Transcripts
1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Hi, my name
is Jose Anglada, I'm an industrial designer
and jeweler living and working in Berlin where I
ran my own jewelry studio. [MUSIC] I know that jewelry
making can seem overwhelming, but believe me it
doesn't have to be. This class is an
introduction to go smiting design for
creative people that want to take
their first steps into designing and making
their own jewelry. The technique I'm going to
teach you is called saw pressing and it is the starting
point for jewelry making. It is used to translate
a design or drawing into a jewelry piece by cutting out the desired shape
from a metal sheet. This process requires
only few tools and it is a great way for beginners to jump right into creating their own
pieces and accessories. In this class, I will guide
you step by step from start to finish to create
your own jewelry piece. I will explain to you the logic behind the saw pressing
techniques so that you can unleash your
creativity and design your own pieces like
a pro in no time. We will go together through
the entire process. From the first rough sketches
to the final design, preparing the metal, sewing, filing, polishing, and
assembling your jewelry piece. I will also guide you
through the process of setting up your
own studio at home, choosing the right tools and understanding the materials
we'll be working with. If there is anything I know
is that jewelry making is an exciting world with
infinite possibilities. I look forward to
sharing with you all my tips and tricks and
seeing what you create. [MUSIC]
2. Your Project: [MUSIC] Thanks for
joining me in this class. I'm very happy to have you here. Your project is to create a jewelry piece departing
from your hand sketches. I believe that design skills are as important as
technical skills. That's the reason why I
will encourage you at all times to arrive at
your own unique designs. Before we start designing
your jewelry pieces, we're going to get acquainted
with our suffering. I dedicated an entire lesson to explain to you everything
you need to know about the hand
pressing technique and some challenges you might
find along the way. We will do a small
exercise together. You've got some
practice and build up confidence to start piercing
your assigned metal. This lesson will
provide you with a solid foundation to understand the limitations
of the technique. In this way, you will
be able to design your jewelry piece as taking
all of these into account. After that, we will analyze some sources
of inspiration and think together how this could translate into jewelry pieces. We will start
designing on paper, by drawing a lot and polishing those rough sketches
until we arrive at a design that really talks to us and we want to
translate into metal. I will ask you to
trace the design with a permanent marker and after
that, the magic begins. We will start placing your
design on a metal sheet. We will do it together
step-by-step and once you're done, we will file it and polish
the piece of metal, so that it looks good and shiny. Finally, we will assemble the metal piece to a
chain or findings, so that you can wear it or maybe gift it to
someone you love. In the next lesson, I
will introduce you to all the materials you will
need for this project. [MUSIC]
3. Tools and Materials You’ll Need: [MUSIC] Hi again. Before you start designing, I want to talk a
little bit about the tools that you will
need for this project. I have good news. You
don't need to buy a ton of expensive tools to get
started in metalsmithing, let me introduce you to the most important
tools you need to have. As you can see, it's
not so many of them, and most of them are
really inexpensive. But let's see one-by-one
what is it that you need. Let's start with the saw frame. There are all kind of
saw frames out there. The one that I have here is
a very affordable frame, and it's great to
start practicing. Saw blades. I recommend buying
good-quality saw blades. Believe me, they will save
you a lot of headaches. Sheet metal, we will use 21
gauge or 0.8 millimeters. I recommend that you start
with brass or bronze, as this is very
inexpensive material, and it's perfect to
start practicing. Once you feel more confident, you can start using silver. We will need drill bits
of one millimeter, and 1.4 or 1.3. You will need hand drill. This one that I have here
is not so expensive, but you can find even
cheaper versions in the internet like this one or
this one that I have here. This one is like
for real beginners. It's made out of plastic. I've tried it, it works, but it can be a little bit
frustrated to work with. If you can, I definitely suggest that you buy one of these or one of the other versions of electric hand drills you
can find on the Internet. Then we will need a steel punch. We will use this little
tool to make some marks in the metal so that
our drills are not dancing around when we
want to drill the holes. If you don't want to
spend so much yet, you can avoid buying
the steel punch, and use a normal nail. That will definitely
make the job. We will need normal
printing paper, tracing paper, a pencil, a black permanent marker, or any other color
would be okay too. You will need a set of pliers. I brought my favorites
to work with. For sure you will need
a chain nose plier, a rounded plier,
and a flush cutter. Then we will need
safety glasses. A candle, we will use this old candle to
lubricate the blades, and to lubricate
also the drill bits. Scissors, a bench pin. This one that I have here is
really super inexpensive, like I think that you can
get it for 3.5 bucks. I mean, it's perfect
to start practicing. You will need a hammer. If you don't have
a chasing hammer, you can use whatever
hammer you have at home. We will just use it to make this little marks in the metal together
with the steel punch. You will need sanding
papers of different grids. For this project, I
recommend starting with 400, then 800, 1000, 1200. The good thing about sandpaper is that you can also get it in your local DIY shop, so they don't need to be
specifically for jewelry. You will also need
double-sided tape and A polishing cloth. Finally, you will need some jewelry findings to
assemble your pieces. What I have prepared
here, as you can see, I have some French
hoops for earrings, some beading pins,
and some jump rings. All of them are
made out of bronze. It's not so easy to find
bronze jewelry findings. If you don't find bronze
jewelry findings, then you can go
for other options as silver gold-plated
or silver gold field. Usually the color of the gold-plated silver is
very similar to bronze, so they look really
nice together. The only problem will
be that bronze will tarnish and the gold-plated
silver doesn't. But you can always polish your
pieces when they tarnish, so it will be okay. Try to get bronze findings, and if not, any of the others alternatives I just suggested. Then I also chose some bits. I have some tiny
sweet water pearls, and some turquoise beads. These are made of real stones. If you want, you can use
others or none at all. This is just for decoration. As I said, it's your own
design so you will be making the decisions. This is it. For this class, I have provided a list with all the tools, and their codes from Rio Grande, so you can be sure you are
buying the right tool. I have left a PDF
in the project and resources gallery for
you to download it. In the next lesson,
we are going to discuss how to set
up your home studio. [MUSIC]
4. Setting up Your Home Studio: [MUSIC] In this lesson, I will share with you some
tips on how to set up a home studio with the least amount of
tools or investment. As you immerse yourself in
the world of jewelry making, you can buy more tools
little by little, or improve your workspace
to work more efficiently. I think there's a right
time for everything and having few tools shouldn't
