I ordered some different shaped sized amber cabochons from one of my gemstone suppliers, this was a bit of a pot luck as to what I was going to receive, but when they arrived I was not sure what to make with them, so I asked my followers on Instagram.

Sometimes I get some crazy ideas, when it comes to ordering cabochons, and in this instance one of my suppliers was offering 5 pieces of amber for £12.

The problem is that it is completely pot luck what you receive!

All I knew was that they would be between 12mm and 20mm in size!

When they arrived in the post a few days later, I was both excited and apprehensive, and when I opened the package these babies were inside:
 

I guess I was lucky, as at least I had two sets of cabochons that could be classed as a pair, so I could always resort to my usual go to earrings and/or studs.

But I had so many design ideas and options, that I decided to ask my followers on Instagram, what I should make with them.

A fellow handmade jewellery maker/designer suggested cufflinks, now I must admit, that design idea never even crossed my mind, but I am partial to wearing cufflinks in my other life, so I thought why not?

I was really excited by the challenge and set about thinking, measuring and sketching the design, baseing it loosely on a pair of cufflinks that I already owned:
 
As I wanted a more contemporary feel to these cufflinks I quite liked the idea of a geometric shape for the cabochon to sit on and played around with the idea of square and triangles, before eventually settling for a square background.  Initially I like the idea of having the amber cabochons sitting in the middle, but then started playing around with other placement ideas.

While I was deciding I made the bezel walls using 3mm sterling silver bezel strips:
Before checking that they fitted, which luckily for me they did like a glove.

The next thing I needed to create was the links for the cufflinks.  I quite liked the idea of having oval links rather than round ones to make the chain, and so used my smallest oval mandrel to create them.

Next I needed some small round jumprings for the back of the cufflink and the cufflink bar.

The final part was to create a simple bar for the end of the cufflinks, I wanted these to be substantial, so had to order some 2mm sterling silver wire so this stoppped the making process in it's tracks for a couple of days, the bit that will go through the button hole securing the cufflinks and the sleeves of the shirt or blouse.

I have never been so excited to see the postman, as I was waiting for a key component of my cufflinks to arrive the sterling silver that would form cufflink bar, and as soon as it did it was up to my now cleaned and tidied attic jewellery studio to finish making the rest of the components of these handmade sterling silver cufflinks.

With all my sterling silver components created I could see clearly how I was going to construct these handmade sterling silver bezel set Amber cufflinks:
 
However I soon found that these oval links were a little too big for the cufflink design, and instead created round chain links in a bigger size.

It is now time to face my soldering demons, and make some design decisions, I quite like the idea of having the amber cabochon sitting at 45 degrees on the cufflink to give it some interest:
 
Then it's the painstaking task are making sure that the bezel sits tightly on the back plate to ensure a successful solder, before flipping it over to solder on the connector for the chain.  I build up the rest of the cufflink, by soldering all the components together to create the cufflink:
 

The final piece looks a bit scummy, is that a word?, anyway I digress, and it's time to repeat the whole process again to make a pair.

Once finished both cufflinks are popped into the pickle to clean up all the excess flux:
 
It's then a buff to clean up all the scratches and a polish, before I set about setting the amber cabochons within the bezel setting using a bezel pusher.

Here's the final handmade sterling silver bezel set Amber cufflinks in all thier glory!

 
I have to say that I am really chuffed and pleased by these handmade beauties,they look gorgeous, elegant and stylish, but clearly I'm biased, so what do you think?

I would really love to hear your thoughts, so post something in the comments below:

Until next time

Joolz xxx

4 Comments

September 15, 2020

Name*

Email*

Message*

IJNHZM

Submit