Finished pierced jewellery

 

Between things today I managed to get out into the Wee Workshop to saw the final two pendants I had scribed, drilled and brought over here from Maleny to saw - see opening photo.

This means I will have at least 7 pendants and 3 pairs of earrings for the Wee Pop Up Art Show at the Little Red Cottage in Maleny on 28-29 November. The five pendants and three pairs of earrings in the following photos will of course require further grinding, polishing and jump rings and wires when I get back to Maleny.

Some process photos of the sawing of today's two pendants follow. You can see the fine granules of metal cut out by the saw.

I snapped two fine saw blades in cutting these two pendants - every now and then the saw blade just jams in the cutting process - a delicate process.

Wee whimsical hoosies

 

As you can see from the opening photo I have cut a couple of wee whimsical hoosie pendants out of melted and rolled salvaged silver metal. I like the negative space form of the hoosies - particularly the one where I used holes in the metal created as part of pouring the molten metal and then rolling the metal bar. The top hole suggests smoke from the chimney and the bottom hole maybe a garden plot or pond???

Photos of the individual pendants follow - they are 4.5-5cm long and about 2cm wide.

Some process-progress photos of the piercing cutting work follow.

Cutting the hoosie negative space resulted in two rough hoosies - these have become earrings.

All the pieces still need to be given final filing, grinding and polishing - that will be done in the Maleny workshop. I'm hoping to have my priced jewellery for sale at our Pop Up Art Show at the Little Red Cottage in Maleny at the end of November.

Saw piercing and inlaying metal in stones

It was grand to get time in the Wee Workshop (aka garden shed) today so I could experiment with jewellery saw piercing on a few pendants. Piercing is a fiddly technique where you cut the design into the metal using a very fine saw blade and a starter hole in the piece of metal. In my case I intend to use recycled silver that I have melted, formed in moulds and flattened by putting it through a hand operated roller mill. 

The opening photo is a close up of one of the pieces from today - a dandelion seed head on a stem that grew out of a piece of stoney soil. I was using the hole and organic formed edges of the metal created in the rolling process. I have yet to drill a hole for a jump ring and give the pendant a good clean and polish. The pendant is about 50mm long and 20mm wide - 1mm thick metal

Some process photos follow. The sawing is time consuming as one has to be careful of breaking fine blades.

I had time to use a diamond blade in the angle grinder to cut grooves in two small pebble from the cove. I have glued solid brass rod into the grooves. Both pebbles will require sand and then oiling to bring out the colour. Final photo is oft two pebbles and two pendants in the rough.

An enjoyable day in the Wee Workshop out of the cold and breeze.