stop you from starting. I want to show you how to
set up a studio at home just like I did when I started
making jewelry myself. I was working in my room
with very few tools, and it was not only
until two years later that I moved to a workshop
shared with other jewelers. In order to set up
your home studio, you will need a study table
to attach your bench pin to. In my case, I'm using
this idea tres stool whose height can be adjusted
to work comfortably. When making jewelry, most of the work is
done on the bench pin, which should be around
your chest height. That is why I set up the table a little
higher than normal. If you don't have
these tres stools, you can attach your bench pin to a normal table and get a
very low chair to sit on. My chair's height
is also adjustable. When I'm working
at the bench pin, I put it down so that the bench pin will
be at my chest height. When I'm working on
something else, for example, designing or computer work, I put it higher so that
I'm sitting comfortably. Let me show you how to
attach the bench pin. First of all, make sure that the screw is loose enough
to fit on your surface. Just unscrew it. We will put the metal
piece through this hole. We will slide the pin
until the end and start screwing [NOISE]
the metal piece. Try to check that it's making
two angles of 90 degrees. Then start screwing strongly
and tightly as you can. It is very important
that these will be like a very safe surface to work on. It has to be as
tight as possible. You see, for example, now
it's moving a little bit, that's still not tight enough, so I will grab this tool
and help me tightening. [NOISE] That's strong and sturdy. That should be fine. As you can see, the bench pin is more or
less around my [NOISE] chest hide when I
put my chair down, and that's the perfect
height to work on my bench pin [NOISE]. Lastly, I would like
to make some notes about safety in
your home studio. Ideally, safety glasses
should be worn at all times. Not when designing, of course, but they are a must when
sewing or using grids. Now that you're home
studio is ready, let's get down to work. In the next lesson, you will learn how to
use your jewelry saw. Have ready a small piece
of metal, your saw frame, and saw blades and meet me
in the next lesson [MUSIC]
5. Introduction to saw piercing: Before we dive into designing
our jewelry pieces, I would like to dedicate
this lesson to getting acquitted with our saw frames. A jewelry saw frame
and blades are essential for cutting shapes
out of a sheet of metal. sawing or piercing is an essential technique
for metal-smithing. Once mastered, the skill
will be used again and again in almost every
area of jewelry making, regardless of how far along you are in your
jewelry-making journey, this saw frame will
always be at your bench. This lesson, it's
going to be full of information on how to
hand-pierce like a pro. But first, let me explain
to you how to put your saw blades in
your frames correctly. First of all, we need to
take one of the blades. They usually come in these bundles so you
just need to take out this little tiny wire
and slide one of the blades outside of
the bundle carefully. Something very important is to orientate the blade correctly. The teeth of the blade
should always point down towards the handle and towards the direction,
you'll be sawing. This is our saw frame that it's composed of a handle, two nuts, one up and one down, and here a third nut that
is going to regulate the aperture or the height
of the frame itself. Once oriented correctly, place the blade in the
top nut and tighten. You put it in and you tighten
the nut as much as you can. You have to ensure
that the blade is pointing downwards
to the handle. If the blade is going
out in this direction, that is not right. Be sure that the blade
has been tightened in the top nut following a perpendicular line to
this part of the frame. Now we need to
adjust the length of the saw frame only if necessary. To know if the length of
the saw frame is correctly, the end of your blend should reach about the middle
point of the lower nut. In this case, my frame, it's a little bit too small, so I will just loosen here
a tiny bit and give it a little bit more space until this is reaching more
or less than middle of this downwards nut
and then again, I will tighten up. This has to be also very firm. Now I will place the end
of the blade in the nut at the bottom of the frame like this and before
tightening up this nut, what I need to do is
to flex the frame. The way I do it is helping with my chest so I press
the frame against the table or the
bench pin and I do strength and then I
tighten up my blade. You always need to
check that the tension of the blade is correctly
before you start sawing. If the blade is to
lose, it will break. If the saw blade has
been secured correctly, it should make a little acute sound when you ping it
with your fingernail. I will check. You're
ready to start sawing. Let's start by making a
small exercise together, you will need a small
piece of metal sheet, a permanent marker,
a steel punch, your hammer, of course, your saw blade and frame and you will also need your hand
drill and the drill bits. You will need to grab
the piece of metal on your permanent marker and
we will draw three lines. One line is going
to be straight, the other one it's
going to be like a wavy line and
finally, a zigzag line. Also I will ask you to draw a circle wherever
in the metal sheet, so I will show you how to do it. The whole point of this
exercise is that you will practice a little
bit with your saw frame. All the different challenges
that you can encounter when sawing your jewelry piece. That's why we are working with three different
types of lines. In the case of the zigzag line, that's the most challenging one, there you will be practicing
how to saw corners. The important thing
is that the lines start at the edge
of the metal sheet, so for example, I
will start here. Now we have our lines and
we can start practicing, but before you start sawing, I would like to share with you some tips on how to treat
your saw frame correctly. Number 1, be delicate with it. Your arm and hand should
be relaxed at all times, the saw frame we'll be
doing all the work. If you're a hand and
arms start to hurt this is a sign that
you are very tense. Two, position of the
hand in the handle. I like to use this
little finger to stop the end of the
handle and then the rest of my hand will just go around the handle
without doing any pressure. Don't do this, just grab it softly and relaxed. Three, when sawing, make sure your blade is always perpendicular to the metal sheet and not tilting sideways. If you are sawing, be sure that there's a 90 degrees angle between
the sheet and the blade. Do not put the blade
like this or like this. To move ahead or
in any direction, the blade should
always be in movement, up and down, up and down. Do not apply any
forward pressure. This means that you need
to trust your frame. You have to concentrate on doing this up and
down movement and on keeping the blade always in movement and the blade will
flow through the metal. This movement should not
come from your breast, no, it should come
from your elbow, so this is the movement. Lastly, always
support the work with your secondary
hand to prevent it from flapping with
the cutting action. This should be strongly against the bench beam and of course, keep your fingers out
of the path of the saw. Now we are ready to
start the exercise. It is very important
that you put on your safety glasses as small metal particles
can jump into your eyes. Sexy. Hold a piece of metal to your bench beam very firmly
with your secondary hand. We will start by sawing
the straight line. In order to start sawing, you have to rest
the blade against the metal sheet on the point that you want
to enter the metal sheet. As the blade has one side that has teeth
