Stephanie Hopkins

Stephanie Hopkins.   "My main inspiration comes from the natural environment; I am fascinated by the forms, colours and textures that can be found in the ever changing natural world. I am particularly influenced by eroded and decayed forms and surfaces which I incorporate into my work using techniques such as etching, patination and reticulation. I aim to create objects of beauty from the decayed and dying influences that inspire my work."

  I adore her work, its a big influence on my work, as there aren't many jewelers who are inspired by eroding and decay like i am, generally people dislike decay and eroding because it can be seen as ugly and negative.

Studio work.

Been in the studio making pendants and brooches. Setting bezels around my acrylic pieces, one of my inspiration's is Stephanie Hopkins, she's a jeweller and metal smith designer & maker. Her work is based on organic forms eroding and decaying. 

Water colours | with clear acrylic

Clear acrylic pieces inspired by skeleton forms made on a laser cutting machine, I experimented with using colour, for these pieces I used water colours. The colours work really well on them, I just need to find a more permanent way of doing this with colour. 

Janine Partington

 I love these free standing enameled flowers made from copper, simple but affective. and picture above is one of Janine's displays at a show she has previously done. shows how her work is finished and displayed.

http://janinepartington.co.uk/view-enamels/standing-figures/

Made in Brighton | Janine Partington

 On Friday 21st i went to Made In Brighton, and came across Janine Partington's work, she is a Enameling artist who makes jewellery and wall pieces and free standing works, all of which are beautiful, I also like her work as its all nature based which relates to mine well. Its made me think i dont just have to make jewellery pieces from my enameling pieces, i can make a whole range of objects and spread my work out further, i plan to explore and expand on this during my studio practice. At Made In Brighton she had them backed on painted white wood, which worked really well.

Purple & clear Acrylic with patinated metals

I found out purple acrylic goes really well with patinated metal, it makes it stand out more, looks beautiful, this is something I will look further into. 

Metal & Acrylic

I've been playing around with pattinating metal today, and placing my clear acrylic ontop to show them on different colours, this shows how much colour can change my designs. Also that metal and acrylic match together well. 

Frosted Purple Acrylic

Frosted Purple acrylic pieces in process of turning into wearable pieces of jewellery. These were made using the laser cutting machine, and inspired by the decay in nature, these are practically ifluenced by Skelton form leaves.  The laser machine is an amazing piece of machinery it ables you to cut or etch into many different materials, it cuts perfectly something like this would take me a lot longer to hand pierce, so it's very time affective therefore cost affective. 

Patinating Metal

 Patinating metal in the studio today.. Taking a long time. Chemicals.. 

Enamel

Back to enamelling! My favourite technique. These are inspired by skeleton leaves. Enamel is a then coating of glass ontop off a metal. You can produce beautiful finishes. 

Dandelions

Part of my two week long project, Playing around with 2 layered drawings. Dandelions.

Photocopies | Skeleton leaf

 Photocopies of my skeleton leaf, photocopied ontop of white paper, so you can see the detail of the delicate lines. 

Colour changing

Using the printers at uni to change the colours of the background and actual lines of my laser cut, skeleton leaf. Edit colour, covert colour, then choose the colours I wanted to covert to.

Paper Necklace

I made a Paper necklace, inspired by the decay in leaves.. Skeleton leaves, like paper skeleton leaves betray a delicacy and fragility, which I adore. 

Skeleton forms | laser cutting

Skeleton forms cut out from clear acrylic using the laser cutting machine! Looking at fragility and delicacy ... Through clear delicate materials.