Jewelry making

I love opals! You do beautiful work. Do you actually bend and shape the wire for the jewlry?
Do you only do silver?

That takes a lot of talent to come up with all the different designs.
Isn’t silver pretty maliable? How do you secure the stones inside the pendant?
I used to buy opals off of Ebay. Got some pretty good deals.

How do you polish them? There’s generally a vein of mineral of some sort in them isn’t there? Do you cut them and shape them yourself?

hah! I have a chainmail rig a friend made for me (he’s been making chainmail for years and now sells it), but I haven’t had a chance to be able to sit down and actually do much with it as of yet 🙁 It’s set up to make about 5 different gauges.

I’ve made 1 necklace with connemara marble and a few other beads, but I need to add the pendant. I have a moonstone shaped like a tear (found it in a tumbled stone bucket at an occult/fantasy store when I was traveling… it totally called to me) and I need to add some sort of wire network around it so I can make a pendant out of it. I’m thinking of naming the stone. I’d like to fiddle with it more, but I need a bit more free time than I have at the moment and to get some needed projects out of the way.

The wire work looks wonderful! I’m a labradorite nut too.

I’ve done some jewerly making, a couple of courses and some stuff on my own but don’t do alot cause really I have no space to set up a propper shop and dad gets mad when i use his work shop cause there are bound to be bits everywhere. I’ve worked with silver, brass and copper and even learned how to set gems. You’re a brave person for dealing with opals, they are probably the worst to set. Copper is by far the softest metal to work with even though it tarnishes really fast. there are some laquers that you can put on it to stop that but i’ve never tried. Silver is next (though expensive) the wire is easiest but the sheet you have to aneal (heat up) to work with. Brass relitively cheap but is a pain in the @$$, you have to repeatedly aneal it to work with it.

look forward to seeing more of your work!

Those look great!! You have done a wonderful job! I am jewelry maker when I have free time & shows to sell at. I usually take the winter off. I’ve been dying to try the square wire! Your prices are great too!