Diploma in Fine Jewellery - Findings, Term 1, Week 9

Since I make a lot of cufflinks, I was looking forward to this week. There were three pieces to make: cufflinks, pearl earrings and a toggle clasp.

For the most part we had free reign on designs this week. So for te cufflinks I decided to use some of the left over reticulated silver I had fro the first weeks project, and tried my hand keum boo again as I like the way the gold looks against oxidized silver. The cufflinks backs were made using jump rings to form a small chain and soldered to a bar. Simple but effective, I think they came out nicely and I like the way the design matches the rings from week 1.

  

The pearl earrings were interesting, I’ve never worked with pearls before, so I was looking forward to learning how to work with them (and maybe give them as a gift to my mum!). For these though, it wasn’t just about creating the pearl cup and post, but they also wanted us to create the backs (or butterflies), something I probably will never do again! They’re fiddly and quite honestly the bought ones look much better!. I made the posts a little to long on these and I was running out off one to get everything ready to mail, so the polishing could have been better, but overall they looked great!

  

And finally the toggle clasp, again, quite a simple project, it just required some jump rings to be made and a bar and a larger ring. The bar needed to make sure it was the right size so it wasn’t too big that the ring couldn’t go through and not so small that the ring goes straight through it, it needed to be just right! I think I could have made the jump rings at either end of the bar straighter, but other than that, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

  


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