Lanhua Pendant - Making of

Hello ♥

I try my best to blog about what I make BEFORE posting them on DA, it helps to clear my mind. And to distract me from the fact that I really should be working on the slowly growing pile of schoolwork that's being neglected. Anyway, this is the latest piece made, Lanhua:

It's a name chosen by my mother, it's a chinese name for flowers like orchids. And here are the working shots -

Somehow, things always get complicated when I try to plan. The original frame didn't work out so I changed it, and halfway through I decided to use a teardrop stone instead. (More painful bezel setting practice, huehue. It's such a failure.) I think I might buy bezel wire soon. Rolling it out from round wire, it's hard to get straight and even and thin bezels.

This piece was made to learn how to do the swirl designs, my mother calls them 'tadpole ends'. And it was inspired by lanterns. Chinese New Year is coming, there are lots and lots of lovely lanterns all over the place with cute little tassels below ♥ But in my dorm lobby there are giant pineapples instead OTL. Anyway. I get so excited looking at the decorations, putting up lanterns and peonies in my house ♥ And then I found a string of rutilated quartz I bought a long time ago, the black slashes against white stone remind me of calligraphy and ink paintings. (I wanted to use a rutilated/dendritic quartz or carnelian for the focal stone, but I don't have either so it's back to clearing the labradorite stash.) I think it would have looked nice with a red stone, red is a lucky colour for this time of the year~

And also, I'm trying to make neater open back bezels and frames-

I think I did quite well on this :) Doesn't hurt that the stone has lovely flash behind! I'm really happy with the swirls and the tassel, I think they look really pretty, so I want to make more pieces like this. If only the darn chains weren't so hard to photograph! And, wondering about how it would look in silver -

Blue stones really do look much brighter in silver. Copper is warm and lovely, but silver is so ethereal ♥. (The problem is, I don't want to indulge in making silver things unless I'm going to to sell them because I spend too much money. But I don't want to sell them because they are too precious. But I want to buy silver.) I think probably I will hoard them for a little while yet, before opening shop.

♥ Jasmyn