Year Of Jewelry Challenge: Week 6

The theme for the Year of Jewelry Challenge, Week 6 was “Amoré”.

This piece was commissioned by a fellow pinstriper/artist from Ireland. He really like the Tree of Life pendants I had been posting, and wanted one for his wife. And he said his wife really liked jade. Since the only jade I had on hand & in order to get this done in time, I chose to go with a frame style to an older tree of life:

Like this, but I changed it to where the bail was a part of the frame, rather than a loose ring.







This is the result:

I also went with the tree style I had learned from my working with Ellen Thurmond of Ethora last year. I really love her style of tree. Changed it up a little, but I still give her credit for the tree design itself.

Year Of Jewelry Challenge: Week 5

The theme for the Year of Jewelry Challenge, Week 5 was “Down & Dirty”. This tied in perfectly with the chasing & repoussé I had been learning thanks to the guest instructor in my jewelry class. Since the method we were learning involved putting the metal in a bowl of pitch, and the methods used to extract the metal from the pitch and the involved cleanup were all very messy, I figured it couldn’t get much messier than that.

Session 1 consisted of a bit of repoussé:

Session 2 was a bit more repoussé, then flipping it over for some chasing:

Session 3 was the final class, and I had a couple more passes with the chasing before I had to remove it from the pitch and clean it up:

For the final session I brought in my plastic human skull model to give me a better idea of the depth and planes while I was hammering. Made things a bit easier to think out.

I have to say, I LOVE this technique, and can’t wait to have the opportunity to play with it again.

Year Of Jewelry Challenge: Week 4

Week 4 of the Year of Jewelry Challenge was “Wild & Wicked”. As it has been “Wild & Crazy” in my life with the crazy book project I have been working on, this piece was in progress at the Week 4 deadline, and still is. I finally have a bit of breathing room to post it.

I'm on a “dual purpose pendant” kick of late, so this is yet another version. Another thing that I am obsessed with would be skulls.

Copper background, rich low brass skull (which looks a lot more like gold, and a lot less of the green ‘brassiness’ of regular brass) and nickel silver. Still need to etch the details into the skull, and do some texturing on the copper before riveting it all together.

The sketch behind the piece. ©2011 Phoenyx Arts, of course. :)