that are really dangerous, but the other side is
flat without teeth, here it's safely to pressure with your thumbnail
and nothing will happen. In order to enter the metal, rest the saw blade against the metal sheet and
put your thumbnail on the blade just for the
first couple of strokes, yes and you move
your blade upwards a couple of times until you
marked it and this will permit you to start sawing. Again, your hand on
your arm are very relaxed and you concentrate
in the up and down movement. Try to use the whole
length of the blade and keep your eyes on the line. If you see that the blade is not flowing through the
metal correctly, you can grab the candle
and just put a tiny bit of candle to lubricate the
blade so that it flows better. Once you've reached
the end of your line, you are ready to remove the saw. To do so, keep on
moving your blade up and down and go out
through where you enter. You saw your first
line. How did it go? Let me make a comment
about saw blades now, they break really easily. Do not feel bad if they break. Sometimes they break many
times while sawing one design, just take it out and
put another one, be sure it is attached
correctly, and go on. Now we're going to continue
sawing our wavy line. Again we will rest the
blade on the metal, use our thumbnail and
do some upstrokes. Couple of them just to make a little mark
where we're going to start cutting and start with your up
and down movements. In order to turn
with your blade, you should be moving
your metal piece and not your blade so much because if not it's
going to break. Always keep the
movement on the blade. Do not turn your metal piece without moving your blade
because it will break. Always keep the up and down movement while
you're moving the piece of metal to guide
the blade through the line. Great. Again, once you reached the
end of the line, go on with the up
and down movements and just take it out through the same
place where you entered. Now we will solve
for the zigzag line. This one is a little bit
tricky because it has corners. When you're turning corners, ensure zero forward pressure
is applied to the saw frame. Use short strokes and turn
the work rather than the saw. Let's see how that works. I'm reaching my corner here and instead of using the whole
length of the blade, I will do smaller movements., and while I do these small
movements I will turn my metal but always
keeping the movements. Once I'm in the right direction, I continue sawing forward
with the full length. We are almost done
with our exercise. We only need to cut out
this little circle. Of course, you can enter with the saw
blade from the edge of the mantelpiece
and cut the circle but I want to explain
something else here. Sometimes you will
need to create negative spaces on your designs. In order to achieve these without having a line coming in from the
border of your piece, you will need to
drill a hole first. You will now grab your steel
punch and your hand drill, whatever that is, and have the hand drill
ready and we will just make a little mark with our hammer and
the steel punch. This is where we're going to drill our hole. In order to drill a hole, we also need to
lubricate the drill bit. We will lubricate it with
a little bit of the wax. Then we're not going
to worry about the bench thing because
the bench thing is for us to work on it and it's
fine to make holes. We're going to drill the hole. In order to drill the hole the drill bits must
always be perpendicular. Do not tilt it in any direction. Keep the drill perpendicular. I like to use this finger
to support the tool. Then with the rest of my hand, I just do this movement. There we go. Now we have a tiny hole in our
metal through where we can insert the blade to start sewing this negative
space in our design. In order to do that, I will
untie the lower naught, and I will insert the
blade through the hole. I will kind of thread
through the hole with the blade and I will put my
piece of work on the top. Then again, be sure that I I'm flexing the
frame enough so that the blade will be
correctly tensed. I close the nut very strongly. Of course, you make the little pink sound to make sure that the blade has
been attached correctly. After listening to it, you can start sawing. Now that you know how to saw a straight line, a wavy line, you've also practiced how to saw corners and negative spaces, let's make a quick recap
of what we can do with our saw frame and a
piece of sheet metal. We can piece a simple
design with just outline, a design with decorative lines, a design with internal
decorative lines, and a design with
negative spaces. Of course, these
drawings here are super, super simple, it's just to
explain you as an example. You can make a more
complicated design but this is to understand the
logic behind the technique. In the first case, in order to pierce
this simple design, we will be able to enter
from the edge of the metal until the line with our saw frame through
anywhere we want. We have seen this already. In the best case, you will be doing
this in just one go so you will enter and
cut the entire design. But don't worry if now that
you are still practicing, you need to come in cut
a little bit, go out, or maybe your saw blade
breaks in the middle of the process and you need to come in again
through another place. Don't worry about these. The result would be a little
hard like this one here. Let's see for this case. This case is very similar. You will also enter first to cut the
contour of the heart. Then as a second step, you will be able to pierce
the internal lines. Because as these internal lines are coming from the
edge of the piece, then you can first
cut the piece and then do the decorative
lines afterwards. The result will be
the same little hard, but with these decorative
lines in one of the sides. Now we have these two
other examples that have our internal decorative
lines or negative spaces. As we have learned already, in order to pierce
internal decorative lines or negative spaces, we need to drill a
hole through which we are going to pass the saw blade in order
to start piercing. In this case, we're going
to first drill the holes. Second, we're going to pierce the internal
decorative lines. Why are we doing this
as a second step? Because until now we still have the entire piece of
metal to hold onto so it's easier to work this
way rather than sawing or piercing the internal lines once we have cut the heart. The third step would be to
cut the contour of the piece. Our end result will be this one. Remember that the
holes that we do in order to pierce
the internal lines are part of our design. The last case is very similar. First we drill the hole, second, we are going to pierce the
negative space and third, the overall contour
of the piece. In this case, we are going to have a little heart
with a negative space. In a nutshell, we're going
to start by piercing out the negative spaces and
the internal lines first. The last step will be to cut out the outside of the design. We do this so that we have a little bit more metal to hold onto during the
piercing process. If we make a slight
mistake by over cutting, we can usually adjust
the outside of the design a little bit
to accommodate this. As you can see, the technique
has its limitations. For example, you cannot do an internal line without having a little
hole at some point of the line because this
is where you will insert the blade through the
metal to start sawing. I personally love
technological limitations because they give
these crafty look to the jewelry pieces. I also like the
challenge of adapting my ideas to what is
really possible. Now that you know how to use your saw frame and what are the limitations
of the technique, it is time to start designing
our jewelry pieces. In the next lesson, we will talk about sources of
inspiration and we will collect some images that
will inform our designs. Are you excited?
