Some info on my concrete creations
With a background in architecture, I have got to know concrete pretty well. However I never thought I would use it to create jewellery. While I was working with silver clay, I came across concrete jewellery and suddenly wanted to find out more. Soon I became addicted to it. I use two different sorts of concrete and they are both non-toxic and dust-free special jewellery mixes. One of them is very fine and dries quickly. It has more of a white colour than the other one. The second one is more like the everyday concrete “grey” colour, and still a fine mixture, but the drying time is longer. I like to embellish the beton pieces with different media. I use water based metallic paint for the paint effects and there are also coloured powder pigments to colour the concrete pieces. Concrete is ideal for combining with nature-based materials such as glass. Concrete jewellery is weather and frost resistant and casting it is a very interesting process. Different surface qualities can be achieved by using alternative vessels during casting. Concrete is a compound material, therefore each item can be slightly different in terms of colour and texture. The imperfections on the items are inevitable, as a result of the nature of concrete and the casting process. However I think these imperfections create individual items and add a special character to each design.
Corresponding to the silver jewellery line I have created, and to my origins, I call this series “beton jewellery by EMT”, since concrete is ‘beton’ in Turkish. I hope you will enjoy wearing beton jewellery as much as enjoy making it.
You can find some of the beton jewellery at Happy Planet Creative Arts CIC– visit the shop in Whitley Bay. 