Another few hours of learning - I decided to make a pair of earrings from a tutorial by Sandra MeEwen.
It was so I could learn her techniques without worrying about design - I pretty much just followed her sample.
A pair of simple round cloisonne spirals, in blue and green.
I tried fusing fine silver for the first time, using some fusing solution made from Copper Acetate and Klyr Fire (instructions on YouTube). First attempt went wrong as I forgot you are meant to do the fusing from below, but the second time (after re-making the components I had melted) it worked just fine.
In the tutorial the earrings were made with holes for the ear wires. I decided to make things difficult for myself and soldered on jump rings. This made the grinding much trickier, and eventually brought about the demise of one of the earrings.
Anyway - it all went quite well and I was especially happy learning Sandra's finishing techniques, which will be very useful.
My main mistake though was that I used silver that was too thin, so when I ground down the excess enamel and wires, the remaining enamel was very thin. She used 0.8 mm sheet, I only had 0.5 mm.
The first earring came out reasonably ok apart from being too thin.
The second earring was ok until the jump ring fell off, and I tried to solder it back on. That made most of the enamel turn black...
Lovely. Not.
The other lesson I learned was that I need to use gum to stick the cloisonne wires in place before putting in the kiln, as they moved out of place when I set them down. I did a 'creative workaround' with the design (on the second, doomed earring) but that shouldn't have happend.
I might try again, this time with the correct thickness of silver, and see if I get a better result.
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| The better one on the left |
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| Close-up of the better sample |
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| Close-up of the doomed sample |
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