Today I made two pairs of spiral earrings, one larger, one smaller, with differing results.
As I (still) don't have any thick fine silver sheet, I made my own in the rolling mill by melting fine silver scraps and rolling them out.
I textured the base of both pairs with a scribe, fused the frames on, added jump rings of course, and cleaned them well with a glass brush and ultrasonic cleaner.
I was going to use different colours, but ended up deciding to use the same ones because I want to get these right. Eventually.
I adjusted the design by doing a loose spiral, and having it start at the bottom. I used thin cloisonne wires not the thicker wires I used on the last pair. Not sure why as I prefer the thicker wire...
It all worked beautifully on the first pair - but disaster struck as the first colour I used went cloudy after the second firing. There are two reasons this might have happened.
- I used recycled fine silver, and there may have been some solder or other impurity in the metal that reacted with the enamel.
- Using Blue Gum glue to stick on the cloisonne wires. Although I doubt that as it would have affected all the colours, not just the pale blue I think...
What I should have done, and I just thought of it now, was to put some fine silver foil over the cloudy mess and it would have fixed it. What I DID do was continue as normal adding layers of the bad colour, thinking it may just sort it self out in the kiln. It didn't.
One day I might grind out that horrible mess and try and fix them, but here they are. Very nice apart from that bad colour right in the middle.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFqz0vaHyuyEkChbTrvMqzn6_makf7yROxmC3qeEA6er1Kn-yypg36JYfkVVZGX1YyaoRAIGVvj4_oL28aC7DcWWMeumDL76Rt9QtsQXJNkMP9reqr-bwqXT6OI41yoyatf9Ai86QwoGrC/w320-h193/Spirals_Pair3.jpg) |
Pair #3
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I was very careful not to use that colour on the second, smaller pair.
I also enamelled and fired both earrings at the same time to save time and to make them a bit more similar to each other. All in all they worked out much better, my only complaint is that the colours are layed out a bit wrong - the pale blue is very similar in tone to the silver so the spiral is not very visible, and I should have thought about that.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi42txCduCQAH-VF3TZfI5vNjZkmHtJj8AX7imO4TXcyIhVok-hE8JrGyPEQzCpOQQwbq7ySFRN6HhbpRzPyM8Ex1ASA6R9Y2LxP6FsPzMC5KgFlaS_qsttwM772OMz3o1QhdvvxkFzedAZ/s320/Spirals_Pair4.jpg) |
Pair #4 |
Note to self - grind down the edges before enamelling in future!!!
(I did them after and things got a bit uneven.)
Here are all of this series so far, and a work in progress shot of one of the third pair, before the disaster.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdRm1ScYCjqoIjxWV7TgklbfalG3wlcs1Mvl3z2ZwmS30F6MqM5QFTBmbFf-Xk-Mx341s7fyWLCO-DkgdyeyZCjElajBxkXvVtLM063-LxsH_c3vXaSjEYUjEdQ0kS8nmIVjKNvJI976wT/w206-h400/allsofar.jpg) |
Many hours of work! |
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5hOTqkFEQRz53Q3ylrCxL7t6GAv7R7Xq-nXVeg2gnA6e9AAUzPNczwaxOLiGiDZVHLGqJ6-Hyh0GUEKomlWwygur6TOpJ73JVEtXD9XJ9TBRTGejd-vkfJ1VSIPgG9SLo0nbd_5m60L4x/s320/Pair3inprogress.jpg) |
If only that lovely middle colour hadn't spoilt...
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