Following my new passion for motto paintings, I have transferred the idea to my other passion, jewelry making. I went to a silversmith’s workshop today and worked on a project which has been lurking in my head for a while now.
I took my very first self-made piece of jewelry, an ugly pendant sawn and hammered from sheet silver, and sacrificed it to make a new pendant. I sawed off all the ugly parts until only a strip of silver was left. As a nice side effect, the strip has my name hammered in at the back, so I could probably wear it both sides.
I polished the strip of silver, filed away the rough edges. Then, I took “lettering tools” (I don’t know the name of it in English; in German, it would be “Einschlagbuchstaben”) and hammered my word of the day into the silver surface: HEUREUSE (French for “happy”).
Finally, I soldered two eyes on it. I upcycled those from two silver chain links, leftovers from a bracelet. I opened the chain links with pliers and slid the silver strip into the opening, then soldered the eyes to the strip to fix it in this position. The eyes are wide enough to thread in an anchor chain.
I had a little argument with my silversmithing coach (a master goldsmith making fantastic unique jewelry for a living and renting out her work space and tools and expertise to amateur silversmiths like me) because she wanted to talk me into a small and elegant setup for the pendant, i.e. to solder in as small as possible eyes invisibly to the back of the silver strip. But I did this my way: I used big eyes on purpose in order to let the chain run through them visibly.
And you know what? I love it this way. Je suis heureuse 🙂
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