I was really pleased with the design of these earrings. I used quite a fetching piece of crackle pottery and shaped it into a drop, and decided I liked it upside down.
The problem happened when I oxidised the piece - the pottery shard absorbed some of the oxidising solution, and turned grey! I tried to rescue the second piece of pottery by removing it from the bezel before oxidising - and broke it :-(
I need to find a way of sealing the cut edges of the shards before I set them, so that it doesn't happen again.
So I have ended up with earrings which I will have to fix - but grinding a piece of pottery to fill a ready made setting is quite tricky, and I don't have enough of that nice crackle shard for two new cabochons...
They would have been nice though!
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| Here you can see the cab turning grey round the edges where it absorbed the oxidising solution |
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| This is the only piece of that crackle pottery I have left, not enough for two earrings! |
Such a shame! I've had similar accidents when I've tried to cram too much in. That's a lovely design, and they will eventually be lovely earrings!
ReplyDeleteJust happened across your blog today, love it! I too collect sea glass and pottery shards along the coast of Maine, USA, where I live. What if you tried sealing the pieces of pottery, at least the sides and back with a 2 part epoxy resin (I use Susan Lenart Kazmer's ICE Resin, it's a wonderful jewelers' grade resin), and the top with a matte decoupage medium, if you don't want it to be shiny like the resin? I had filled a couple of silver bezels with small pieces of pottery shards, sea glass & shells; unfortunately, the color from the pottery shards bled - next time I'll seal with either resin or decoupage medium first.
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