New Works In Progress
Posted by Leah on Oct 8, 2008
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.
In Progress Pendant
This first one (above) is closest to being finished. It is made from fine silver, which is 99.9% pure silver.
Another In Progress Pendant
The next one (above) is a combination of argentium and fine silver. Interesting things happen when fusing metals with different melting points, I discovered.
Not sure what this one will be
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.
Not sure this is even usable, but I like the texture
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.
Sculpting with Fire
Posted by Leah on Jul 3, 2008
One of my favorite techniques, which I hadn’t played with in a while, is using a torch to sculpt fine silver into interesting, organic sculptures. I used the torch a little bit making my Random Knot earrings recently, and it gave me the idea to make some fire-sculpted earrings.
The result is this pair. The earwires are argentium silver, and the dangles are fine silver. I started with wire, loosely sculpted it by hand, then used the torch to melt and drip the metal. I love this effect - it is unpredictable, so it’s always kind of a rush to try making something, knowing that if I keep the torch on it for a second too long I could end up with a silver puddle instead of an interesting sculpted piece.
