Once the shape has been cut out there is usually a small hinge where the pipe is still joined which lets you prise apart the two shapes and have a look at what's inside. . . 
This piece has a beautiful range of greens and once I've filed and sanded the edges I may well wax one star to maintain the patina and pickle the other to get a lovely clean copper.
This week's workroom photo brings you little copper hearts and dots sawn out of recycled copper water pipes being soldered onto sterling silver wire. These will form the base of two pairs of sea glass earrings, in fact, the dots have already been made up with dark cola brown coloured glass and they look rather autumnal. Must be all this rain we are having leading me towards thought of a cooler season!
This picture was taken yesterday before the bangles had their final polish and were packaged up to be sent to Crown Studio, Rothbury. I do love them and it was nice to see four worn at once, very jangly! There are four more on the bench at the moment nearing completion and a stack of pretty sea glass droplets awaiting the drill. 
Bangles, a ring, some copper sea weed inspire shapes and a bezel set pendant on the go today. My delayed silver arrived special delivery this morning, hooray! Looking at this picture shows a lot of fluxy mess on the slate and bench, it looks like bird poo, but it's not, I promise. I must have a clean once I'm caught up on making.
Two pieces of sea pottery set in fine silver; they are finished now but the image shows them in a nearly finished state. 
Six slimline stacker rings ready for polishing; they are all a bit mucky from sanding in the photo but will come out lovely and shiny after they've been in the tumbler. On the 23rd and 24th April I will be at the Galashiels Easter Craft and Gift Fayre and there will be a whole host of new pieces ready for the weekend.
The beginnings of a new charm bracelet chain lined up on a ruler. I must point out the super little blue gizmo on the left hand side of the picture; a tapered steel mandrel on a rest so I can shape wire into circles with ease. An ADJ original and one of the handiest tools on my newly elevated bench!
Check out my new and improved work table!
So, I've had a wonderful mini break with my fabulous siblings and today's workroom has been less hammering and sawing, more emails, accounts, assignments, photo scanning, fair arranging and cups of tea on the settee. 
I spent a lot of frustrating time experimenting last week and have found it very difficult to solder copper; even after cleaning, pickling, cleaning, pickling, fluxing, fluxing, fluxing and using my torch as hot as it goes I have only had two soldering successes. Hmph. Looking around the internet for advice it seems I can't get the copper hot enough quickly enough before oxidation prevents the solder from flowing. Any advice on this would be very welcome. 
In other experimenting-when-I-should-be-getting-ready-for-the-next-fair news I have had the resin out again. In 2009 I had a go with resin and though it was fabulous stuff but was never very happy with the results I achieved; mainly the bubbles and the lack of a high shine finish. Recently I thought the bubbles would go really well with the sea glass and so have cast a bangle and some bottle cap rock pools. The bangle is again causing me frustrations as every time I get one section re-coated for a shiny finish I have to sand a wee drip away meaning I have to re-coat that bit and the sand away another drip and so on and so forth. This is using epoxy resin and I am very tempted to try out a different kind to see if I can get the finish I'm hoping for. We shall see.
Silver bubbles soldered together and very ready for a pickle and a polish! Any ideas what this set is going to be?!
Things were going well with thirteen pieces ready for tumbling and final finish. Then, when smoothing off the ends of the second to last pair of earrings for the day I dropped my hand held drill and bent my only cup burr. Thinking I could maybe just straighten it enough led to it snapping. Oops. Still thirteen pieces nearly finished and a whole pile of bits started means I won't have a sparse looking stall at Saturday's fair.
Yesterday involved a lot of filing and shaping so today I have to finish off this sea pottery ring. It's a really cool little blue and white piece of sea pottery which looks a small bit like the Scotland flag! 
This week's update from the workbench brings you little silver stars and hearts all ready to be brushed, filed, sanded and combined with some pretty sea glass droplets to make earrings.
