Silver Pendant

In December we had a course of jewelry making. We had to design a silver or bronze jewelry; a pendant, a ring or a pair of ear rings. I designed a silver pendant with a little stone.

As I love flowers very much, I wanted a pendant with flower shape or at least something that resembles a flower. At first, I needed to saw flower petals and a round piece out of silver plate. After that, I bent the petals a bit, to make them seem a little more realistic and interesting.

In my drawing, there was a flower reaching for the moon. At this point, I wasn't sure what kind of stone would be ideal for playing that role, so I had to try a couple of options. A topaz shape of an octagon was really beautiful but a bit too extravigant for this jewelry, so I decided to use a very pretty iolite (cordierite), that looks like the kind of moon I would stare at for hours.

After soldering the petals, I joined them with the pendant ring and soldered tiny little stigmas out of silver thread in the middle of the flower. It was really challenging, but when I finally, after a few errors succeeded, it felt like a real victory. Then it was time to make a little "nest" for the iolite, and that was at least as difficult as making the stigmas.

After soldering all the silver details, I put the pendant (without the iolite) in a kettle with lemon acid and let it swim there for a few minutes until the boiling point. Then it was time to clean the pendant and set the iolite into its nest. 

The polishing was time consuming and more difficult than I had thought. Since the petals were convex, it made the polishing hard and I also had to be careful not to bend and break the stigmas. 

Making this pendant was wonderful! It was exciting and challenging and even nerve wrecking  from time to time, but I enjoyed the whole process. And, although the final result was not 100 percent perfect, I find myself content and happy!