wet and dry paper.
11. The ring is burnished using a steel brush on a flexi-shaft drill
12. The finished ring