An Experiment

I just finished a necklace for a customer who previously bought a pendant--she wanted a shorter necklace in the same materials she could wear layered with the longer pendant. She asked if there could perhaps be a detachable pendant on it so she could also wear it alone. Here is the original pendant she bought:

I looked through my stash of stuff and just didn't have a commercial pendant that was going to work. I really wanted to do another flower, because the original pendant had a flower. I thought the flower should be in copper though. So I fished out my jeweler's saw and cut out my first flower shape. This had been on my to-do list--in fact, I had already drawn some flowers on my copper sheet, intending to (one day) cut them out and do something with them. I wanted to pin a bunch of them in different sizes to one of my metal bases like I've been doing. But instead my first one became a little pendant.


Here's what I eventually came up with:

I hung a little copper flower charm along with the pendant, just for fun. I LOVE these little flower charms (got them from Magpie Gemstones) but they were too small to use alone. I antiqued it a little and tumbled it to make it match the rest of the copper. For the pendant portion, after I cut out my flower shape and cleaned up the edges with my Dremel and some fine sandpaper, I marked the striations with a sharp wood chisel. After antiquing and tumbling it, I domed it a little and then bent the petals back a little. I had previously flattened out some commercial beadcaps (in a previous spontaneous experiment--"Hmm, I wonder if..."), so I pinned one to the center of my pendant. I attached the whole thing with a ball headpin to a snake-shaped copper base that had a loop at the top. The flower spins freely. I attached the pendant and the charm via a couple little jump rings to one of my toggle bars, so it could be attached to the center of the three connector rings and removed at will. I added some copper chain to the pearl portions so it would be weighted evenly. Et voila!

I think I'm over my trepidation about cutting out flowers. I cut circles around them first as close as I could with a pair of left curve metal shears and that saved a lot of work. (If you're left-handed you can do it with right curve metal shears--they come both ways). I also prefer the shears for plain circles, rather than sawing. I have to clean up the edges with a Dremel, but I'd rather Dremel than saw. It's a power tool thing. But I've not used the shears on anything heavier than 20 gauge sheet--probably wouldn't work very well on 18 gauge.

So that's what I did this weekend. I've been dragging myself around for the past month, sick as a dog, and finally got some antibiotics. I think I'm getting better, so back to the grindstone.