Some New Copper Earrings And A Sale

One of my New Year things was to start using up my rather large collection of cabs, including some cab shaped pearl beads I've had for years. So I made a start with these copper earrings.

I rolled the copper through my rolling mill with a textured card to give it a lovely swirly pattern and combined the copper with pale pink pearl beads and a fine silver ball. The balls were a total pig to solder on as they kept wriggling around and refusing to solder on the flat side. I have no idea why they were doing this but after a bit of a battle I did get them soldered down in the end!

The second pair I made used part of some really lovely sterling silver bracelet toggle fasteners. I remember buying these on ebay several years ago after ebay sent me a voucher. I can't remember why they sent me a voucher other than I was a seller on there at the time. Anyway I bought the flower toggle fasteners as I used to make strung bracelets at the time but never used them all so when I had a tidy up last week I thought they were too pretty to ignore.

I cut the connecting ring off them and soldered them to textured copper then pierced out the copper sheet in the centre and trimmed the copper around the outside to echo the flower shape, added a hanging loop and earwires and oxidized. I think they're a bit unusual looking and I'm liking the negative space thing going on!

If you visit my Etsy shop today you'll see I'm having a 10% off sale! That's on everything including findings. Use the coupon code "ooh lovely" to get 10% off anything you buy from 6 January to the 6 February.

I enjoyed a bit of a break over Christmas but am now back to it with jewellery and findings orders again! I'm hoping to get some time to make more new pieces in the next couple of weeks including heart - themed pieces for Valentines.
Till next time....... ♥

Contrasting Textures - Copper And Silver Earrings

One thing that has always caught my eye when I look at metalwork jewellery is contrast and layers. That difference in texture between patterned and smooth and also the depth added by layers and overlaying.

I recently tried etching sterling silver firstly using copper nitrate and a battery. It worked but the results were unpredictable. By that I mean some pieces etched well within an hour and the next batch were hardly touched after 4 hours. A bit frustrating and not reliable enough for someone who isn't the world's most patient soul! So I decided to try ferric nitrate which is a bit more "hardcore" than the previous method and one I'd been hoping to avoid.

The sterling silver etched well with the ferric nitrate. I used vinyl/plastic stickers you can find in craft stores and left it for about 2.5 hours. The stickers worked well and the etch was really clean and quite deep.

 These earrings were hard to photograph because of their shiny shiny nature but the etched design shows up well. I soldered the etched piece to a plain piece to highlight the contrast in pattern and smoothness.

A copper and silver combination. I'm starting to feel a bit more confident when I solder as I try different things and work out how to get over those little problems they don't tell you about in the jewellery books. Positioning a piece so it won't move when you solder on loops and earwires for example. Fellow jewellery makers also help a lot (thanks for the tips Tania!)

These were made using the silver I etched using the copper nitrate and battery method and a rubber stamp design. I added the wavy edged smooth silver at the bottom as a contrast. I really like that look so will no doubt do it again!

A pair of little sterling studs with etched and smooth silver.

Copper "shields" with etched silver. Getting to know how much solder to use to attach the silver pieces to the copper is a challenge - too much and it can spread over the copper and cause a lot of cleaning up work (ask me how I know that). 

Ah well, it's all part of the learning process as they say!