Bike Heart Pendant

January 10, 2012 in I made this

Made this for a customer, I really liked the way it came out. Copper, and silver.

Ambidextrous Bike Heart Pendant

November 26, 2011 in I made this

Made this for a customer, copper, with silver jump rings, just like other heart pendants I have made but with jump rings on both sides as per the customers request. I really like the way the patina turned out.

Bike Heart Pendant Photos

June 22, 2011 in I made this

Copper (with a silver jump ring), for a customer.

Bike Heart Pendant Process

June 22, 2011 in I made this

I had a request from another customer to make some more bike heart pendants. These are fun to make but take a while due to all the piercing and sawing. They are not complicated, just involved, so I thought it might be fun to take some process photos and share how they are made.

Start by prepping and cleaning the copper, then I apply the printed design to the copper with rubber cement.

I am making two of them...

Then plan out where you are going to drill all your holes, I do this by hand with a little manual drill (I find power drills to be a little hard to control sometimes when I want to drill into really tight areas). You can do this with a punch and a strike plate first if you are having trouble keeping the drill bit from jumping around.

lots of holes.

Then the fun part, cut out all the tiny pieces.

notice it is still kind of rough around the edges, no sanding has been done yet.

Then I sand, file, and finish the copper with some liver of sulfur.

I use a slightly thicker gauge copper for the pendants than for the earrings, mostly for strength, and also because it gives it more dimension.

Flower Pendant

December 7, 2010 in I made this

This was a failed attempt at making a pendant with a tropical flower, and a little silver bee. It just never did what I wanted it to do. But it was an interesting experiment. I wouldn’t use shellac again for this sort of application.

Silver And Shell Pendant

July 22, 2010 in I made this

The silver wire took a long time to wrap delicately around the “bones” of the pendant, with special care spend on spacing and making sure each one is well adjusted. The shell had been weathered to a fine polish which really looks good when combined with the silver. I am happy how this came out as it was my first attempt at anything like this. I will be making more of these in the future. It is also nice because I really like to pick things up off the ground and put them in my pocket and I have a bucket of little nick nacks that I need to do something with.