I’ve been working away on a new range of button pendants. When I say range, so far I’ve made a prototype and one actual pendant, but there will be more on the way soon. I wanted to adapt the processes I’ve learnt to make my small silver button earrings and adapt them to my ideas for pendants.
As the buttons are quite light, I thought it would be important to give some weight to each piece so that they hang well and with the button earrings I used 0.3mm sheet silver for the backs – I didn’t think this would be weighty enough, so I decided to make a round band from 2mm silver round wire instead. 1.5mm wire would be ideal, but I don’t have any of that in stock at the moment and being impatient, just went ahead and used 2mm!
Once soldered and formed into a perfect ring I hammered this flat, reheated and kept on hammering until I was happy with the thickness. I then created a bezel and soldered this onto the flattened ring. I wish I’d taken images throughout this process for reference, but also to illustrate this blog – I’ll do that for the next one I promise!
I then attached a couple of jump ring to this so that I could attach a chain. This is the prototype:
The photo’s aren’t great I’m afraid – shite light again! I’m really pleased with the piece as I feel I’m developing my skills and ideas and getting better at working with silver. This piece has a few flaws that I can learn from and as it’s not a piece I’m going to be selling, I think I’ll wear this at the craft fairs I’m going to be doing in November.
Here is the first pendant that I’ve made since the prototype and I’m chuffed to bits with it – I’ve used a really lovely engraved vintage mother of pearl button. I have a few of these, so going to make a few pendants exactly like this one soon.
