Now to say that my tutor was a sadist, maybe a little unkind, as when he presented me with a shell to set onto an aluminium back, I thought he had misunderstood/misheard that I wanted to learn to gem set.

But his logic, was that I could set something as small and fragile as this shell, under his tutoridge, then everything else is plain sailing.....

These was challenging to say the least espically as I had not practice pierce sawing from my last session, that little titbit I kept to myself, and just sawed the prongs in the shape and hoped for the best.
 

30 minutes later I with a bit of manuipulation of the prongs, I was able to set the shell within the prong setting securely, with only one casualty.

One of the things I could not get the hang of from the previous session, was to create balls at the end of metal wires.  I knew it was possible, but could not recreate them in my studio, so the next project was to create a prong setting with wire, finished with balls, for a ring.

This project had many design challenges, namely as we were getting into the territory of soldering.

I have watched numerous jewellery soldering videos on You-tube, giving conflicting advice, so I was excited and apprehensive at the same time.

Before we could get on with it, the tutor did the theory behind successful soldering, as the 4 year old in me was thinking can't we just do it already?????

I create the design, which I think will hold the gemstone in place, but am advised to add more, as if the frame is too big, it can be made smaller.

The balls on each end of the wires are created and soldered to create a cross.

A band of copper is used to create a ring for my little finger and soldered to the cross, before the gemstone is added, and my fears that the frame to too big is realised....