Pink Jade Ring and Pendant

I had to re-work a Pink Jade pendant into a pendant and a ring  - yes it sounds odd but it wasn't - the pendant had two stones in it.

The original pendant was almost in the shape of an inverted egg (fat side on the top with the big stone and pointy side with small stone at the bottom) I unfortunately, much to my chagrin didn't take a photo of the original pendant before chopping it up.

So, how I started off was to remove the small stone and chop off the bottom of the pendant and then make a ring with the small stone inserted into it.
Then I would move onto reworking the main part of the pendant with the large stone 

The ring was easy, but the stone while small in the circumference was quite a tall stone and not having any access to lapidary tools I could not take the height down a bit, but it still made for a nice unusual ring

Pink Jade Ring

Re-working the main pendant now proved to be a bit of an issue, the pendant had a twisted wire finish around the edge that I wanted to try and save, but trying to get the edge of the pendant nice and even and also replace the twisted wire all without damaging the stone was to prove to be an exercise in futility or stupidity - you pick.

As you will see in the photo below the twisted wire just did not look nice and the more I tried to correct it the worse it got, so a decision was made..... redo

Silver is melted and rolled, patterns drawn and glued to the metal in preperation

And a little while later out came a fresh new pendant, I didn't add the twisted wire as I thought it looked fresher, crisper and more modern just plain.

Pink Jade Pendant

Infinity Pendant

To say I've been lazy is an understatement, well maybe not only lazy but also a bit of makers block, now this is very similar to writers block but different in that writers don't know what to write, I on the other hand hand tons of ideas oozing from the primordial swamp that is my brain but couldn't bring my self to go down to my workshop and put fingers to metal.... okay okay so maybe laziness had a bit to do with it.

Well It has finally come to an end.... I Hope......

I also have to catch-up with my blog which has also stagnated since our trip to Singapore .... may this is the writers block of the whole issue.....

Which brings me to new pieces of jewellery made:

My cousin Andrew and his wife Val had a baby, well lets not get too far ahead of ourselves..... at the time of designing and making the forthcoming pendant they were due to have a baby ...... in February ........ but then as quoted from: 
“To a Mouse,” by Robert Burns - “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft  a-gley.” ..... but I digress a bit.

The baby was due in February a month that just so happens to be the birth month of Val, so the design went something like this:
Andrew wanted to give her an infinity sign pendant
With an Amethyst stone in it... February ...... birthstone......

And here is the first laughable attempt at drawing a design on a Samsung phone, neither of us it turns out is making any serious attempts to unseat Michelangelo or anyone's 3 year old child for that matter....

So I start seriously putting something together and I came up with a design incorporating to bars on one side of the infinity representing Val and Andrew, the Amethyst then represents the baby...... being born .... in February
And here comes the schemes the mice and the gods..... 

Infinity Pendant sans setting and stone

So work continues on the pendant, the stone is 3mm by 4mm pear shaped - really really tiny and I am not a setter, but as it is with bumblebees  who can fly........

("Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn't know it so it goes on flying anyway."-Mary Kay Ash)

Start of the setting with stone

Rough setting before neatening up

I made a small setting for the stone, well actually a few small settings, one was the wrong size, one did a flight of a bumble bee off across the workshop never to be seen again and one was just right although it also tried a half-hearted escape attempt as well, but it duly got soldered into position, the stone got set and the pendant got its final polish....

The days ticked past and yes you guessed it February became March, but unfortunately the Amethyst did not become an Aquamarine... maybe one day....

Completed pendant

Completed pendant being worn by Val