inTheSilverRoom: Jen's Big Day Bangle..

Hello me hearties, more blog post catch up. Recently two lovely people, Karen http://www.cannymarshall.com/ and Claire bought a voucher from me for their very good friend Jen's big birthday, you don't need to know which one, I'll leave that up to your imagination. This is such a nice thing to do, and it happens a lot, friends/family club together to buy something special from me. A voucher leaves it to the recipient as to what exactly they want, a ready made piece of jewellery they have coveted for a while, a workshop to learn the process of jewellery making or to commission a piece of jewellery from me. Jen chose to commission me to make a very personal piece of jewellery. After visiting me in my workshop we designed a wonderful bangle between us, actually three bangles, two silver bangles with freely moving hoops depicting her daughters names and a copper bangle to contrast with the silver. I began with the copper...

Okay it doesn't look so pretty here, just you wait, all the bangles were to be textured, that and the solder join is achieved first.

Now for the silver, silver wire is forged down to the required thickness, textured and formed into a round bangle.

The all important names..... these are stamped onto flat forged wire, this takes some practise, I have my secret formula......

These are formed into a round and soldered, tiny little bangles on bangles.....

Now the hard bit - the perfectly round big silver bangles are cut in half down the original solder line to slot the name hoops on - after they are perfectly round themselves. It has to be done this way as once the hoops are on it is impossible to get the bangles perfectly round again....