Another council weekend over. Combined with the nasty cold I’ve got, I guess I must have seemed particularly pathetic because dear boyfriend surprised me with some awesome new tools on Friday as a pick-me-up :) I got two items that were very high on my omgwant list - a stainless steel bracelet mandrel, and a set of alphabet punches (1/16″). The punches are so tiny and cute! He also picked me up a pair of flat-nosed, nylon-grip pliers, some various gauges of silver wire for a project I want to try, and a nice big chunk of half round sterling silver ring blank. I unfortunately don’t have any metal pieces long enough to try out a bracelet just yet, so I made my first ring over the weekend at boyfriend’s request.
The punches obviously work better on flat metal but boyfriend was determined I try, so I punched out “lil devil” accross the front of the ring. My spacing/ placement is not perfect, but it has a certain whimsical quality to it. yes… whimsical. It took me literally hours to get a nice soldered joint on it - the two ends didn’t meet up perfectly when I first attempted the solder so it failed miserably. However, since it also annealed the metal, it was much easier to get the ends to meet nicely on the second attempt. This time, however, my flux failed me (I experimented with a stained glass flux I had on hand - turned out not to be a good substitite). I reverted back to the silver flux paste and finally, on the third attempt, success! My first attempt to get the ends to meet though involved pliers which resulted in some damage around the area of the joint, so it took some considerable filing/sanding/polishing to work those marks out and get a nice mirror finish on the metal. The seam is completely invisible on the exterior surface of the ring, but there is a faint trace on the inside. You can see, too, how the letters got wider in the centers from the curvature of the ring. I am fairly pleased that I set out trying to create a size 9.5 ring and that’s exactly what I ended up with :) Boyfriend was very impressed and has been wearing it since. I need to get some liver of sulfer to darken the letter imprints so that the text is more visible. (in case it isn’t immediately obvious, the ring is sitting on a sheet of glass in the photo thus the reflection. I didn’t expect the reflection to be quite so… realistic(?) when i took the photo!)
Over the weekend, Mom left me the pearls I’d made her a few birthdays ago to repair a damaged part, and since I’d never gotten a proper shot of it before, I thought I’d post a few photos. Its sterling silver and freshwater pearls, with smokey grey Swarovski crystal accents. I think this was the first necklace I made her, and its one of only two projects that I’ve used sterling silver tigertail wire for. It was fun to work with, though keeping even tension in each segment of pearls was the most challenging part. I think its a pretty update to the classic pearl look.
