Monday, 11 February 2008

Earring Bonanza


I havent posted for a while.
We went away for christmas and new year . I wasnt all that motivated in January so I only have a few pairs of earrings to show.


Here is a picture of my birthday/ christmas present. needless to say I have been melting scrap metal and turning it into plate then texturing it then melting it down again and starting the whole process over - not very productive I know, but I was having fun. because I can. I still need to get a stand for it but the g clamps are working in the meantime.


This is a pair of shell earrings I found the shells at St Lucia (SA)Unfortunately I broke the second shell in half when I was trying to set it. So I havent finished them.The shells are set with a bezzle. the front of the earring is the backplate with a hole pierced out of it. As seen in the top earring. The shape of the shell made it a challenge to make these simple earrings, as the sides of the bezzle needed to slope from 2.5mm to about 1mm. With the bottom earring you are looking at the broken unfinished earring from the back




These are a pair of domed, dinged and drilled earrings.
I cut the circles - with a saw (I dont have a disc cutter.)
Domed them . Then put the domes into pitch and textured them with my dapping punch. I then drilled a few holes and tried unsuccesfully to add a few balls. Then I soldered them to a backplate and added a post.









Because I now have a rolling mill I thought I had better use some of my textured metal. So these werent that technical to make but I really enjoyed the process. I used "tutu" netting to get this texture.











Finally I bought a mixed bag of stones (all tiny) from bid or buy.
I know I need to practice some of the stonesetting skills I learnt in July.
So I gypsy set these 2 turquoise stones. This was a challenge because both stones were very unevenly cut. They took a while but I got there in the end