Today has been a productive day! I met up with Morgan yesterday to collect some sketches that he's been working on for our jewellery collaboration, and I was so excited, I couldn't wait to start working on our pieces. So I decided to take progress photos for you all to have a sneak peek at what's in store for Infectious Designs. We're taking advance orders now, but we will be having our launch in the not too distant future, so stay tuned and we'll let you know where and when!




I started off by photocopying and gluing my chosen style onto a sheet of 0.8mm copper and cut around the basic outline. I've also drilled the holes ready for my saw piercing.





Here is the piece with all of the easy bits taken off it. The next step is to cut all of the negative space, which is what the drill holes are for. This next step made far too many profanities pour forth from my mouth.







Here it is with the negative spaces cut out (grumble grumble) and the copied sketch still pasted on top.






And here it is with the paper taken off. Oooh coppery!








Here it is after being filed and having been attacked by emery paper. I gave it a good hard scrub with a steel bristle brush to give it a nice matte finish. I like this finish, less likely to get finger prints! I think it also gives a nice depth to the piece too - when you move it, the light catches on different scratches and makes it look cool. In my humble opinion anyway.

It's not quite finished yet, I still have a fair bit of filing to do in the little spaces to make them all neat and pretty, but I am so impressed with how it's turned out. I was worried it would lose a little 'something' when transferring the design from paper to metal, but it's worked out really well.

As I said, we're taking advance orders, so feel free to contact me if you're interested in owning a unique un-named infection (we're still trying to think of a name, any suggestions?). There'll be a few designs on offer, depending on the size and length of your name and you'll have your choice of metals too - copper, brass, gilding or sterling silver. Eventually we're going to progress into making Perspex versions too, meaning we'll have limitless colour selections and combinations to choose from. We're also aiming to have a stall at the next market day at Dirty Shirlow's in April. I'll post definite details once we've worked them all out.