6. Inspiration: In this lesson, we will be
talking about inspiration. The truth is that
the line between inspiration and
imitation is a fine one. It is much easier to avoid falling into
imitation if we look for inspiration in things
other than jewelry. It can be art or nature
or architecture. It can be anything. Just think of things you
love and inspire you. For example, if you are a cat lover maybe you want
to make a pendant with a silhouette of your cat or if you love plants
maybe you want to collect images of
tropical plants and get inspired by the
shape of their leaves. It can be anything you love
and might inspire you. For this project I
encourage you to gather some images that you can use as inspiration for
what's coming next. Designing your jewelry pieces. Of course, the Internet is probably the most practical way of gathering reference images but it doesn't have
to be the only one. You can also find
inspiration in books or catalogs, photographs,
even objects. For example, I am a lover of
simple and doughnut shapes. My designs are usually
very geometric and clean but I also love nature and how it's shapes
can inspire my designs. I would like to
share with you next some images and sources of inspiration that I put
together for this class. These are two postcards that I bought recently
in a museum shop. It's Matisse. As you might know
Matisse used to work a lot with the
paper cut technique. The reason why I think these
two images are relevant for us today is exactly
because of that. If something can be cut out of paper it can be definitely
cut out of metal. The fact that he was
cutting these shapes out of paper were also giving
him some limitations. The shapes are a lot more simple that he would have been
maybe drawing or painting. For example, this is
clearly a human body but the shapes have
been simplified and the silhouette has
been simplified into a simple line work that
he cut it out of paper. This technique is I
think very relevant and inspiring for the technique that we're going to
be working with. I also brought to share
with you this book. This book is a book by Cynthia
Alonso and [inaudible]. The illustrations are
by Cynthia Alonso. It's an Argentinian illustrator. I really love diving into children's book because
the illustrations are simple and beautiful
and for me super inspiring. For example, already
this end paper I can already see these beautiful
silhouettes in jewelry. They would look
like just gorgeous. Here you can see the same leaves but with a little
bit more of detail. There's some internal line work that could also
be done in metal. Look at these olive tree leaves
or these little flowers, how simple the drawing is and then some details inside or
these beautiful flowers. Imagine cutting these out of
metal would be just lovely. Here she's working
with abstract shapes. Of course, our jewelry
pieces do not need to be something literally. They don't need to be a
tree or a cat or leaves. They can also be
abstract shapes that are beautiful and aesthetic. We can also get inspired by abstract art or
abstract patterns. Let me show you one of my
favorite parts of the book. Here, the eucalyptus tree. I simply love these leaves,
these falling leaves. I can also see them in
jewelry like so much. Maybe a pair of earrings
that are alone. There's also this other book that I would like
to share with you. This is an Argentinian
artist based in UK. Her name is Sophia Salazar but her artistic name is Hiedra. I wanted to share it with you. For example, these
illustrations that we've just seen are
digital illustrations. They are full of
color and textures. That's not important for us because we're not going
to be working in color. Of course, we cannot create
textures on the middle. I mean, yes we can but we're not going to do it
in this project. This artist works a lot
with woodcut or lino cut. She also uses paper cut. Her art really calls me
and I'm a big fan of her. But look for example, how
simple this silhouette is. Like how she managed to draw a human body in just
simple few lines. Of course, we would need to make some adaptations here
to be able to cut this out of only one piece of metal but we are almost there. Also look at this body. Again, we would need to
maybe make some adaptations but this can perfectly
inform our designs. She also works a lot with
paper cut technique as well. You can definitely see how she was inspired by
Matisse paper cuts. For example here. Again, this can definitely
be an inspiration for us as whatever can be
carried out of paper, can be carried out if metal. Lastly, I would like
to share with you a Pinterest board that I put together especially
for this lesson, to share with you
a little bit of the research that I have been doing to gather some images
to inform my designs. I want to quickly show you how my Pinterest board looks like. I gathered a lot of imagery that are mainly
illustrations of plants and nature but in a very simple yet
expressive way that is usually also incorporating
a lot of geometric shapes. I found this beautiful
vases whose shapes I love. I think they are so
elegant and so simple. I'm sure that these shapes
can inform my designs. I also found as
you can see here, a lot of illustrations
of flowers and plants whose shapes are very simple with not
so many details. But I am sure that all of these shapes that you
can see are going to look so awesome when we
cut them out from metal. I also found some nice
reference images of packaging. More vases. Look at these shapes. More and more plants,
flowers, leaves. Look at these corals here. Lisa Congdon, I gathered some artworks and patterns
from her because I think that she really masters
the art of drawing with simple and few lines but her
drawings are so expressive, so funny, so lovely. I also found this
beautiful poster here. It's a poster I made to promote the French Film Festival in
Uruguay in the year 1959. These shapes over
here they're funny, like some bouncy cloud that is simple but yet
so funny and expressive. I can see these shapes
being transformed into beautiful pair of earrings
or some jewelry piece. Lastly, I want to show
you this woman body. How simple the contour
of the silhouette is. So little detail and yet it's so expressive
and beautiful. They added some internal line
work that we can also do in our designs to give some detail to the
piece, to the design. But overall, there
are just few lines. It's very simple but yet very
beautiful and expressive. This is it, it's not so long. It's mostly simple
geometric shapes in my case that are representing
nature in most cases. But just gathering images and references that are inspiring
to me and that will inform my designs
in the next lesson. I hope this was useful. I'm going to leave this link in the resources so you can
have a look closely. In the next lesson,
we're going to start designing our
jewelry pieces. Please select five images
and have them handy. If you can print them
that's even better. They don't need to be in color. Black and white is totally fine. If you are an artist or illustrator with a
defined style and you already have designs
that you want to translate into jewelry
pieces that's great. Then you might have not need to do all of these research
and search for inspiration. To transform your designs
into jewelry pieces you just have to make
small adaptations, taking into account the
limitations of the technique. But don't worry. We'll do that together in
the next lesson. Just print out your designs
and have them handy. [MUSIC]
7. Design Your Jewelry Piece: Before we dive into designing, I would like to talk to you
about some key aspects I recommend you to
take into account throughout the design process. First, of course, have into account the limitations of
