I've really been exploring movement in my jewelry lately. This necklace is another experiment on this theme. Each roundel in the center of the necklace is attached to the next one by wire going trough the spiral. The picture really doesn't show this concept well, but it acts and feels like one of those metal linked watch bands... kind of kewl, but I think my execution needed to be better. I"m pretty pleased by my hand forged hook on the end... I never seem to get the proportions right on the hooks, but this is spot on.
Another theme I've been exploring is broaches or pins. These are called "scatter pins" and are in a book ( which I can't remember the title to right now) They are fun and quick to make, I'm toying with adding these to my jewelry shows, probably at the $10.00 price point... at least for the sterling ones.
Last up is a heart pendant. This is my "green" story for the week! I made the sterling heart pendant over a year ago, and misjudged how much wire to coil around the heart frame. ( it originally ran out half way through the 2ND hump) I thought it looked ghastly! I threw it into my sterling scrap pile in disgust. A couple of months ago I decided to turn my scrap in for $$, and discovered several medium chunks of wire that I could smooth out and use, several 1-1/2 to 3 inch pieces that I can make into head pins.. and a few really large chunks of wire from "failed" projects. With silver prices what they are, I decided to recycle more directly. I spent an evening watching TV and sorting through my scraps, pulling out any reasonably usable chunks of wire. With a year or more distance ( and frankly better wire skills since) I looked at this heart with new eyes... and unwound the heart back to the first hump, trimmed and filed, and it looked OK... but alittle naked. A quick dig around I found this drop bead and decided that would be prefect.. I now have a nice pendant that only took me half an hour or so to make... if you discount the couple of hours I probably spent on the heart part over a year ago!! Still, even after rescuing lots of wire bits, I had over 11 oz of silver to trade in. I've been collecting the silver bits for the past 4 or so years.. not to bad eh? Now that I'm learning metal smithing techniques I'll probably remelt the silver to reuse in the future!
I've really been exploring movement in my jewelry lately. This necklace is another experiment on this theme. Each roundel in the center of the necklace is attached to the next one by wire going trough the spiral. The picture really doesn't show this concept well, but it acts and feels like one of those metal linked watch bands... kind of kewl, but I think my execution needed to be better. I"m pretty pleased by my hand forged hook on the end... I never seem to get the proportions right on the hooks, but this is spot on.
Another theme I've been exploring is broaches or pins. These are called "scatter pins" and are in a book ( which I can't remember the title to right now) They are fun and quick to make, I'm toying with adding these to my jewelry shows, probably at the $10.00 price point... at least for the sterling ones.
Last up is a heart pendant. This is my "green" story for the week! I made the sterling heart pendant over a year ago, and misjudged how much wire to coil around the heart frame. ( it originally ran out half way through the 2ND hump) I thought it looked ghastly! I threw it into my sterling scrap pile in disgust. A couple of months ago I decided to turn my scrap in for $$, and discovered several medium chunks of wire that I could smooth out and use, several 1-1/2 to 3 inch pieces that I can make into head pins.. and a few really large chunks of wire from "failed" projects. With silver prices what they are, I decided to recycle more directly. I spent an evening watching TV and sorting through my scraps, pulling out any reasonably usable chunks of wire. With a year or more distance ( and frankly better wire skills since) I looked at this heart with new eyes... and unwound the heart back to the first hump, trimmed and filed, and it looked OK... but alittle naked. A quick dig around I found this drop bead and decided that would be prefect.. I now have a nice pendant that only took me half an hour or so to make... if you discount the couple of hours I probably spent on the heart part over a year ago!! Still, even after rescuing lots of wire bits, I had over 11 oz of silver to trade in. I've been collecting the silver bits for the past 4 or so years.. not to bad eh? Now that I'm learning metal smithing techniques I'll probably remelt the silver to reuse in the future!
1 comment:
Your rondell necklace is very cool! I really love it. It seems like it would have a good feel in the way that it moves.
Also, the heart. You can just mail it to me!!!
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