It's FINISHED!!!!

The goal of this piece was to take a piece of jewelry from a magazine or photo and get inspired by it- copy it to a certain extent. This was what I found-

 

I opened the wings, splaying them out more. I also added on an entirely original section to the necklace. The marquis (almond) shaped stone is a labradorite which I received from our program director as a raffle prize from random stuff they brought back with them from the Tuscon, AZ gigantic gem show. Last February. I knew I saved the stone for a reason. The little round stone is a carnelian. I actually had it as a tiny free-form that had been tumbled (made smooth and shiny). Took it to the lapidary wheel and cut it into a cabochon. Anyway, follows the sob story. If you don't feel like reading the long mess, scroll down for some more pictures of the piece. Also, click on the photos if you want to see in better detail.

Rather than carve the piece out of wax (since we didn't have cylinders big enough to make a plaster cast from) I had to fabricate this entire thing. The necklace is made of 3 sections. The center "eye", the almond shape, and then the wings with side "arms". I had worked out the wings just fine (cutting them out, detailing them). The almond shaped piece originally had a bezel. That soldered just fine as well.

Then, I think my first mistake came next. In order to be able to pave the wings I'd need to have thicker metal to work with, so I had to solder on another layer of silver sheet to part of the wings. Rather than doing this first, I assembled the wings together with the almond bezel piece. The "elbow" joint above the almond shape also was soldered together. Then came soldering onto the wings the extra sheet. This will come into play later.

I put the wings aside for the moment to work on the center "eye". I created a domed base thick enough to handle a ring of czs to be set with a bead and bright cut. This piece also originally had a bezel setting meant for the carnelian. I pre-cut all the seats for the stones, but setting wouldn't happen until soldering the "eye" to the main piece.

This is when I believe mistake number two happened. I soldered the eye piece to the wings. The bond held on well enough at the time. But again, having done this became a problem later on.

I then paved the wings successfully, no issues. I went to set the czs into the eye piece. One joint broke, so I decided to just remove it entirely and work on it separately. To attach it back to the main piece, I decided to use the laser welder rather than solder with a regular torch flame. It's best to do so anyway because the czs can only take so much torch heat before they start to look frosty. I tried and failed, so I got my teacher to do it for me. The problem with the laser welder is sometimes the beam gets reflected and bounced around, which if it hits just right can explode or melt a cz. A cz did in fact get melted so I had to replace it.

While inspecting the piece I noticed that the bezel wire for the almond piece no longer appeared to be fully soldered to its base along one side. So, I tried to use the laser welder with some soldering wire to close the crack up. I ended up blowing a hole through the metal, which wasn't so bad because I could still salvage it and do something like a half bezel. I fixed the issue and then went to set the labradorite. I started to fold the bezel over and it separated from the base on the side I thought was fine, but clearly was not. I think what happened is when I had to solder on the extra sheet of metal for the wings, everything else got so heated up that the solder holding the bezel wire to the base "fused" into the metal of the base. That seam was no longer fully soldered.

I got pissed off so I just ripped the bezel wire off entirely. I started creating a new one when my teacher gave me an alternative method. He had me drill holes into the base to insert wire through. While hole drilling, I broke a seam holding the eye to the wing, so once again I removed it entirely. Unfortunately from the pressure of drilling not only did that happen, but the "elbow" joint above the almond shape broke as well. And, I could see that the almond shaped base had started to crack at the seam holding it to the main piece. Back to the laser welder to fix those issues. Next I inserted wire into the holes. The wire coming out the back side was balled up and then I pulled the wire from the front as tightly as possible. Used a ton of easy solder to fix the wire in place. I then had prongs. Hooray. I filed the prongs into little claws and set the labradorite successfully.

I then had to reattach the eye to the main body of the piece, using the laser welder once again. I believe I blew up another cz, which then had to be replaced. I went to go set the carnelian, and lo and behold, the bezel wire cracked at its seam and also started separating from its base. I believe this was a result from mistake number two. I should never have tried soldering the eye to the main piece with the torch. Ever. That extra heat, again, I think fused the solder into the base and no longer really held the bezel. I tore off the bezel and decided to go a similar route as the almond shape. Drill holes and insert wire for prongs. In two places where I drilled holes the czs popped out so I reset them. Then came the same process as before in fixing the wire into the holes. The third hole that didn't need a resetting of a cz did need it after soldering the wire into place. I know this part just happened today, but I think I remember that those two places I had needed to reset just from drilling the hole, again needed resetting after soldering the wire in. Filed the wires into claws.

Next was tackling the laser welder once again to attach the eye to the main body. I did so, and blew up another cz. AWESOME. Reset the cz. FINALLY set the carnelian. Attached the chain with some jump-rings to the wingtips. Jump-rings were also laser welded. Good God it's done.

I absolutely hated how long this took, how many fuckups I made. It's gotten to the point that there are scratches in the metal in certain places and things aren't perfectly polished, and I don't fucking care. I refuse to work on this thing for at least another year. Again, I'm going to see the flaws no matter what. BUT I tried it on, and it looks fucking awesome! Seeing it in the mirror and staring at it on myself for a minute already started to lift the weight of how hard this project was, and how I felt it shouldn't have been. I do like my little claw prongs in the end better than the original bezel set idea. I just wish it didn't have to come around in such an aggravating fashion. Meh.

Here are some more views of the piece:

Close-up of the wing. I used a diamond bur (like the one on the right) to texture the webbing in the wings. I ran the bur half the web in one direction and half the web in the other. When the light hits it, you get that split effect.

The carnelian "eye". Forgot to mention that I had cut out a small circle in the base. It's a little hard to tell here, but when placed on something dark, it looks like a pupil within the stone.

The labradorite. Check out the little claw prongs.

A close-up of the texture in the "arms". Used a ball bur for the effect.