the techniques at all times. Second, we will use the
sources of inspiration as our starting point and then give freely on to your creativity. Third, I want to ask
you to keep it simple. This is your very first
jewelry piece and I would like to encourage
you to work with very simple line drawings and to avoid including
too many details. Four, the size. Let's think of the
size of the piece we will be designing
from the beginning. Scaling the design might be
a little bit complicated. Of course, it's
possible we can scan our designs and then scale
them in the computer. But for this project, I encourage you to make your
drawings in the real scale. I recommend you to work
in a scale that goes from 2.5 centimeters by
2.5 centimeters and four centimeters by four centimeters
as a maximum area. I printed some of
the images from my Pinterest board
to have them handy. You don't need to do this. If you don't have a printer, you can also refer to your
Pinterest board instead. But I like to work
analogically a lot. I printed two artworks
by Lisa Congdon. I also printed the beautiful
bases by Eric Roinestad. This is our Retro Scandinavian
Print by Laura Danby. This one here is a botanical
pattern by Sarah Abbott. The materials I have with
me here are plain paper, tracing paper, a ruler, just because I'm a fanatic
of geometric shapes, but you don't need that. But I also use the ruler
to cut the tracing paper, a pencil, and a
permanent thin marker. This is very thin. It's important that
it's very thin because we want to be precise. I don't have a rubber
with me or eraser because I prefer to keep
all of the process. Even though I might start doing some drawings and then end up in a totally different place, that's why I use
the tracing paper. I'm going to share with you a very simple technique
to start by doing very rough sketches
that you don't have to think so much
about them and then polish them with
this tracing paper to arrive to the
very final design. Let's get started. First of all, I would like to refer
to these bases that cultivated my attention in
the first instant I saw them. I really like this detail
on the side of the base. I think that a
jewelry piece with this detail would
look beautiful. I'm going to start
by drawing these. Do not think so much. These are just rough sketches. Just don't make any judgment and just start doing drawings. Of course, we cannot
cut this out of metal, as we already learned. Why? Because by
cutting this line, this piece would fall
and we don't want that. If I would like to make a design that is
similar to this one, I would need to
adopt this design to make it work according to the limitations
of the technique. The way I can do that is so I know that this part and this part
need to be connected. I will first start drawing the general contour
of the piece, that is this one. Now that I have the general
contour of the piece, I can think of how I could
include some of these details, but without having the
piece falling or being cut. Maybe I can add this line, but not until the end, so until here, also here a little
bit, and here too. This would create this
impression of a line, but the line cannot
be all the way drawn because if not you would have three different pieces. Maybe I can add some
details, for example, I could make some dots here or for example, I would like to show
you this reference. I chose this reference
because I really like the the internal line
work she includes. As you can see, she's using
very simple shapes that are naive and they could have
been done with paperwork, like with paper cut technique. They are really
rough and simple. Then inside she uses this
line work that I really like that gives a lot of expression to these
very simple shapes. Maybe we can do the same
here and just try to add some line work to our design. Then, of course, when we
are designing jewelry, we need to start thinking how are we
going to assemble that? Because this is
part of the design. In this case, what
is it going to be? Is it going to be a pendant? Is it going to be earrings? For me, this looks more like
a pendant for a necklace. I would need to drill
a hole there and then just put a jump ring. You see how the pattern
from a base that inspired me because of
the beauty of its shapes. I arrive to a design to a
jewelry piece that is totally different and then I can continue to
analyze my resources. There's something that they
all have in common and is the geometric shapes and the
simplicity of the shapes. In this case, flowers or branches have been
represented in a very simple and geometric
way and abstract too. Maybe I can start choosing some shapes that I would
like to use for my designs. For example, I love
this one here, I love this one
here, and this one. Maybe I can already say
to myself like, hey, maybe you want to
work with this shape. You want to work with a
shape that is more or less like these, somehow. Then I would also include
something like this, and maybe for the leaves, I need something like this. What about I would also maybe add here some other things
that are inspiring. Look at this one here. Like how expressive that abstract shape, is and the linework inside. This one has a linework too, so once I've analyzed those resources or
reference images, I can let them go and just continue working
with my own creativity. I will put them aside, but I will, of course, continue to work
in this direction and I wouldn't be in this starting point if it wasn't for those reference images. I will continue working
on my own having into account all the limitations
of the technique. For example, if I want to make a piece that looks
more or less like this one, yes, again, don't worry, just draw they have to be really
rough sketches. It's important that we draw a lot and we will
polish them later. If I want to make
internal lines, as we already learned, I will need to have at some
point of the line a hole. I cannot do this the way it is. I need to think. I want to make a line here, but maybe I will add a
point at each extreme. Look how in this case, the limitation of the technique is becoming a friend to me, because I think
that this will look really nice and beautiful. Then here I don't need to add any points because I am entering from the
edge of the piece, so this is about the
limitations of the technique. Then another comment I
would like to make to you, it's like, for
example, in this case, when I was already deciding
that this will be a pendant, then it's important to know that beforehand because
here I will have to drill a bigger hole through where my jump ring
can go through. Also, for example, I can say, I'm going to design a pair of earrings that is
composed of two parts. For example, I will do
something like this, and then here there's a circle. But in order to connect these
two parts with a jump ring, I will need to drill a
hole here and a hole here. Then this part will also
need to have a hole through where my French hoop will pass. These are things
that it's good to contemplate from the
beginning so that you can have these things noted down for when you are executing
your work in metal. Now I'm just going to keep this here and I'm going
to continue designing. I'm going to start drawing a lot until I find a piece
or a shape that really talks to me and I want to polish with my tracing paper to arrive to my final design. I think I'm getting there. As you can see, I started
with very rough sketches, and then, for example, I found that this shape
that I really liked, so then I said, well, I want to bring this
back and maybe try it a little bit more long because
I like long earrings. Then I traced it and included another detail like a
negative space here. I really like this one
