forged silver circles: pendants and rings

This week I've been concentrating on jewellery - more specifically, on silver smithing stuff.

Just in time for the Australian summer.



I'm a huge fan of the forged silver circle. It's such a feminine shape and fits so well with some rough or smooth pebbles. Look a little closer and you can see I've made the headpins for the beads. These look so much nicer than looped silver wire ends.

They're slightly kooky because I let the silver melt and form its own shape.

The chains are different lengths and thicknesses - chosen to suit the stones.

And on Wednesday we got our silver cast results back in our little community collage course.

A big 'wow'. The lace came out spectacular and who'd have thought star anise would be so cool - cast as is - without dipping in wax?

The gum leaves were a little disappointing - the thick coat of wax meant that the finer leafy details were lost so I've hammered these a little to thin them out a little more but also to strengthen the silver.




And finally got around to making stack ring sets. Does one bead add enough bling or should there be more?

My favourites are the rings - these carved wax and cast silver rings originally had little flowers on them - but they fell off before they were cast. Never mind, I thought these were pretty though him indoors said "Very impractical".