Flexi Keyboard Bangles and HandBag

Hi guys. Its been a while since ive done this so i hope i havent lost all of my followers. Ive been super busy making new work and ive just started a temporary job at DUT where i studied. Its the position as the workshop technician, so im pretty much running the jewellery workshop until a replacement can be found for the old technician. So far it seems to be quite a cool job. Im doing the things in the workshop that ive wanted to do for a long time, only now they paying me for it.

Im still making my own stuff in my spare time and have been invited to be in an upcoming exhibition.

I came up with these bangles just before i went to Design Indaba in Cape Town. They are made from Flexible Computer Keyboards and have had a great response. At the moment i am making a number of them to sell in shops in Cape Town, so until i find a place in Durban, thats where theyll be.

I had this great idea while talking to some designed friends of mine, Zane and Rachel, to make a handbag from one of the keyboards. Well after some experimenting with eyelets, i got it right. Ive had some serious reactions from this, so lets hope i can sell them now.

Design Indaba 2009

Hi everyone. I have just returned from the Design Indaba in Cape Town. Thank you to all the organizers and the people who made the Design Indaba the most amazing expierience of my jewellery career. Thank you to Bev Cupido who was there to make sure that me and the other 39 Emerging Creatives made it there and were able to display our work. And thank you to all who visited my stand and spoke to me.

I will be putting up my photos from Design Indaba and photos of all my new work as soon as i get the pics on my computer, so please check my blog again soon! I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Esc Here

Last night I completed a new computer key brooch. It has a Perspex frame, that was cut on the Roland CNC machine, using Rhino 3D CAD. I went to Mantech Electronics
to try and buy blue flashing LED's, which they did not have. I found something even more amazing, red and blue flashing LED's.

Carbon Kevlar Trilby

I made myself a Carbon Kevlar Trilby for a hat party that i went to. It came out pretty cool, needs a bit of a fix up tho. making the patten was the hardest part. The carbon kevlar has a great parrern. The weave was done purely for aesthetics, and on the reverse side, the pattern and colour is reversed. Next time i make one i need to use a heat resist resin, perhaps an epoxy. The resin that i used tends to go soft when its hot, so the hat deforms on a warm day.

Kim Kyeok: Aurora, Light as Jewellery

"Jewellery expounds its value by blurring various boundaries,from the material to the immaterial, the tangible to the intangible,conveying sensuality and emotions surrounding the body." (Kim Kyeok)

I found Kim Kyeok through one of my favourite websites, geekologie.com .Kim has made a collection of jewellery using emanating LED light in a controlled pattern, to decorate the body. This is something that i've been toying with. In combination with the ideas of Leah Buechley and her e-textiles

Graffiti?

On the graffiti line, is this graffiti?

Space Invaders

Ive found a really awsome site called space-invaders.com . which i can't actually access right now so when i do i'll write some more...
But here's a pic which relates. I saw them in London on buildings, and thought they were really amazing way of doing graffiti.

Drilling and Joining

I clamp...drill... then glued.....oh and put the dowel rods in then clamp for 8 hours to join

Plaining the wood

Last night... or sometime in the weee... hour of this morning i did some plaining to flatten the faces of the wood that i am joining together. i used a combination of a rasping plane, and a belt sander.
It seems to be working, even if it is taking a while.

National Architecture Day

Today was National Architecture day. So I thought i'd put up a pic of one of my favourite houses. This is the Cascade Lake house By E. Cobb Architects Inc. They have some amazing designs on their website, and I have always been influenced by their work.

Switch earrings

I made the these earrings a while ago. They are made from switches that I took off the PCB from my friends HiFi. The same HiFi that the laser from the "Laser Brooch" came from.
The switches make a really cool sound when you click them, which is great as they are earrings so the sound is really close to your ear. I wonder if people will have the courage to press them when they are on someone else's ears? Ha Ha. Need to give a pair to one of my friends and find out!















"Laser Brooch"

Neck swap! and part scavenge

These are two guitars that belong to a friend of mine. The neck of the one on the left has worped so the plan is to take the neck from the one on the right and put it on the one on the left. Then hopefully my friend will let me use a couple of the left over parts for my guitar.

Here's a pic of the spilt wood. Mirroring the pattern for strength

The start

This is a pic of the mahogany that I am using to build my guitar.
I have two pieces that are each just over a meter long. The idea is to split the wood down the center and open it up to mirror the pattern. This
will give it streagnth and stop it from worping, as the grain will curve in opposite directions.

