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NorthStarCherry — First Silver Pendant
Published: 2012-06-07 15:55:12 +0000 UTC; Views: 1713; Favourites: 70; Downloads: 0
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Description
This is the first silver piece of Jewellery I've ever made
It's a small fine silver (99.9% silver) pendant with a lace pattern and a beautiful 4mm Violet cubic zirconia crystal on a 16" sterling silver box chain
I know it's simple but for my first piece I'm really pleased with it and I now wear it all the time
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Comments: 35
Late comment.. ;w;
This is wonderful!! And it is just your first piece of silver you've ever made??? This is seriously amazing!!
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Thank you!
and yes it's my first ever one! I can't wait to make more though!
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It is beautiful and very original, like every other signle thing you sculpture
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I really want to try the metal clays for jewelry. It's one of the things I've been thinking about.
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I'd say go for it!
It's really expensive though if you're going to buy everything on your own! I'd say to try out a class first or try out the copper clay before trying out silver
If you've used ceramic clay though then you'll find it quite easy to use as the materials pretty much feel the same
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Nice! What kind of techniques did you use? You've set the gem beautifully, and you even managed to get it square as far as I can see and it looks like it's tight as well! Are you sure it's the first time you've done this?
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Thank you! 
It's made with something called silver clay 
This was the first time I've ever used it and my first ever attempt at stone setting as well 
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So it was silver clay... I have to say it's very delicate then, the only things I've seen made with silver clay have been very clumsy and your isn't. How thin is it? and ain't that kind of silver very soft? I mean, sterling silver gets scratches and such pretty easy, and how easy won't that get it then? o.O
How did you do when you setted the stone anyway? I've tried plenty of times and it looks like crap pretty much every time...
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It's about 1mm thick and it's actually very strong...I think you might be thinking of pure gold instead as pure gold is so soft you can shape it with your hands..whereas silver is much harder it also means it doesn't scratch as much
I've never seen particularly bad scratches on sterling silver..usually only very fine ones after they've been worn a fair bit and even those look fine if it's cleaned up a bit
I've worn this pendant quite a bit now and so far it hasn't got a single scratch on it
To set the stone I made a small blob where I wanted the stone to be using a silver paste syringe and then using tweezers placed the point of the stone into it and slowly pushed it in
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Okay, but 1mm is good
No no, I'm thinking on silver! I know pure gold is waaay softer, but silver is pretty soft too,
but if you compare 925 silver and 18K gold (swedish standard) with each other gold is harder
Maybe it's because I've been in goldsmith-school for five years I react on even tiny scratches
I hated polishing in the beginning XD
I see, so that's why it got so nice and even. Maybe I should try out silver clay... seems funny
But can CZs take so much heat? Or doesn't it get so hot? Is there any shrinkage?
Lol, I feel I'm asking quite many questions 
talk different techniques, especially with people from elsewhere
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yea 1mm is a good thickness for smaller pieces
I can't afford to work in gold
I hate scratches too
Ah I love polishing! It's one of the best bits seeing your piece turn nice and shiny
CZ's can withstand the temperature fine as that's how they're made in the first place
The only problem with some cz's is that the temperature can change the colours...it mostly seems to happen with blue only and certain greens...a lot of blue ones turn red/orange so if you wanted blue stones you'd have to buy lab created sapphire or corundum which are more expensive, but for pretty much all the other colours they're fine
I'm not sure if you mean the stones or the clay shrinking..but the stones don't shrink (you have to let them cool naturally though otherwise they'll crack)
The clay I used shrinks about 8-10%
I don't mind the questions
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Yeah gold is so expensive, the only times I've worked with gold
have been when I'm out on practice in real workshops with real reparations
Haha, well it's good you love polishing, I've just stopped hating it
Yeah I know but diamonds are formed in volcanic eruptions pretty much,
but they can still burn (talk about expensive bbq-coal!) so even if
they are created by melting the different substances together, it won't
guarantee their "survival".
Yeah Colour-changes are common, especially when you buy the stones.
Almost all natural gems on the market (up to 95% if I don't recall wrong)
are in some way treated. It can be heated to change the colour (the most common
and easiest way), filled with glas (ruby-classic), oil-filled (almost all
smaragds) and so on. CZ might be synthetic gems, but the "rules" still apply to them.
(If you get an opportunity to read gemmology and try out testing them,
I really recommend doing it, it's super fun and interesting!)
