This ring was the second last piece I made for my Vocational Course. The design was one provided by the school, as the task was to learn claw/basket setting. I chose the stone though!!
I made the ring particularly for my mum, for her birthday. She’s delighted with it!! Hooray!!
I finally finished making a pendant from the last piece of cuttlefish casting I had from our casting workshop earlier this year.
It’s a bit of a departure from my usual style, but the casting just seemed to need some softness with it!
My teacher gave me a couple of suggestions for how to finish it off – thanks Sue! I love the nature of silversmithing, there’s always some new way to look at things and something new to be learned!!
The brief for our seventh project for the course I’m doing this year was to create a piece using chenier hinge as a feature rather than a function. (Chenier is hollow tubing, in case you weren’t sure!)
I designed this pendant so that it could be worn both horizontally and vertically. The six plates rotate around a centre rod. There were a few challenging moments to my usual sadly limited patience during the construction of this piece. Titanium is an interesting but hard metal to work with.. physically hard rather than mentally! It’s a dull grey colour, and very hard to cut, file and especially drill. The gorgeous colour is achieved by heating very carefully, so it has to be riveted on rather than soldered. I added the titanium mainly because I fell in love with the blue quartz bullet stones!!
Once in a while, my fellow students and I agree, you make something that has many challenging stages in it, and many learning experiences. By the end of the process you are pretty over it – so you pop the piece away for a while, and when eventually you bring it out once more, it usually is much more pleasing than you remember! This is one of these pieces! 🙂
I made this ring for Gracie, my son’s girlfriend, to wear to her Year 12 Formal. She is such a sweetheart, she deserves a whole handful of beautiful rings! This one will have to suffice for now.
She chose the stone, and I set it very simply (as always!) and gave it a high polish.
Thanks for the honour, dear Gracie, and have a fantastic night!! 🙂 xx