I cleared out some boxes recently and stumbled upon an old riso screen from my days at Bristol School of Art, made from a drawing of red cabbage. Aha, I thought. Just the thing for making some tiles for the Widcombe Art Trail. So that's what I did.

Back in the enamelling workshop for some grown-up adventures: making a button for an exhibition called The Button Project, up in Macclesfield.

So here is my finished piece. I started with two layers of gold flux, and then painted a couple of layers of liquid black enamel on top. It proved quite hard to fire for just the right amount of time - long enough so that the black fused without sinking into the thick flux underneath. I like how the black has a matt finish while the gold is really shiny - also the black is raised so it's quite a tactile piece. 

Anyway, in case you didn't guess... I'm calling it the Power Button. 

OK this enamel mobile isn't a new piece, but it was looking particularly photogenic today with the snow and all, so I took this pic.  

The 'icicles' are made of thin sheets of copper bent into long cones. I used a solid glue stick in quite an uneven way to hold a thin covering of white enamel powder, then fired the pieces so that they just turned slightly greenish in places. I'd punched holes through the tops first so I could then thread them through a circle of thick copper wire for hanging. 

Hooray! Got all my pendants ready for display today, in time for the Christmas craft fairs. We're going to be at the Friends Meeting House - right next to Bath Christmas Market - on Sat 24 Nov, Sat 1 Dec and Sat 8 Dec. Hopefully some of the coachloads of people piling into Bath on those days will pile over our way.

There are about another dozen of these pendants, and they are all different - no two the same. Quite proud of that. 

Back in the enamelling workshop today for the first time in ages - trying to get stuff finished off in time for the Christmas craft fairs. 

I had a couple of spare mounts so decided to do some quick and easy pieces to go on them. The piece on the left has round blue glass beads fired onto a base of transparent light blue; the right-hand one has amber-coloured square beads fired onto blue flux. The blue flux layer wasn't quite thick enough so there are little holes in it from being fired for so long (to get the beads to properly melt into it). I kind of like the effect though. 

Always fun messing around with beads - tricky to get the firing time right so that they melt just enough but not too much.