Yes I was referring to the clay, I would be rather worried if the stone suddenly shrank xD
I see, about the same amount as when casting (the way I know how to do).
Great
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A lot of natural gemstones can't be fired with the clay because they will have tiny imperfections in them which causes them to crack or explode so if you're firing a stone with the clay then they always use lab created ones
I've got to order some CZ samples when I start the jewellery properly and test those out! But it's going to be pretty expensive!
I've only done a little bit of casting and that was with pewter and it completely failed
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Yeah that's a good thing with synthetic gems - they are usually somewhat free from inclusions and cracks, and they will be cheaper then real gems to
Yeah CZ are good "newbie-gems", they are pretty hard, cheaper then most gems, and rather easy to get hold of. I tried to set a synt. spinel once, but they only have hardness 8 compared to CZ 9, and I ended up cracking it a bit. All the CZ had survived (but the settings weren't pretty XP) but that little spinel didn't make it. It is stuck, but has a crack
I've never tried pewter actually. We'll, maybe once. When I was a kid I got the opportunity to cast with handmelted metal, but I don't know what metal it was
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Ah I wouldn't call them newbie gems as such.. a lot of pros use them too because of the price and the fact that they can look just as nice
I recently just bought two big 10mm CZ's in a gorgeous colour changing violet colour
You can also get them custom made and cut to whatever shape size and colour you want too so that's pretty awesome
I haven't tried out any spinel yet but I was going to buy some blue ones to replace the blue CZ's that change colour
so it's useful to know their hardness is not as high
Unfortunately my college doesn't have the money for pro tools! We only have a small amount of equipment which limits what we can do..we also can't afford gold or silver so if we want to use that we have to buy it ourselves!
That's why I like the silver clay..it seems expensive but you can actually make quite a lot from it and you reuse every part of it! You can take the dust from sanding and turn it into silver paste to use on something else
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I know, I just meant that they are the best gems for newbies to start with 
Ooooo, I wanna see!! Colour changing gems are cool
You can get any gem costom-cut, it just might be extra-expensive 
I hope you can find blue CZ, but spinels are pretty good too
The schools I've been in have been specific goldsmith-schools, so we made pretty much everything in silver, but we did got bills on all material we wanted too keep, the rest was sent to melting (I think they had some special contracts so It got a little bit cheaper to melt it down). We could buy gold and use if we wanted to, but I never did that, I like silver
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haha yea I get your point
I love amethyst!
I also prefer silver to gold
There's only one jewellery specific school near me and I can't afford to travel there yet alone actually get a place there! Everything here costs too much
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Oh really? Mine birthstone is ruby
I've actually never heard the story behind the name of amethysts...
Yeah custom cut ones are really expensive, but mine was on sale, I paid 10€ but if I don't recall wrong the original price was 37€.. That's a sale in mine taste xD Although, my wallet still cried.
Oh right, you're from Britain, aren't you? Don't you pretty much pay tuition-fees and stuff there or am I mixin' things up?
How expensive are things there in general? What would like a hammer or something cost?
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10€ from 37 is very good indeed
Ah well in ancient greek 'amethystos' means 'to not get drunk' and the greeks and romans wore it as thought it protected them from getting drunk
The story behind it is that the god Dionysus had been insulted by a mortal and in his anger he decided that the next mortal he saw would suffer his wrath by having tigers rip them apart. The next mortal he saw was a young woman called Amethystos who was on her way to pray to Artemis. To save the young woman from Dionysus, Artemis turned her into a pillar of stone. This made Dionysus angry and he threw his wine over the stone which stained it purple
Yea but fees are about £9000 per year and you'd have to pay for your own silver and stuff on top of that! Then the travel is a good £150 a month as well
Texture hammers cost about £30 to £40 each here
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It's about 12x8mm, so it's fairly big
Haha, I don't drink either. I also think it taste terrible XD
Cool story!
That's one thing I like with swedish schools - they are free. Sure, we might have to pay our own materials and books and lunch and so on when we studying at a higher level, but the courses itself are in general free.
They are that expensive there?! 
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Thank you!
Happy Birthday for tomorrow btw!
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Very nice! I've been trying to talk myself into making more jewelery lately cause I just bought a bunch of new clothes. lol
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Thank you!
This was my practice piece with Silver before setting up my own shop
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