Behind the scenes! How I made this pendant.

Hi Steemians.

Today I want to show you some of the processes behind making a pendant. This isn't a tutorial as I don't think I'm very good at explaining myself for that but more of a little peek into how the finished pieces come into creation.

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So to begin with I started with some sketches. The last one is the one I settled on for this piece.

I picked out 3 stones for this piece originally but as I worked on it I dropped one of them and added a different one.

I wanted this pendant to include Quartz, Green Tourmaline and a raw Emerald. The Emerald ended up being dropped as its shape didn't fit the design.

So next I began creating a frame in heavy gauge wire, the benefit of having a to-scale sketch is this frame can be laid on top to get the shape exactly right. This technique is only really helpful at this early stage as once the piece becomes three dimensional you can't lay it over the sketch so well.

These early wires that define the shape were secured at the back permanently as it's important they don't move around during the rest of the wrap.

A super long coil I made, ready to be attached and shaped.

At this point, I'm still working on the 'skeleton' of the piece but already I've managed to secure the two important stones in their final positions leaving me free to focus on the aesthetics.

The coil on the right in this picture looks pretty standard but up close it actually changes from one wrap style to another, it's something I hadn't tried before but needs a bit more practice to get perfect.

The last few photos were me trying to cover up the Quartz and Tourmaline wrapped ends whilst keeping in with the original design.

Adding these copper beads was a good way to fill large empty spaces without building up too many wires unnecessarily.

I'm nearing finishing by this point. I've covered most of the structural and base wires so I thought I'd try out another recently learnt technique of stone setting using wire wrapping. I think the three copper beads at the top left work well as they break up all the rounded edges and give it that bio-mechanical feel.

The addition of these Jade beads was an experiment to begin with, I nearly got rid of them when I couldn't see them as anything other than eyes!

Instead of getting rid of them I just covered one up a bit so it's not so prominent in the final design.

This is pretty much finished here, I'm just tidying up all the loose ends on the back

This was just before the oxidisation process using liver of sulphur solution.

After oxidising I realised I wasn't happy with part of the design, you can guess which bit is added due to the gleaming copper!

And here's the finished pendant post oxidisation before being hand polished using wire wool and then a jewellers cloth.

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Some nice close-ups of the finished piece for you

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More photos!

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