Thursday, November 01, 2007

Custom Orders

"Star Of David"
for Laurie

This one was a real bugger to get right. The star is made from a thin sheet of sterling silver. It took me five tries to get the star right. The first 4 were made by trying to cut out the star with tiny metal scissors/snips. The points were very hard to keep straight. Finally, I pulled out the jewelry saw. Since the star is so tiny - the entire pendant is about the size of a penny - it was rather tedious to hold the silver sheet and saw the shape, while keeping all my fingers intact. But it worked. This is by far the nicest one.

It was then fused between 2 sheets of glass, one burgundy and one clear. The heat or something caused the silver to discolor a bit. It's almost as if it tarnished, which is quite possible. Prior to fusing, the silver was quite shiny due to the polishing I had done.

So the entire process was quite laborious. I'm certainly going to have to charge more on any future ones that include silver. But for a friend, I gave her a break. I also figure that it was a great learning experience for me - enclosing silver within the glass.

The pendant goes out in the mail today. I hope she likes it.