The guitar

The past two weeks have been hectic! Between working on my research and planing out the guitar that i am building, i have'nt had much time to share it all with you.

Something that i started on this last week is the design for an electric guitar. I decided that its something i've always wanted to do, and i could use my jewellery skills to make the components ("you gotta have skills") Ha Ha

These are some of the drawings that i have been playing with. I have got hold of a piece of mahogany which i am using for the major part of the body. Part of the bottom corner will be made from a perspex box construction, so that the components can be visible, and so i can equip it with LED's. I want to give it matt white finish, i'm sort of going for that ipod look. This week i'll be glueing the body together, so i'll be sure to put up picks of that.

Fashionable Technology

In my last post, I mentioned the book Fashionable Technology. Well when I was In London, I went to the Tate Modern. Apart from seeing the most amazing art, I visited the book shop. After walking to one side of the shop, the first book i picked up, happened to be the most important book I have ever seen! Fashionable Technology by Sabine Seymour.


This book has helped me so much in my research into using technology in jewellery. The author wanted to convey her concept on the amalgamation of technology and fashion.

"The theoretical discourse in this book intends to provide an initiation to fashionable technology. It addresses the major concepts and provides a detailed bibliography that points to additional publications. The list of materials, blogs, institutes and events affords a starting point for further exploration in the field."

Seymour,S. 2008. Fashionable Technology.

New York: Springer-Verlag/Wien



One of the most inspirational people that I have found in this book, relating to what I am doing, is Leah Buechley. She is making and exploring the very things that i would like to do. Her Beaded LED Bracelets are totally amazing and the ideas that she has about e-textiles, and soft circuits are incredible.
Leah Buechley is a post doctoral researcher in Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder where she works with the Craft Technology Group. Her research explores the intersection of computational and physical media, focusing on computational textiles or electronic textiles (e-textiles) - soft, flexible, fabric-based computers.

I've been wanting to equip a hoodie with a LED display, and have just come across this page on Leah Buechley's site on how to make your own wearable LED display. So this will help me allot, as I only have a basic understanding of electronics, and have been relying on friends who are computer science students, to help me out.

Cyber Dog

During the July Holidays, I traveled around England. I had a great time, and saw some really amazing things. But there were two things that totally made my trip. The one was getting the book Fashionable Technology, which I will speak about in the next post, and the second was going to a shop in Camden Town called Cyber Dog.

Its A shop that sells rave clothing and accessories, and my stuff would fit in here perfectly! The clothing all glows under UV lights, or has scrolling dot matrix images or has some sort of computer based PC board pattern. Seriously amazing stuff! The shop itself is like another world, and unlike any place Ive ever been. Strobes, UV lights, and hard trance music playing, and the shop assistance all fit the part, with their florescent hair and massive boots. Add in a couple of beers and I could have had a party right there! and apparently that's what they do. they clear out the clothing and have parties!

How much better could it be? I loved Cyber Dog and cant wait to go back.

Dont you wish the moon was always heart shaped!

Just something random...
I took this photo a while ago, and must have shook the camera a bit, which blurred the shape of the moon a bit, but made it into an awesome heart shape

Link to Platinum Switch Brooch Video

I've done It! After much resezrch, tests, trials, and allot of burnt out SMD's. Ive finally mannaged to make a working example of my switch computer key brooch. I mannaged to get an electronic latching switch from a safety band, that runners and cyclists wear at night. The switch has three positions; on, off, and flashing. So now when you press the key into the frame, you have those options. This is something that ive been working on for some time now, and to have it finally working is great. This model I made for the Anglo Plat compoitition. The entire visible part is platinum, weighing 10.4grams.
The next task is to find out how to reproduce the switch, as cutting up safety bands is going to start getting heavy on my pocket, and quite wastefull, wich is an isue that i am trying to address by recycling computer components to make jewellery.

The Belt Mount Egokast Player

So after having this great idea, and doing the drawings, I have found a company who is one step ahead of me. The Belt Mount Egokast Player, is a personal media player. Its pretty much the idea i was talking about. its nice to know that there is common thought in the world, and that im not the only one out here...
Na...its not realy. you like to think that you are being original, and its so hard to do that. Marcel Duchamp's Mona Lisa with a Moustache, springs to mind.