Sun Ring Commission

Here's a photo of a commission I made recently. Ring is made from silver and gold and the stone is a Carnelian.

Design studies assignment 2

For our 2nd Design Studies assignment we were asked to select 3 random images and then ask a selection of people to look at them and come up with a story linking the photos.Above are the 3 photos I chose.

Here are a selection of some of the stories I collected.

Christopher Caraher, 36, Scottish Power engineer

There was a problem . a problem of monumental proportion
in this day and age information is passed between nations at the blink of an eye .
but with the amount of data being transferred in 0 and 1's sometimes you get a three.
this happened in Blackwood estate.
miss smith checked the weather forecast and was glad to see that sun was predicted for the day .
she got her things together and set to make for a shopping trip .
she called her best friend and patted her on the head . her pet dog Vader was her only company in that Old run down house deep in the estate .
She ushered Vader outside and told her " be a good girl and stay near the house" . the hound would wait in the front garden for her master to return .
it was a 7 mile walk into the village at the 5 mile mark there was a public house and with it being a hot day miss smith stopped for her little dram .
6 hours later miss smith blamed the company she had kept and stepped out side to find that the weather had changed and her poor Vader was out side her ramshackle house .
but the worst was to come .
the clouds parted for a moment to her shock there was a full moon . the next full moon was 3 weeks away . she checked online each and everyday.
she panicked and started to run for the safety of her ramshackle house and her best friend Vader .
this must mean the data had been changed .
who ? had done this ?

After doing this we then had to select another image and ask some people again to make up a story about the picture although this time hopefully they would all more or less come up with a similar story.

Ethyl Smith, Alternative therapist

Yesterday while Murphy my dog and I were walking in the wood we came across and tiny old house almost covered by branches. It must have been there for years and yet I'd never seen it before. There was one window with a metal cross piece and no glass and somehow I imagined it like some kind of prison and shivered. Maybe I felt like that because it was such a dark cloudy day and then suddenly the clouds parted and the sun came out and when I looked again the strange house had gone...vanished.

Robert Smith, retired mechanic

Unhappy dog sitting on leaves and the clouds above seem to indicate a storm coming but me and the dog have no intention of sheltering in this strange old building.

Vicky Montgomery, 30, Sales assistant/buyer

My name is Mittens, I am a spaniel. Yes, I know, Mittens is a cat name. But unfortunatley my owners don't care that the other dogs laugh at me. Not that I really know other dogs, because where I live is quite remote. Rural is what the owners call it, I don't like it, Its old and musty smelling, with alot of trees around, and bushes. The bushes scare me though because I can't see whats behind them. One time a smaller kind of animal jumped out at me and chased me, I think it was a squirrel. The owners thought it was cute, but I swear I saw its teeth! They were sharp very scary looking.....That night, when we were back home, I lay looking out of my window, it was quiet. I felt better, because there were no scary animals chasing me, or bad dogs laughing at me. Then I looked up and saw the most bright thing I had ever seen. It was a ball, a big bright and shiny ball. The best looking ball in the world. I stared at it until I fell asleep.


It was quite interesting seeing what people came up with. Some of them went into great detail over the photos and some not. However I was surprised that some of them came up with similar things, such as naming the dog, or commenting on the picture of the house calling it strange.

For the 2nd part of the experiment I had to choose another image but this time see if the people I asked came up with more or less the same story.
I chose an image of a man riding a bull. As predicted most of them came up with the same story. I think the image is pretty self explanatory.

Photo Shoot

Here are the photos I took today of my Catwalk piece in the photo studio.

Catwalk Piece

Well I finally finished my latest project at uni. We had to design and make a colourful piece for the Catwalk focusing on a specific period in time or culture. As you can see from the pictures I chose to make a headpiece and based it on african tribes. I used a mixture of materials such as copper, brass, felt and then wraped the entire piece in coloured wire.
Thought I was never going to finish it thanks to another bout of tonsillitis and then I to finish this piece whilst sporting a huge comedey bandage on my finger was not easy.
Doing a photo shoot today so I'll poost the photos of that up later.

Design Studies Assignment 1

For my first Design Studies assignment this semester we were asked to swap photos of either personal possession or of when we were growing up and then swap them with someone we don't really know. We then had to each in turn analyse these photos trying to figure out what kind of person they/you are and then find out wither we were right or not.
I have to say at first I was not too keen on the idea of some stranger analysing me. I think certain things should be kept private. However I did take part but I chose to submit photos of my possession rather than pictures of me and my family.
The person that I swapped my photos with did a pretty good job I thought. For example she brought up things like I tend to collect things of sentimental value and she also noticed that I like to make a space my own.
The photos that she gave me were of her as a little girl and then as a teenager.I did not do to badly either with her photos. I guessed correctly that she was an outdoorsy type of child, that she lived in the country. Although I thought a farm initially as in one of the photos there was a goat and in another there was lots of fields. However it turns out her parents just happened to have goats and that her cousin lived on a farm.
I also found it interesting that the photos she gave me were only of certain periods of time.i.e when she was a small child and then as a teenager which lead me to believe that these particular periods of time might have been her most happiest.This turned out to be be true.
Although doing this assignment was interesting it still hasn't changed my mind about keeping certain things private,maybe it's just an age thing.I've also kept certain findings from this assignment back as I didn't think they were appropriate to blog about,and to be honest I'm not sure what we are suppose to gain from doing this assignment. I guess if you look at it from a jewellery point of view we could put these techniques of analysing into place when a client commissions a piece of jewellery which would help with the design process.