Acrylic Jewellery Project Booklet

This is a project I was inspired to create after reading about the work of different acrylic jewellery designers in a DATA magazine article. It’s a great project to run if you have a laser cutter or just hand tools available to cut the acrylic and I find it very useful to use up any offcuts and small pieces of acrylic that may have left in departments. I have used with both key stage 3 and key stage 4 and normally restrict them to only using material from the acrylic offcuts bin.
The booklet sets out the brief with space for designing, prototyping in card, and documenting the make before presenting their final solution, finished item and an evaluation. With key stage 4 I find it useful to introduce them to a wide range of issues and details about working in plastics and students have always surprised me with creative work.
Essential equipment for me to run this project would be: hand tools, Tensol cement to join the layers of acrylic and a few craft items such as pin badge backings, cufflink blanks, or earing posts that can be attached to the item to ensure a fully working and finished solution, I have found these online easily and in craft stores.
This can be run over a series of 5/6 lessons or in a single day if you are running an activity of timetable perhaps.