So, yesterday I re-made the leaf ring that I had made previously but melted. I also made another leaf ring of a different style, a small pounded ring for Kayla, and two pendants. The small leaf ring you see above didn't take all that long because I knew exactly what I was doing with it. Surprisingly the solder seam was perfectly aligned so I didn't melt the ring again. The other leaf ring I made is for Daniela's mom for Mother's Day. It is pretty simple as you can see, just a leaf that wraps around your finger. With both of these rings I got to learn two new skills. 1) I learned how to use a bur to engrave the surface of the silver, 2) I got to learn how to oxidize silver so that the engraved parts look black and stand out more.


The small pounded ring looks like the bigger one I had already made, except that it is a pinky ring. There really isn't much to this ring since all I had to do was mill out some wire, flatten it, solder it, and then pound it with a rounded hammer. So it was simple really.

The two pendants I really like. The one with the flat pearl I had started making on Tuesday. As I already told you I wanted to make a twisted rope ring but instead ended up making a pendant because the piece was too small. Anyway I soldered the ends together, which was very hard since I had six pieces of wire to solder together, and connected the penny pearl to it on the inside.


The other pendant is a three part piece. The symbols are peace, love, and peace/love/harmony. Confusing I know, but the bird stands for all three of those I guess. So I simply melted some silver, milled it flat, drew my designs on the surface, then saw them out. Then I connected them to this chain and there you have a cute little necklace.

Yesterday I spent a large portion of the day drawing out wire for some braided rings. It took me about an hour to finish drawing out the wire today. So, with about six feet of wire I made four braided rings. However, after looking at them together on the finger, I decided I did not like them and made two of them into earrings instead. With the remaining wire that I had after making the rings I made a double wire braided strand and made two rings out of it. These I really like because they look sort of celtic and not so much like a braid. I like the braided earrings, but they are very very flimsy, which is kind of a drag. All in all, though, I am proud of these creations.



After making these I set out to make a rope ring. This would consist of about six wires being twisted together and then soldered. I twisted the remaining wire I had, but it wasn't long enough. So, I decided to make a pendant out of it with a penny pearl center. Since the piece was sort of an afterthought I didn't put too much effort into making it pretty, but it looks okay.

After all of these twisted and braided wire pieces I started on a ring for a friend. It had leaves stacked on top of each other, sort of like grain. I hand sawed the whole thing out, then used a bur to etch leaf patterns on the surface. After about two hours of this I had the ring all ready to go to solder. However, when I was soldering it...the entire piece melted into a pile of useless junk. It happened because the solder leeched onto the surface of the silver and instantly heated it to its melting point. Since silver is so conductive the heat spread rapidly and the whole thing was ruined before I knew it. Now I have to re-start the ring entirely!

This first picture is of an African Turquoise pendant. This was fairly simple to make. All it took was some grinding down of the stone, some fitting, some soldering, some filing, some polishing, and there you have a pendant. I didn't run into any problems, which seems to be happening more since I have more experience. This is the first pendant I have made though because they are sort of boring to make.



Then we have this ring. This took me all day! I twisted the swirls out of silver wire then had to shape them perfectly to the ring. Since I was to solder them onto the ring they had to be completely flush, which wasn't easy since the surface is rounded. So, eventually I got them on there and finished the ring. But, I am not so sure I like how it is now. I might alter it tomorrow if I feel like it.

On Thursday I started a celtic swirly ring. I milled out a piece of silver that I had melted down and drew my design out on it with sharpie. I then spent the rest of the day sawing out the design by hand. On Friday I soldered it together and polished it. I like this ring because it is very art nouveau. However, it is also very fragile, due to the thin parts that were sawed out.



The other ring I made took me only part of one day. I made five simple bands and soldered them together. I then made a bezel for a penny pearl that I had already ground down. I soldered the bezel to a back plate, then sawed it out, and soldered it onto the five rings. I put the pearl in and pushed the bezel edge over.

The only problem that I encountered with this ring was that the solder seam on the bezel was not good enough, so when I tried to solder the ends together the solder did not flow down the crack, and instead leeched onto the surface of the silver and melted the ends enough so that the bezel was too small. So I had to remake the bezel, but it wasn't hard since I have had so much practice at it.

Now, I have two more days at Barry's then I move onto the photography portion of my project. However, I have completely run out of things to make since I have made everything I originally designed in my sketch book. Now I am scrambling to come up with some designs that I can get done in two days!