Foldform Copper Heart Earrings - My First Attempt!

                                          

I'm slowly teaching myself some more basic metalwork techniques. I love making wirework jewellery and torch enamelling but I think I'm at my happiest when I'm hammering bits of metal and playing with my torch!

I recently bought a new metalwork jewellery book - Mixed Metal Mania by Kim St. Jean. It's a very good book with an informative tool section and easy to follow instructions and covers some basic techniques including soldering, riveting, forging, foldforming and reticulating. Her jewellery style is quite rustic - something I find hard to do being a bit of a shiny neat freak but I'm sure I'll learn to "let go" eventually! 

                                                             

I've seen foldforming before and did have a quick go at it a while ago but the copper sheet I had was too thick and I also tried to do it without annealing the metal (stoopid!) so talk about making life difficult!
The book has several projects which use foldforming including a brass foldformed heart pendant which inspired my copper heart earrings. I already had the copper heart blanks - sent to me by mistake from beaducation.com when I ordered flower blanks (!) but as they are 24g they are perfect for foldforming.

I started off by annealing the hearts to soften the copper then after quenching and drying folded them diagonally and hammered the fold flat. After annealing again I used an old kitchen knife to open up the hearts then flattened them using a mallet. After pickling to remove the firescale and a bit of a scrub with wire wool I used a center punch to add some texture to the fold then added a bit of detail ( I like my little details!)with a couple of fine silver ball rivets. This is something else I've just worked out how to do - use a nail punch with a concave end to support the silver balls as you hammer the rivets on the other side. You need something to hold the nail punch upright - I use one of the holes in the block my dapping punches live in. The nail punch is actually stuck in there now from the hammering but at least I'll know where it is!

I finished and photographed another foldform pair of earrings yesterday. The discs had been sat on my table waiting for inspiration and it finally came in the form of antique copper flower beadcaps and pale green chrysotine rondels. Now I know how to rivet beads and things onto metal there will be no stopping me. These are still quite shiny shiny so I'd better get working on my rustic side!

A Recent Commission & A Thank You Note

I very rarely make necklaces, preferring to focus on earrings and the odd bracelet, but recently a buyer contacted me to ask if I would make a necklace to match the stamped copper and green pearl earrings she bought for her Mum a couple of weeks ago. Of course I said yes!

She gave me pretty specific instructions for the design which was great and does make life easier. It was basically to match the design of the earrings with a copper chain. The pure copper chain I already had was a bit thick so I offered to order a finer one (most likely from the States) but in the end we decided to use some antique copper chain that I could order from a UK site (still took a week to get here though!)

I was a bit worried that the chain would be too dark but when I sent the photos to the buyer she said her Mum loved it so I went ahead and listed it in my Folksy shop.

Here are the original earrings the buyer bought for her Mum 

Yesterday I received a sweet thank you note from the buyer's Mum saying how much she liked her necklace and that she though my jewellery was gorgeous! I thought it was so nice of her to take the time to send me a note. She also wanted to know how much the pair of earrings on the business card I sent with the necklace were then promptly got her daughter to buy them for her as well!

All in all yesterday was a good day!



Wire Artists Gallery On The Wireworkers Guild Blog

Author of the Wireworkers Guild blog Linda Jones, wirework jewellery maker, magazine contributor and author of several jewellery books, has posted a gallery of photos of wirework jewellery made by the guild members on her blog.

It features a selection of necklaces like the one pictured on the left by Sally Pitman, bracelets, earrings, rings and tiaras. It's lovely to see the variety of wirework styles out there and also nice to see a pair of my copper earrings included too!

Sue Mason-Burns

Wendy McClean

My copper and turquoise jasper earrings now happily residing in Londonderry with Colleen of Folksy shop Clover Jewels