Shinium - Brilliance by Design

Not so much a jewellery or woodworking howto, this, but frankly my south-facing workshop has been insanely hot the last few weeks - over 40C on some days! - so personal cooling is important. This is really, really easy. If you can make a cup of coffee, you can make this. You don't even need an ice-cream machine although it does make things easier if you do. The 'secret' ingredient is fresh mint. Sounds daft, but roll with this one, it really works. Gather some mint. Chuck it in your cafetiere or drip filter or espresso jug (so the coffee ends up on the mint, not in with the coffee grounds).  If you don't have any mint, don't sweat it, the end result will still be tasty. Luckily our garden has bushes of the stuff. While that's brewing, nice and strong, pour a tin of sweetened condensed milk into a jug. Opening the lid of the tin is probably the hardest step of this whole recipe. Add your coffee, stir well. You can go 50/50 milk to coffee, or more...

I know in my last post I said I'd do some epoxy inlay stuff, but I just finished a run of epoxy inlay and have been doing some wire inlays recently instead. So, wire inlay it is today, epoxy inlays another time. A simple wire inlay on a carefully chosen piece of wood can create a beautiful piece of jewellery which will last for years. This tutorial will cover a very simple, single wire inlay, but the principles for doing more complex things are the same. First up, choose some wood. Lets assume we've gone through the standard rough-cut, shaping, sanding montage and go straight to selecting from some wooden pendant blanks. Left to right I have Purpleheart, Padouk, Douglas Fir, more Purpleheart and the one I've chosen, a piece of American Black Walnut. It doesn't look too jazzy now, but when we're done it'll be really nice. Walnut is quite an understated wood, but it's definitely got class. So, first things first - mark where you want your inlay to g...