Last year, I was delighted to hear that Melissa of Nine Angels* was launching Jesmonite workshops. For those who aren’t familiar, Nine Angels offers a range of colourful Jesmonite homewares and polymer clay jewellery, all handmade in Dundee. Jesmonite is an eco-friendly composite material which makes really tactile objects.
Melissa launched the workshops at an introductory price so I snapped up two tickets, one for me and one for my Mum’s birthday. We always say we’d like to do things like this, so it was the perfect opportunity.
The workshops are held at Fresh Studios, 4-6 Staffa Place where Nine Angels HQ is located. There are lots of other businesses in there which I’ll have to check out in future; Andie the Label & Sewing School offers classes that I’m very keen to book.
When we arrived there were lots of moulds laid out, sparkly glitters and bottles of coloured dyes. It all looks very tempting and we were spoilt for choice. Melissa explained how the session would go (I won’t go into too much detail as I know this one was a bit more of a guinea pig run so it might be slightly different now), told us about Jesmonite and showed us how to measure and mix.
Next, we got to choose our moulds. Me and my Mum decided to share a pair of snowflake moulds, these could be made thin for hanging or thicker to be free-standing decorations. My Mum added silver leaf to her mould and I choose pink and gold flakes, she then poured her lilac Jesmonite in and I mixed up a pale pink. Jesmonite is so satisfying to work with! It’s much quicker to set and become a finished object than I expected.
For my next make, I chose a trinket tray mould which I wanted to make for my sister’s spa - it had to match her colours perfectly so I spent a wee while faffing with the shade of green but I love how it turned out with the bronze glitter and flakes. My Mum also made a pair of candle stick holders for the Christmas table with a lovely grey-green colour and green metallic leaf.
While the Jesmonite was setting we had a coffee break. I’d told Melissa it was my Mum’s birthday so she even got some little (vegan) cupcakes in which was super thoughtful. While we drank our coffee we kept an eye on our moulds to see if they had cooled down - the Jesmonite heats up as it sets so this is how you tell when it’s ready to pop out.
Once the Jesmonite was set we de-moulded the pieces and got to work sanding and sealing. It was lovely to see the variety in everyone’s makes. There were so many beautiful colour combos with everything from coasters to pots and pendants.
I absolutely loved this workshop, it’s been so long since I’ve done anything properly crafty and I’d love to do another. Nine Angels have more workshop dates on their website including a new lamp workshop which looks very cool. You can also buy Jesmonite kits if you’re interested in trying it at home.
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