and I ask myself like, how could it look
like a pendant? Instead of doing it
so long and thin, I did a little bit more broad, and here also are
different versions. Of course that at all times I am thinking of the
limitations of the technique that's why these internal lines over
here have a little dot. If I have these
little dots here, I could also think of maybe adding some little decoration. Like for example, using B pin and just adding
some little bits. This is something that you can definitely ask yourself
while you are designing, then when you are
assembling the piece, you can try it out if you
like it better without them, you can leave them
out, but it's good to already start thinking
about all of these things. Now I think that
for this class I will maybe work with this
piece because of the size, I think that it's the
biggest and it's better to start working with a piece
that is not so small because to manipulate
small pieces, it's a harder work. I will start working on this design and polish the
design as much as possible with layers of
tracing paper until I find the final design that I want to translate into metal. This is a bit of a
detailed work, so now, we care about the trace of our pencil and to
make tidy lines, but I will now start
taking care of that. For example, these parts are
all more or less the same, and I will start to polish
my design in layers. Once you arrive at
your final design, trace it with a
permanent marker. It should be thin, and then we will trace
it once more to create a template that we will use to translate that
design into metal. Always keep documentation
of your designs, meaning you should never use your original hand sketches
to pierce your metal pieces, you can either scan it or trace it as I'm going to do just now. Done. In the next lesson, you are going to
pierce your design. Have your tools ready, and a lot of pencils.
8. Hand Pierce Your Design: It is time to start sewing. Remember that little exercise we did together in
previous lesson. Now is the time to put
all that into practice. But before we start, we need to attach the design
to the metal. Let's do it. What I do is I cover the whole piece of paper
with the double-sided tape. Doesn't matter if the
double-sided tape goes a little bit outside, we will cut it later. But it's important that the whole piece of paper is
covered by double-sided tape. I do this. Now, we will attach our
design to the middle piece. To do so, we're
just going to peel off this and attach it. Just make sure that the
material is clean so that the design will stay
attached the whole process, so just make sure and
we will stick it. Perfect. I will look
at my design to understand what are the
things I need to do first. In order to pierce this
negative space here, I will have to drill a hole
inside of it at any point. In order to make
these internal lines, I will also need to
drill a hole for each of them plus the
whole of the jump ring. What I will do next
is I will first punch the little holes with the punch steel that will
guide my drill bit later. I will do this
little pilot holes. Now that we have our pilot holes
we have to drill. Remember to wear
your safety goggles, to have the [inaudible] so that we can lubricate
our drill bit. In order to do the holes, I will go back to my bench pin. Just remember like
we did last time, the drill bits should always stay perpendicular
to the metal sheet. You can use these finger to help keep the equilibrium Ready. I just drilled all my holes with a one
millimeter drill bit. In the case of these
four points here, I would like to most probably
use them as decoration. I want that they are a
little bit bigger than that. Also, the one for the jump ring. The jump ring is made of
one millimeter of wire, so I definitely
need a bigger hole. What I'm going to do next
is I'm going to change my drill bit and I'm going to enlarge the holes from 1-1.4. I will change drill
pin and again that's perfect. We're done
with our hand drill for now. I will put it aside. It's done to start sewing. We will start by passing all the negative spaces
because in this way, we will have all the
metal that is surrounding the piece to graph our metal
against the bench pin. We are going to be able
to work more comfortably. We start with the negative
spaces and the details, and later on we will pierce
the contour of the piece. I will thread my metal through the blade as we did
in previous lessons and attach my blade correctly and firmly
and we're ready to go. As you might realize, the marker is thicker
than my blade. You need to make a decision like whether you're going
to go outside the line, in the middle of
the line or inside. I recommend that
you go a little bit outside if it's possible
instead of inside, as you can always file the
material that exceeds later, but you cannot invent
new material when you cut part of the design. I'm going to try to
keep the middle of the line always in my case. First, I go from the
hole until the line Once I am there,
I start cutting. Remember to keep the hand
relaxed at all times Keep the up and down movement and guide the sew but without doing
forward pressure I am arriving to
a corner. Again, once I get there, I will do smaller movements with my blade and start
rotating the pierce In order to sew the
internal lines, these lines are intended
to be decoration. Instead of using blade number 2, I'm going to change
to a blade number 4 so that the line is a
little bit thicker. I will detach my number 2
blade and grab a number 4. You place first in the
top nut very firmly. The blade is perpendicular,
that's fine. Before putting the down nut, I'm going to thread
my blade through the hole again and secure the blade
in the down nut. Now I'm going to
just sew this line. I've finished with
my internal lines, so I can change the
sew blade again and use the 2.0 that I was using before because this is the right size of blade for the 0.8 millimeter
metal sheet we are using. Teeth are positioned correctly. I can of course, enter through wherever I want. I will try to enter
here and just cut it in one go but if you, maybe at the beginning, when you are starting sewing
and you need to practice, sometimes it's better or also depending on the
shape of your design, sometimes it's better
to maybe enter, cut a little piece, enter again, and go out again. Of course, that's on you to decide and you will feel it if the material is giving too much resistance because
of the shape of the design, then you can go out
and enter through another side of the metal
again, you can decide. I will just enter here. Again as we did in our
exercise, to enter the metal, you press the metal sheet firmly against the bench pin
and with your thumbnail, you help yourself and you do some upstrokes. first and then you start. That should be fine. As I had to change my
blade because it broke, I will need to enter again the design
as it's very difficult to go through the whole
line with 10 blades, so I would rather just cut again here and start where I left. As you can see, I am in a critical place
here because I have to turn almost 360
degrees to go on with my design and I do it by doing very tiny strokes and rotating
my piece while I do it. Almost there. I'm
about to finish. This is very important. When you are arriving
to the very end, be sure you don't have your fingers on
front of the blade, because when you arrive
to the endpoint, the sew blade might
probably go forward very quickly and if your
fingers are there, believe me, it won't be nice, so be sure that your fingers
are behind the blade. I'm done. Congratulations. You hand pierced your
first jewelry piece. In the next lesson, we will file and
polish our pieces. Have your files, sanding paper, and polishing cloth ready.
