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