New Works In Progress

Thought I'd share some progress photos from the new jewelry series I'm working on...the finished pieces may or may not resemble these photos at all! It's a very experimental series for me and I'm having a blast working out the process. [caption id="attachment_758" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="In Progress Pendant"][/caption] This first one (above) is closest to being finished. It is made from fine silver, which is 99.9% pure silver. [caption id="attachment_759" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Another In Progress Pendant"][/caption] The next one (above) is a combination of argentium and fine silver. Interesting things happen when fusing metals with different melting points, I discovered. [caption id="attachment_760" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Not sure what this one will be"][/caption] The third piece is fine silver, fused a bit more than the first one. I'll be adding more metal and probably some pearls to this piece. [caption id="attachment_761" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Not sure this is even usable, but I like the texture"][/caption] And the last one, fine silver and argentium silver. It looks kind of cool, but as you can see, I didn't do much shaping with it, and that's because I'm not sure I can. In experimenting with fusing two different types of silver, the results aren't as predictable as when I use all argentium or all fine silver. In this case, some areas became hollow (and I think I even have a geeky explanation for why it happened, but that's a whole other long post) and the resulting shell is very fragile. Hopefully I'll have time to work on this series more in the next week or so, and I'll post any pieces that I'm happy with.