9. Filing & Finishing Your Jewelry Piece: Our jewelry piece
is almost ready, and in this lesson we're
going to make it shine. First, we need to detach the
tracing paper that is left. You can do this by
hand with the help of a cutting knife
or using acetone. I will do the second
option because I am lazy. I will pour some acetone
to this little glass, and while I wait a few minutes until the acetone does its work, I will explain to you how
we're going to file and polish the piece. The filing and polishing
has three steps. First of all, we're going to use our saw blade because something I didn't tell you yet is that our saw frame is the
tiniest file we have. We first use it to retouch some things that didn't go so well in the cutting
of the piece. For example, the corners, we can sharpen them and this
is a great tool to do that. Afterward, we will
file all the edges. We will use our tiny files to smooth all the
edges that somehow have all the traces that
the saw blade left. All these little lines that
you see around your piece, we will make them
disappear with our files. Also with the files, we can improve the shapes if the saw blade did a
little of a mess, or if at some parts of
the design you were not able to perfectly
follow the line, so that we will also
fix with our files. Lastly, we are going to
use our sanding paper of all different grids
to polish the piece. The last stage is
the polishing cloth. Here there's something
I would like to explain quickly while my piece gets ready. We have different grids
from 400 until 2,000. If you don't have 2,000, I think that 1,200,
it's already okay. What we're going to
do is we're gonna start with the smaller number that is the biggest grain
of sandpaper, let's say. We're going to start with
400 and we are going to sand the piece always in a straight
line in one direction. We're going to do
it constantly and then when we see
that the piece has been perfectly sanded
and that we only see lines in the direction
we were sanding, we are ready to change
to the next sandpaper. I will choose my 800 and I
will turn my piece 90 degrees, and I will do the process again. The reason why we do
this is that this will let you check that you had polished good enough
with the grid you're using and that
you're ready to pass through a second state or to
the third or to the fourth. You will be able to check if all the lines
have been erased by the following grid
of a sandpaper. I will show you this
later more in detail, but I wanted to explain that
it is important to turn your piece 90 degrees when
you change sandpaper, and while you do it, you will understand better. Let's see if this
has been already. Yes, it's done. I wouldn't just help myself with this file to take out
the tracing paper. First I would like to tidy up these two little corners
inside of my negative space. To do so, I will use
my saw frame, and to tidy up those
corners I will just very carefully
start filing them. I can do it from both sides at the same time so that these corners become
really real corners. That's fine. Now I will
adjust my saw frame again and I will just clean up these small places
between the shapes. If I tilled my saw
frame a little bit, I can use it like a file. It's okay, I think it's good to
go with the files now. I will just leave
my saw frame at the side and I was started
working with my files. What's important is to choose the right file for the
work we are doing. For example, if I am going to be filing here this curve, I will most probably want to use this tool that has
art curve here as well and if I am filing
a straight line, I will probably want to use these flat surface or
this other tool that I really love that has
a file on this side and here there's no file. The square one is very
good for corners. In case you were not able to do them sharp enough
with your saw frame, you can also use these corners to sharpen up your corners. You can also use a bigger file if they
are big things to improve in the contour
of your piece. For example, I will
start by using this one and filing the contour. The piece should
always be resting against the bench and you
should grab it firmly. A new file with straightforward
movements trying to accompany the whole
shape of the piece. I will try to use
this big one just for the contour here
and all the rest, I'm going to file it
with the small files. As we departed from our
hand sketches, of course, the hand sketch was
not perfect and we are not aiming to arrive
to perfection, but to keep this roughness
and this crafty look. But what I definitely
want by filing is to erase all of these traces
that my saw frame left. I'm going to start doing that. I will start with
my little files, this should not take so long. You just need to erase traces of your saw. What it is important
is that you hold your piece firmly
to the bench pin, but you can find your own
way, like for example, sometimes I like to put
up in order to better see the contour and be able to work on that and
improve imperfections. But the rest of
the time sometimes I'm rotating in
different places. You can find what's best for you and
more comfortable. Remember, you file
until you cannot see the traces of your solid
anymore. I think I've pretty much finished with my filing, before passing to
the sanding paper, I want to show you these
little sanding paper sticks. They are really inexpensive, you can buy them or
do them yourself. It's not so difficult
to do them, you just need to wrap a wooden
stick with sanding paper, but they are really
inexpensive so maybe it's sometimes
better to save the work. In order to finish those edges, we're just going to
sand the edges with the sanding paper so that it
will be absolutely shiny and with no traces at all. This should be very
quick because you did a good job with
your files already. There's almost no trace, so this is just to
make it really smooth. This is a 400 grit, I think it's perfect
for this job. We finish with our
sanding sticks and we're going to start the process of sanding our
pieces with the sandpaper. I will just incorporate
my chair to work more comfortably and I will tidy up. I will check up that my
sanding paper is in order, so 400, 8, 400, 800, 1000, 200, and 2000. I will start so I will grab
the 400 grit sandpaper, I will check that there's
nothing in my table and I will start sanding. Now, I can see
that the traces of the sanding paper are
all over the piece, and this means that I am done with this
side of the pendant, so I will continue
with the other one. Here, I would like to show
you some little secret. I mean, my piece is
a little bit small, this works better
with bigger pieces. But you can use paper tape
to make a little handle that will help you through this process easily. We are ready to continue
with the next sandpaper. As you can see, as we were always sanding
in one direction, the sanding paper had drawn or made these lines in my metal. Now I'm going to sand in
the opposite direction. Then the sanding paper of the following grid
will start drawing lines in perpendicular
to these ones, and I will only stop when I don't see these lines anymore. I will change the
sanding paper now and start sanding with my 800. Now I do it in this direction. For example, here, I already see the lines
that these sandpaper did, but I still see some in
the opposite direction, that's why we are
turning our piece 90 degrees because it helps us realize when it's the right time to change the sandpaper
to the following grid. I still have to work
on this one to erase these few lines that are there left so I will continue. I'm ready, now we
only need to use our polishing cloth to polish our piece. We will do that also
as quick as we can Now you can do it in circles, last touches, and we're done. There is some polishing
paste on the piece, you can wash it
with a little bit of soap and maybe
an old toothbrush, and this will just go away. Yeah, we're done. Now that our pieces are
looking good and shiny, we only need to assemble them to turn them into
wearable objects. In the next lesson, we
will do this together, prepare your pliers
and findings.
