Silver Cups

Many years ago I went to 5 day beach parties for new years several years in a row.  During that time I started a tradition of making a new shot cup for the party. I have continued, over the years, to be interested in making silver cups. However not just for new years any more.  Sometimes for special occasions or gifts or just for the fun of it because I had an idea I wanted to exicute
Top left is the New Year Chaser.  This one was probably the most elaborate and complicated to make. It is a champagne cup on one end and a shot cup on the other. The double ended ball suspended in the middle "drops" when the cup is turned over, almost touching the point of the bottom cup but swinging clear.
On the right of the New Years Chaser is the Conch Cup.  Sea shells an sea life have always fascinated me (as you can tell by my website) This one is self explanatory but again, some tricky solder joins.  On of the most difficult things cannot even be seen in this shot.  The feet are tiny silver spirals that had to be soldered on near the end. Let's just say it's hard to solder something small to something big. 

 The Tornado cup and the Bubble cup are some of the early designs.  The tornado cup has gold balls swirling around the out side. This one proved to be difficult because it's one long piece of wire and that is one long solder joint to go top to bottom without any gaps or leaks and then soldering on the gold balls without re-flowing the whole thing was a challenge too. The "bubble" cup on the right was one of the first ones from the "beach party series".  I liked the idea of it looking like there is no bottom yet it holds a full once.  

The bubble cup on the left was done for the 4th of July. Again using the drilled out metal as a decorative design element.  I have used this technique on several jewelry pieces over the years.  On the right is a wedding cup done for a friend. They wanted lots of texture.  I like the little feet on this one

 This pair of shot cups are titled Scars and Strips
I used a course rasp file to get the texture on the out side and soldered on the copper and silver stripes cut from long strips of this material I made years ago for earrings and bracelet. That in it self is a good blog post.  Its a pretty involved process of soldering and rolling. These 2 were done for the fun of it but have been sold.

I used this "box making" technique to go a step further and make a tea ball.  I wrote a blog post on that one here.
 I don't have any of these on my Etsy store or website but if your interested in on just comment here or contact me  through the website 

Beach Pebble Jewelry

Today I started culling through one of my bags of beach pebbles to look for something that I could use for a repair job. The customer had lost one of her post earrings with dangle beach pebbles. I was trying to find a pebble to match the remaining earring, but didn't have any luck. I did find one small basalt pebble thick enough to cut down the middle to make a bookmatched pair. That's when the repair job turned into a custom job. I used a cut off disk to grind through the pebble and slice it down the middle.

Here is the finished pair.

I really enjoyed working with beach pebbles again. I don't get to do this as often as I would like. I have a stock pile of ocean tumbled pebbles from nearly clear quartz to black basalt, and every color in between. I've collected these pebbles from my travels along the East coast from Long Island to Florida. Contact me if you have any interest in beach pebble jewelry. I'm willing to work with any pebbles you have or we can sift through my collection to find the right match for your style. 

Check my website for samples of previous work involving beach pebbles. I've made a quartz heart shaped ring and a beach pebble crashing waves pendant. 

Building a setting

This project started out with a customer bringing me a Marquise shaped Stone. and a sketch.The stone was a shape and size then I couldn't buy a setting for so I decided to make one

I used a soft fire brick as my soldering pad and this allowed me to push the wire prongs into the pad and hold them in place in little notches I filed to hold them

After those were soldered I pulled it out of the brick and soldered on the bottom frame.  Unfortunately I don't have a picture of that, but you can see it in the next picture sitting on the solder pad. At this point I still have the prongs sticking down so I pressed them back into the fire brick to allighn it for the next solder joint.

I forged out the wings and added them to the setting.

At this point I pre finished the entire piece before setting the stone so I could get to the hard to reach places and not worry about the stone.

 The finished piece.  This was a custom made piece so it's not available for purchase.

Approaching storm cup Process

This was a custom cup done as a gift from my customer to a friend as a wedding cup.  Unfortunately I couldn't get the video to work.

I start out by using card stock to figure out the size and shape of the cup to get a template

Once it is transferred to the  silver I cut the rough shape out and start to texture it with hammers.

 After hammering, the metal becomes work hardened and must be annealed to soften it up for forming and more texturing

 I used 2 or 3 different hammers to get the texture I wanted

 It took several annealings to get all the texturing done.  The idea was go from intense texture on one end to subtle or no texture on the other and fade and grade as the cup turns.

 Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of soldering the cup into a cone and applying the bottom

The finished cup holds about 2 oz.  good for use as a shot cup or a sake cup. 

Lariat project

This project was designed for a customer. He came to me with the idea for a lariat with a rounded triangle at the top and a stone at the other end of the chain. We worked together ,back and forth, to come up with the final design. Some of my students want to try something like this so I'm showing the steps. If there are questions, leave them as comments or as email

The first steps in this piece are not shown.  I used square cross section wire and used a file to make notches and bends where the corners are.  Then I could solder the corners without having to line then up. Only one join needed lining up.  I also soldered a 16 ga ring on the bottom of the bezel cup to allow for more soldering area . It gave me a place to put the edge of the frame. notice the chunk of pad holding up the frame while I solder it in possiton.

Holding it in a 3rd hand tool resting on the solder pad to steady the position.  (white paper for photo only, obviously, you can't have paper on the solder bench) 

I filed a small flat spot on top of the frame to give the top ring a place to attach. The ring itself is flattened on the bottom.  Easy solder is pre flowed on the ring.  Heat is appied to the frame and the ring brought in as the frame reaches temp.

For some reason the program wont let me write below the above picture.  The picture shows how I hold the jump ring that attaches the top ring to the chain for soldering.  The finished piece with a sardonix bead and set moonstone

Fun Class

I got to teach a private workshop on soldering and stone setting to another teacher and artists, Deryn Mentock of Something Sublime.  We did the workshop in the studio of another artist and mutual friend.  It was fun and we all learned alot.  Deryn made a great silver ring with 2 bezel set cabs.  Great job Deryn!