Sunday, January 27, 2013

Laika pendant - making of | Go to post ➜

Hello ♥

Here are some process shots of the pendant I made this weekend, Laika -

The making-of went surprisingly easy, I had no sketch or plan, just trying to learn new things with each new piece I make. So this piece was made to learn how to do the flattened curved metal pieces at the side. (Stupidly enough, it first occurred to me to cut them out of sheet, which was a huge waste of time.) And also, to work on my bezel setting skills. I am bad at it, it is hard to make the rims for non-circular stones, and they are always somehow a little loose after setting.

I've actually been picking out stones from my collection which aren't the most impressive, because I feel like I'm still practising and not very good yet. The one used in this piece was a slightly lopsided oval, chipped on one end - both flaws that can be hidden with a bezel. Labradorites with this colour flash somehow don't have one "stunning" angle where the flash is strong, instead it has little clouds of colour all over the stone from every angle, and is infuriatingly hard to photograph. In bright natural light, it looks almost translucent dark grey and there is very little colour.. but indoors at my workbench (as you can see in the pics above) it has an almost black colour with flashes of bright blue. A mysterious look and lovely colour, I've been looking all over for smaller accent stones that match this brilliant blue and finally found some pretty cat's eye stones that came close enough :)

The one thing I'm annoyed by now that it's done is the fact that the cat's eye on the piece itself has a diagonal flash, while the ones on the endpiece both have a horizontal flash. I don't even know why I'm so annoyed. Maybe because I really like symmetry and so having just a small anomaly like that frustrates me. Should have checked the stone instead of just picking the first one off the strand! =/ That, and it's also diagonal in the opposite direction of the inclusions in the main stone. OTL

(It's really obvious, I can't un-see it after noticing.)

But I'm still happy with how it turned out, and finally got some copper chain so I could finish the whole necklace, clasp and all. Although making the endpiece isn't half as fun as making the pendant, but when the whole thing is complete it does look much lovelier.. Here's another clasp I made for the piece in the previous post:

With the little matching stone at the end it really seems more complete :)

♥Jasmyn

Labels: handmade, labradorite, making of, sodacrush, wire wrapped

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