New Sterling Silver Stamped Studs
New Sterling Silver Stamped Studs
Feeling creative and I'm in the zone, I feel it's time to up my metal smithing jewellery making game, and move onto working with sterling silver sheet!
Working with sterling silver sheet is a game chnager as it costs considerably more than copper sheet, so I tend to be more conserative in terms of how much I am willing to waster.
It also makes you become a little more creative in how you can recycle the offcuts for other design projects!
One of the things that surprised me while I was sawing out square and triangle geometric shapes for some studs was how easy it was to work with compared to copper sheet.
My first pair of sterling silver studs was going to be a bar stamped domed design, but I was not happy with the impression, and reversed it before doming and give it a matte finish:
Granted this was not my original idea, which I started creating these sterling silver studs, but I have to say I do love how they have come out!
If at first you dont succeed try try try again, is my mantra at this point.
This time with a slightly bigger sterling silver stud I line up the stamp and whack it with mt 2lb mallet, again the imprint is uneven, so have to carefully line up the stamp, and give it a couple more whacks.
Again I am not that impressed with the out come, maybe my expectations with regards to this stamp have been set too high, but I kind of dig the effect I have created, and with a bit of doming and polishing:
At this point I have given up on the bar stamp as it does not seem to create the effect that I am after, and I turn my attention to the small swirl to see what this creates.
Metal pieces all lined up, a couple of whacks later, with a bit of doming and soldering I create the following babies:
It's at this point my creative mind goes off on a tangent, and remembers the punches I brought over Christmas, and thinks what random organic designs I can create freehand on a pair of rectangular studs.
Obviously the intelligent thing would be to meticulously measure every thing to ensure that they match right?
Well As when it comes to most of my designs organised chaos is the best way to describe my design process, or maybe just go with intuition and gut feelings!
With a couple of punches this is what I create:
The next question for me is oxidise or not to oxidise, as this will make the stamping really standout, but I quite like the subtlety of leaving the natural metal.
The stamping means that this method allows me to stamp my own identity literally on my designs, making them truly unique, with a little bit of flair.
These will be available to by on the website from the 31st July 2020, with or without oxidation.
Joolz xx
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