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Welcome to my blog, random stuff about me and where I live, plus some bits about my jewellery.

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Wednesday 24 October 2018

Back after ridiculous time away

Well, I haven't written anything on here for an insane amount of time, so here's a short hello.
I've been doing a lot of stuff fusing silver to copper, making pendants. Having spent a lot of time making intricate beaded jewellery this technique is a really great antidote.
Recently I experimented with making a bowl. For the jewellery I use pre-cut shapes as they are really very well priced and I couldn't make them myself for the same amount, but for the bowl I needed to cut the shape by hand, this was easier than I thought, takes a little care as the blades are very fine and break easily.
I used a pair of long silver earrings bought from a second hand market, very 80s. It's very small bowl as I only have a little doming block to make the bowl in.
Here it is, not completely finished in these pictures, needed a little more polishing.


Not too bad for a first attempt I thought.

Wednesday 1 March 2017

Finished Moonlit Water pendant

I've been working on a little piece which I've called either Moon Water or Moonlit Water, although I think I might have used the second version for a much earlier piece.
The piece uses white sea glass and silvery and white beads, both vintage and modern. I frequently use silver wire torcs to hang these pendants but I decided that this time I would make a beaded necklace.
(For people who think I've misspelled torc, that's the right spelling, torque has something to do with engines, sorry bit of a pet hate of mine)


This is very unusual for me, I actually drew a design for this piece, it's even turned out not too far from this!


Here's a very early stage of the piece, fixing the sea glass to a backing with rows of hand stitched beads.


This is the pendant finished, slightly out of focus sadly.

I've recently started using metals, fusing them together. So I decided to make a fastener for this piece out of silver wire.



The clasp is a T Bar style with a loop which the T bar fits through. It's made by twisting wire round itself and then fusing it with a blow torch. This wire was quite fine so I had to be careful not to just melt it. After cleaning the fused wire is hammered flat, this makes it much harder, work hardened.
In the top image you can see the mini anvil I use to hammer the shapes with a small modellers hammer.


Here's the finished piece on my work mat. I've added some embellishments to the simple beaded necklace, partly because it felt like it needed something, and also so that the pendant will sit with it's clasp visible at the side rather than at the back as usual. After all if it's such a nice fastener why hide it?
There are a some tiny baroque pearls in this piece which I found on an antique/junk stall, it's a great multi strand necklace so lots of pearls available.

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