Even Craftier

My wife has been crafting again. This time it’s one of her long-running projects that she’s finally finished in a sudden turn of speed, plus some glass jewellery.

She’s been making a few sets of wooden drawers for a while now, and this is the original practice piece made from pine which after many, many hours of sanding now opens and closes without sticking. At one stage I did wonder whether Janet’s hand would fall off before the box was completed. With a little Danish Oil it looks lovely. She wasn’t going to bother finishing this because it was just a test piece and she’s not overly fond of pine as a material, but I think it’s turned out really well.

Here’s another picture of the box with the drawer open:

She’s also been making glass jewellery:

As with the silver jewellery this was a course at the National Glass Centre. Most of the pieces were made by selecting various layers from different kinds of glass, cutting and shaping them, then placing them in the kiln to fuse.

The red disk (actually a hemisphere) was moulded by creating a plasticine shape, making a plaster mould of the shape, and melting glass into the mould. The underside, which I’ve singularly failed to photograph, is quite roughly finished because it faced into the mould, but has a knotwork design on it.

There are more pictures of each item here.

I think she enjoyed this course a little less than the silver-making one because the actual process of making the jewellery was fairly straightforward involving use of the kiln, with the remainder being a case of designing the pieces by selecting the right colours, patterns and overlays. It looks really professional when finished, though.