10. Assemble Your Brass Piece Into a Wearable Piece of Jewelry: [MUSIC] We are almost there. In this lesson, we will
assemble our jewelry piece. You will need jewelry
findings and if you like, you can also use
some tiny stones or pearls that can be
attached as decoration. I also brought some chains and nylon threads of different
colors and of course, your set of pliers. Assembling the piece is
part of the design process. You can think of some
aspects before hand, or you can leave it all
for the end and start trying some things out until you arrive at the result
that you are happy with. Regardless of how you decide to assemble
your jewelry piece, I would like to explain to you the most important
things you need to know. I will show you how to add a
jump ring to your pendant. I will also explain to you how to add little stones
or pearls with a bead pin and how to attach
a French hoop to an earring. I will show you these
three things and with them you will be able to do
all sort of jewelry. [MUSIC] I will explain
to you next how to add a jump ring
to your pendant. As we are not soldiering
for this project, I recommend that you use a sturdy jump ring to ensure
that it will stay closed. This one here, it's made of one millimeter brass wire
and I did it myself, but you can definitely buy them. What we're going to do is we're going to use
two chain pliers. We grab it with the aperture up and with the other plier, we make with one plier, movement forward and the
other one backwards. This is how we
open jump rings to be sure that they
will not be deformed. Now I have this aperture and we can pass the jump ring through
the whole of our pendant but it's big enough because we made sure that it was bigger than the
wire of the jump ring. Now we close it and to close it, we do the same thing. We just do backwards
and forwards movements with the
pliers and close it. Now my jump ring is
closed and secured and it is steady enough
to stay closed even though I won't soulder
it for this project. Now I just need to decide
whether I'm going to use a green nylon thread, oh that looks really cute, or a golden one, or this beautiful very
fine chain that I have. This chain is
silver, gold plated, and as you can see, it matches the color of
the brass perfectly. I think I'm going to use
this one for this project. I will just pass one of the
extremes of the chain through the jump ring and ready. My necklace is done. But before we
finish this lesson, I would like to explain to
you two more things that you might need to assemble your pieces
because maybe I decided to do a
necklace for the class, but maybe you did a pair of
earrings or something else, so I want to show
you two more things. In this case, you will
need a rounded nose plier. I will explain to
you next how to add a French hoop to your earrings. This is the French hoop. This is how it comes. You just need to open
these so you will insert your pliers
through it and open it. You put your earrings through the French hoop and
close it again. Make sure that you
close it well enough so that your earring
will be secured. [NOISE] Lastly, I would like to
show you how to add decoration to your
designs if you like to. For that, I have
here some bead pins. This can be found
like these ones with a little bowl on one of the extremes or with a flat surface on
one of the extremes. I definitely prefer these ones, but both are useful. I will show you how to do it. I prepared this earrings. These are one of
the signs that I drew throughout the class and design throughout the class. I would like to put a little bead or pearl here
hanging as decoration. That's why I drilled
this hole here. That's what I'm going to do now. I have to graph one bead pin on my
rounded nose pliers and so I have to get a little pearl or whatever you want to
decorate your jewelry with, and I will just put it through. Now I need to create a hoop and for that I'm going to help myself with the
rounded nose pliers. First of all, I
graph my pearl and I move the wire 90 degrees. Then I just press
with my plier at the point that is
not so far away from the point
because I don't want to make such a big hoop. I want to make a
small one so that it looks delicate so I will just do this and turn
the wire around it. Now I have these and
I need to cut it. What's remaining I don't
need it so I cut it. [NOISE] Now I just need to do this a little
bit more perfect. I need to open it now after having closed it
in order to put it in my earring and then
I close it again [NOISE] and that's done. I am very happy with how
my pendant looks and I think I don't want to add
extra decoration to it. I could definitely add some little stones
like I did here, but I like this one as it
is. What do you think? [MUSIC] We're almost done
with our class. In the next lesson, I'm going to say goodbye and thank you. [MUSIC]
11. Final Thanks: [MUSIC] Thank you so much
for taking my class, and congratulations
for finishing your first jewelry piece. I hope that you leave this
class feeling proud of what you've created and
inspired to keep on practicing. This is just the beginning of an amazing journey that
is jewelry making. I really hope that
this class has inspired you to continue
learning new techniques. Please take some photos of your jewelry pieces
and publish them into the project and
resources section so we can take a look
at what you did. I cannot wait to
see your designs. If you want to get notified
about my upcoming classes, do not forget to press the
little button up there that says follow so
we can keep in touch. Thank you very much and
hope to see you next time. [MUSIC]
Jose Anglada, Jewelry designer
