Not quite symmetrical

These wallumy earrings are made by smoodging tiny porcelain coils flat which are then pressed into clay and silicone molds made from direct impressions from nature. Then they're painted, sponged and fired. Finally pairs silver hooks are made.
Pierced ears anyone?

Porcelain pendants

Porcelain pendants. Wallum impressions in porcelain, made into pendants with a tiny silver twig.

Leptospernums in silver

First we clean the silver and coat the surface with bitumen paint.
Then I draw leptospernums, Scratching in the silver, the scratchy, twiggy, sticky bushes covered in tiny white blossoms.
Then Rebecca goes to work with her jeweller's saw and ...........
The lovely tiny blossoms appear, magical, and softly gleaming silver.

Leptospernums in porcelain

Leptospernum blossoms are familiar to all lovers of the wallum. Tiny and white these five petalled flowers completely cover the small scratchy bushes that produce them. I made these porcelain works with an scraffitto/inlay technique which in itself is a rather scratchy dry process. The interiors are pure, translucent Southern Ice porcelain covered in a clear glaze. The exterior captures the light with a spotted pattern of clear glaze over the dry drawing.

The final exhibition will include some groups of 10-15 pieces of this leptspernum work ranging form large bowls through to tiny teabowls all covered in the sepia drawings and softly capturing and reflecting light from their spotted surfaces.

Clay workshop

A few weeks ago I visited Shannon's Maleny studio and she worked on some scribbly gum designs with bases pressed into the brass etchings. The damp clay took the shallow impressions rather well.

We also made these impressioned porcelain danglies from clay and silicone impressions taken from the wallum. It was challenging working in the clay but eventually I moved past the wet sticky mess phase!
I'm now seeing if I can make them work as jewellery. It is all rather exciting and experimental!

Tangle Brooch

Copper, car paint, sterling silver (oxidised), 18 k gold, st steel pin.
Copper upper plate etched by Shannon. Oxidised silver photo etched by Rebecca.

Tangle Brooch came from our studio time together last month. Shannon painted asphaltum resist on the copper plate which was then etched in nitric acid. Then I selected areas to cut out. I constructed the riveted brooch using photoetched and oxidised sterling silver. The rivets are tiny gold pins. There is a vaguely etched rainy landscape on the back.

I have saw-pierced sections of the copper to reveal the dark underlayer. "Tangle Brooch" seeks to capture the micro and multilayered mysterious world of growth and decay in the Wallum as hastened by sudden rainstorms sweeping across the open plain.

Silver and Clay

I've been visiting Rebecca's studio. We are into the creation phase of our wallum project and are spending time in each other's studios,learning "cross discipline" skills.

We painted silver and copper with brown, road tar goo and when it was dry, I scratched leptospernum blossoms and leaf silhouettes exposing the metal. The plates were then dipped into and acid bath.
We are working on a couple of ranges of jewellery incorporating metal, porcelain and thread. Here are the porcelain pendants in the background with silver cuttle fish castings of twigs in the foreground.