Good afternoon Steem crew!
This was quite an ambitious design for me. I've been looking at lots of really complex 'heady' wire wrap designs online lately and finally felt confident enough to give it a go myself. The green stone I used is a Chrysocolla cab although I believe it also has some Malachite and possibly turquoise in there.
I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I only finished it today though, I find looking at a piece a few days later with fresh eyes is better for critiquing it so we'll see how I feel then!
I've included more steps with this one for those of you interested in the process.
The process
To begin with, I drew a very rough design. I was being lazy and couldn't be bothered to find a pencil and paper at the time so I had to make do with the back of shopping list and a sharpie.
With this particular design, I wanted the quartz to be held at either end so that when you hold the finished pendant up to the light you're able to see through it.
Honestly, this piece was mainly made up as I went along. The basic shape came from the sketch but I just went freestyle after the first few wires were laid down.
I laid down a heavy gauge base wire to get the vague outline of the piece and to begin a setting for the stones.
Next stage is securing the piece of quartz. It's really hard to juggle the wrapping and holding the stones in place at the same time so I wanted to get this out the way early.
The thin wrap I've used to attach it is just temporary till I've built up something better looking and more secure.
A good way to fill out a larger piece like this is with wire coils. I'll do a post on how I make these using my new (very basic) DIY jig, they're satisfying to make! I get comments about how complex they look but in reality its just a couple of different techniques combined.
Adding spirals to fill the gaps and build the structure.
Nearing the finish line at this point. Most of the wire added at this stage is to fill the little gaps or to cover up kinks or bits I messed up earlier! I also cut away the fine binding wire at the top of the quartz as by this stage the stone is nice and secure from the surrounding wires.
A few copper balls and tucking of the loose ends finish this piece. Apologies for the dark photo here, this was very late last night, had to finish it as I was on a roll!
Finished Pendant
Here are some quality shots of the final pendant.
The see-through quartz section came out good, I want to do this design again but with a higher quality stone in future to really show it off.
Previous Post - https://steemit.com/slothicorn/@robali123/labradorite-and-copper-pendant-how-to-weekly-contest-by-robali123
