Look what they made!

I realised today that, in my neglect of this poor blog, that I haven't yet shown you the beautiful pendants that my students made in the Stone Setting workshop a couple of weeks ago - so here they are!

None of the ladies had made bezel settings before, so the class really tested them - and they passed with flying colours! Lots of sawing, filing, hammering and very careful soldering followed finally by actually setting the stones. Most of the work and time goes into making the setting and the piece of jewellery that it is going on, and only the last half an hour or so of the class is usually spent on setting the stone itself. Actually I think that one of the most difficult parts of the class for the ladies who came was choosing the stone that they wanted to use as there were lots of beauties to choose from!

Kay used a lovely turquoise cabochon in her pendant, while Susie chose a Botswana agate with beautiful patterning and Lesley a labradorite. The way she's set it with the blacker parts running vertically make me think of the moon shining through the trees in a dark fairy tale forest! By the way, Kay and Lesley used the same hammer to texture their pendants. No two people ever create the same texture as everyone's stroke is different! I only had three ladies on the course in the end, as the other two who were booked on and coming together couldn't make it due to a broken ankle - Annie, if you're reading this I hope that you are healing well!

There is still time to sign up for the next workshop on Friday 8th November - the topic this time round is making chains. We'll start with lengths of sterling silver wire, coil it into a long coil, cut that into rings and eventually after soldering and hammering and sawing and some more soldering and adding beads to the mix if you wish we'll end up with beautiful chain bracelets! If you'd like to join us the full details are here.

P.S. Thank you very much for the emails and facebook messages and messages through Etsy I've had about closing the Daisychain Extra shop. It has been fun running it but the time is right to concentrate on my own jewellery and on more teaching!