Cinnamon Jewellery

I recently finished my first hollow form pendant with a bezel set cabochon and actually remembered to take photos this time (!) so I thought I would share how I did it. I decided to make a fairly small round shaped pendant and set an 8mm turquoise cabochon onto the front. I started by forming the frame or wall of the pendant and made the bezel at the same time. After soldering I shaped the frame on a ring mandrel to round it up. I then cut a small piece of sterling sheet for the back piece so it was about 3mm bigger than the frame all round. I flattened and sanded the sheet so there was good contact between the frame and sheet. Using steel t pins pushed into a fibreboard soldering block I secured the frame to the base so there was good contact all round. You could use binding wire instead of t pins or as it was a small sized piece just pushing down with a soldering pick probably would have worked ok. I just like to have a hand free when I'm soldering if possible ju...

I recently finished my first sterling silver hollow form pendant. In my last post I said how much I love the look of hollow form pieces - the 3D solidness of them despite being hollow. Anyway I still love them after making my first version in silver! I didn't take any photos this time but I promise to do so next time when I'm planning to make another one with a bezel set cab on the front. I used 24g/0.5mm sheet that I etched using nail varnish as the resist to create a dot pattern. I used a small brush for the nail varnish and managed to get it all over my fingers (course I did). I discovered you get a neater, rounder dot (which is so important to me because I'm slightly weird!) if you load the brush so it's almost but not quite dripping, hence the messy fingers. I bought some 5mm 24g/0.5mm strip from Cookson Gold for the frame or walls of the hollow form which is a bit extravagant I suppose as I could cut it myself but it just makes it a bit quicker to do. I fou...

I finished my first "proper" copper hollow form pendant last week. I say proper as I'd made 1.5 practice pendants beforehand to get the feel of doing them. The half was my first attempt and it went ok up to the point where I pierced out the hole in the centre after soldering the first piece of sheet to the frames. After piercing out the hole I then for some reason started to pierce out the rest of it which would have left me with basically the frames again (!) I did realize my mistake quite quickly............. My second attempt went much better apart from quite a few gaps in the solder seam on both sides despite soldering one side FOUR times! Resoldering one area to fill the gap caused some other areas of solder to reflow and the solder to run off completely leaving even more gaps! I quickly decided I needed something to hold the frames and flat sheet together so the join was tighter and ordered some T pins...........  First attempt....... looks ok-ish from thi...

I wanted to do a bit more bezel setting to improve how long it takes me to do. I am getting quicker at it, really! I sometimes "waste" time cleaning/ filing/sanding bezels up then change my mind about what I'm going to do with them and realize I will have to sand them again after another lot of soldering. Oh well :D I thought I'd try decorating one of the bezels by stamping. I wasn't sure if it would work as the bezel wire is pretty thin at 0.3mm so I stamped fairly lightly. I didn't want to risk stamping too heavily and the bezel splitting and I also left a gap where the join was going to be. I think it worked ok with these simple turquoise cabochon earrings . I stamped in the gap I'd left after soldering but not directly over the solder join. I think the stamped effect looks "right" with the turquoise. I'm currently practicing making hollow form pendants in copper and will move onto silver in the next couple of days. I love t...