Copper Flower Necklace & Earrings

I just finished making a necklace in copper. Copper is a lovely metal, soft and easy to work with, and it has a pretty, warm color. The affordability factor is also hard to beat!

I call this set Copper Flower Necklace and Earrings, and it's completely handcrafted.

I made the clasp, chain and little copper balls using wire wrapping techniques. The central motif of the copper flower I sawed from copper sheet metal.

After filing, sanding polishing and drilling, I added the flamework cobalt blue bead with a copper wire wrapped tendril. Don't you just love the mix of cobalt blue and copper?

The little horse in the picture is from Sweden. I inherited it from my Aunt, the lady who ran the original Dalkullan, which was an import store. I named my Etsy shop after her store.

Thanks for dropping by, and hope you have a great day! If you'd have any comments, I'd love to hear from you! :)

Fabricating Metal Earrings

I'm working on a new earring design, and it's one that I'm fabricating from sheet metal and wire.

The picture to the right is a piece of brass sheet metal, and you can see the holes where I've punched disks out. Using a disk cutter, I slide the sheet metal into it, strike a couple blows with a household hammer on the cutter, and out pops a lovely round metal disk. It's a lot easier and more accurate than the way I used to make circular metal disks, using a jeweler's saw.

Next I cut an addition hole out of the first disk, this one off-center. Then I hammer the metal with the ball end of a ball pein jeweler's hammer, to texture the metal. And finally I give the metal a rounded form, using a dapping block and punches.

A dapping block is a heavy piece of steel with hemispherical depressions tooled into it, and the corresponding punches are bars of metal with spherical steel ends that mate up with the holes in the dap. Using a dap makes it possible to evenly round a piece of metal.

The earring still needs to be filed and polished, and have an earwire attached.
I'm going to use a sterling earwire, and maybe a bronze colored freshwater pearl. As you can see, it's a work in progress, but I hope you've enjoyed getting a little glimpse into how I make jewelry.

Thanks so much for stopping by!