One woman's adventures in the land of hand made jewellery

Friday 3 June 2011

A Small Disaster Averted

It's been a while since I made any earrings at all but recently when working on an as yet unfinished silver clay project I had a scrap of rolled out clay left. Having impressed it with a swirly texture I hand cut two tiny squares and pierced each piece of damp clay close to one corner.

Once dry the result was a bit of a disaster. Sadly I realised that the texture was somewhat marred by my pawprints! The two disappointing squares sat on my workbench accusing and challenging me everytime I sat down to work for several weeks. Silver clay is expensive and I really felt I'd wasted these particular pieces. Then inspiration struck, I could cover up the fingerprints with more clay...

Holding both dangles together I sanded their edges to ensure both pieces were a similar shape and size. Next I brushed the fronts with a little thin paste to dampen them before using a syringe to add some random squiggles to each. Once dry, torch fired and brushed, a little burnishing picked out the top layers of squiggles so they gleam when worn.

There was another small hiccup when I realised that the hole on one of the resulting dangles wasn't quite large enough all the way through for a jump ring. Twenty minutes patient work with a needle file and a beadreamer and this was soon rectified. So all in all my beginner mistakes were overcome, lessons were learnt and a potential disaster averted. And as a bonus I now have a shiney new pair of earrings to wear! I just need to practise my photography...

4 comments:

  1. They look beautiful! You must be so patient to make jewellery as detailed as that! :O) Kay x

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  2. Thx Kay... one of the nice things about working with silver clay is you can buy preloaded syringes and then its just like cake icing!

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  3. Wow, Fantastic Blog, it’s so helpful to me, and your blog is very good, I’ve learned a lot from your blog here, Keep on going, my friend; I will keep an eye on it,

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