Still learning

 

Fiona and I spent a few hours with Lindsay Gallacher learning some finer and, for us, advanced design and soldering techniques. I had designed what I thought might work on several wee hand cut plate silver rustic cottages that I had designed as earrings. After talking through my designs with Lindsey I finally settled on the connections you can see in the photo above. 

I also wanted to learn how to solder curved pieces of silver wire to represent coastal dune grasses on a pair of earrings. The outcome can be see in the opening photo.

Some process photos follow.

The time spent with a professional such as Lindsey proves that one can always learn new and improved techniques.

I also oxidised a pair of the rustic cottage forms to see how the dry point marking would show once the oxidising was gently polished back.

I've added ear wires to three of the pairs of forms - I think they are ready for the next step.

A different sort of day

 

The focus of the day was metal - melting and pouring metal; cutting silver-plated blanks for word leaves; and slicing tiny (1cm)  and small (2cm) solid silver hearts. As you can see from the above phots above and below I managed to slice the metal for the solid silver hearts.

You can see I was slicing the poured metal with a saw because my side grinder needs servicing. The hearts will make gorgeous  earrings and pendants when polished.

But that is where the time in the workshop finished for the day. Thankfully my time was flexible so I was able to use the rest of the day and a bit of the evening giving a few folk a hand. 

Tiny wearable books

 

I have completed making 9 pairs of tiny metal book earrings. The pages are approximately 1.5cm wide and 2cm long. The books are made from silver-plated brass cut from vintage silver-plated drink coasters. Each pair or earrings has two words stamped onto the middle leaf: 4 pairs have love and peace; and 5 pairs have joy and hope stamped on them.

A few images of the making process in bit of a random order.

A completed pair. The earrings wires are deliberately simple with a slightly thicker gauge silver wire and longer tail as the tiny books still have a bit of weight to them.

I made 9 pairs as a few people said they want to buy these for friends for Christmas. Making these small books is quite fiddly - lots of steps and small bits. But the end product is a little bit special.