Making Wee Flower Earrings

Hi, Steemians!

This week I have been struggling to get much done at the bench. @mstafford's mom and my mom both have birthdays in the coming 2 weeks and we wanted to give them handmade jewellery for gifts. Especially Mark's mom as it's the big 60 for her this year. My mom's is first so I'm working on hers right now. She's a hard lady to buy for-- she has everything already and if she wants something new, she just goes out and buys it. Thoughtful gifts that will make her smile are the best way to go. My struggle with the jewellery has been deciding on a design, and then figuring out how to do it.

I don't know how I arrived at the idea to make little flower earrings but here we are. In my head initially I pictured little flowers oxidized to black with brass centres. Follow along if you want to see the process and where I ended up:

First, I cut a couple of circles out of sterling silver using my disc cutter, which is essentially a hole punch for jewellers:

Then, using my triangular needle (teeny) file, I started carving notches around the outside of the circle. As these got deeper, I used my saw and flat file to shape the petals.

At this point, I decided it was the right time to solder the little brass inside onto the main piece. I later realized that I should have waited until closer to the end. I'll explain why in a bit.

looks nice, yeah?

Then I used my super-cool dapping block to give the little flower a concave shape.

After a bit of sanding, I soldered the earring post onto the back.

It was at this point that I realized I should have waited to solder on the brass center. You see, when I reapplied heat to solder on the post, I re-melted the solder that was holding in the brass bit. The molten solder crept out from under the brass and enveloped it, making a mess.

Sooo.. yay! I learned something!

I re-applied a new brass center over the old one and it looked much better. After that, all I had to do was polish... and then make a second one to match, of course. I learned from my mistakes and the second one went much quicker.

Here they are!

Of course I had to try them on... for science!

These were so fun to make! They are by no means perfect, but they came together with relative ease, which is a win for me considering how I struggle with soldering. I learned a thing or two about sweat-soldering (melting solder into one spot first, then re-melting with a delicate piece on top to fuse). Best of all, I think my mum will really like them.

Now, onto the next project! Thanks for following along!

Peace & Love

-Caitycat