Friday, October 12, 2007

Turquoise and citrine

Do you remember those earrings I made a while back, made up of the turquoise stones that I've been saving for something special and fun? Well, the pendant I originally had in mind to pair them with didn't quite work out, so I had to go back to the drawing board.

I decided to try something a little different, and here is the result. The main bead is a lemon yellow citrine, coupled with a handmade sterling silver wire "sculpture". My jewelry teacher once taught me a technique where you hammer a wire sculpture much like this, flattening the wire. The results give a very polished, finished look to the sculpture. However, I don't have a chaser hammer or a bench block in my arsenal yet (those are totally next on my shopping list), so I used a regular old hammer and it didn't really work very well. Also, this is 22-gauge sterling silver wire, and the hammering technique works better if you use a different type of wire.

Still, I think it looks really fresh and different, and the wire sculpture turned out well even without the hammering technique.

What do you think?

5 comments:

Karmela said...

If you remove all those green stones and replace them with a complicated silver chain, then dangle the swirly loop with that white stone at the end, I'd buy it.

Hazel Designs said...

It's actually a yellow citrine, not white.

Mom2Amara said...

See I like the green stones and the wire. I'm a bit iffy on the yellow citrine - I think it might be too large since the green stones are a bit larger as well... But that's just me!

Hazel Designs said...

Hmmm...it sounds like I may need to re-work this one. What if I put a turquoise in place of the citrine? Would that work? Or just eliminate the loopy thing and do a simple choker.

And then I can use the citrine and the loopy thing for another necklace, doing some kind of metalwork, as suggested, for the strand.

Hmmm...possibilities...

Karmela said...

Nonono! I love the loopy thing! Get rid of everything else BUT the loopy thing and the stone dangling from it and replace it with a complicated chain!