Am I going to tell you why I call it Piaf’s bead? Nah, not the full story anyway. It’s just my nickname for Sabine, the maker. Here’s her description of it:
 The starting point | “The bead is a ‘Chaos’ bead, created by pushing the glass through a brass mesh (it’s still inside the bead), then encasing it. I’ve not made many, because they take forever, but might re-consider now! The dots are made using a silver-rich glass, by reducing the glass in a propane-rich flame, you get the metallic shimmer” Somehow, it was clear to me that this superb bead should form the centre-piece of some sort of pendant, and I came up with the design in the sketch below almost immediately. |
From my design book
Other people had the same reaction as I: the bead has quite a reptilian feel to it. So, as well as the pendant having a lot of ‘body’, I began to experiment with how to texture it to give a snakeskin feel.
One thing that you soon learn when making jewellery is that you end up making a lot of your own tools yourself. A 4″ oval nail was soon filed to shape and I tested using as a punch to mark the piece of scrap silver sheet over on the left of the picture (yes, I put it on the scanner along with the page from my notebook).
Satisfied, I began the process of drawing up the design in detail to create the template for cutting out the silver sheet. Some people do this by marking the design directly onto the silver, but I prefer to draw it out on my PC, especially if, as in this case, I need to make allowance for when the silver is formed.
I then print out the design, stick it to the silver (as below) and cut it out.
Yes, that’s blood! Mine.
One thing that you soon learn when making jewellery is that you end up making a lot of your own tools yourself. A 4″ oval nail was soon filed to shape and I tested using as a punch to mark the piece of scrap silver sheet over on the left of the picture (yes, I put it on the scanner along with the page from my notebook).
Satisfied, I began the process of drawing up the design in detail to create the template for cutting out the silver sheet. Some people do this by marking the design directly onto the silver, but I prefer to draw it out on my PC, especially if, as in this case, I need to make allowance for when the silver is formed.
I then print out the design, stick it to the silver (as below) and cut it out.
Yes, that’s blood! Mine.
 Cutting out from a stuck-on template. | I’ll finish this post with a photo of the piece with the snakeskin texture applied. I’ll patinate that on the final piece.  The texturing process underway. The 4" nail works. |
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