Soldering Skillz

So I started making a set of earrings from wire and decided at some point to share a little.

first off, I had a ton of solder joints. All the bends in the wire i notched the wire, bent the wire then soldered in the notch to give it strength again. As you can see I used my tweezers as heat sinks to prevent certain joints from accidentally flowing. For the most part I was able to use hard solder, but the spot that had 4 joints at once I decided to use medium on. you can see in the picture below H for hard solder, M for medium. No need for easy.

 I then put on the earring post with medium, again using tweezers to prevent that one joint from accidentally getting too much heat and flowing on me.

 I then added the wires for the pearls and soldered them closed. I polished up the prongs so they were smooth.

 I decided to try something so i oxidized the posts

 And tumbled them so the oxidation became permanent....i might touch up a little to make the darker once they are set.

 Aand this is what i got: black tourmaline and pearls. Super classy.  I overworked one prong so i gotta re-solder it, then liver of sulfur, then tumble then reset. le sigh. Almost done, though. Hope it gives you some ideas how to solder lots of joints together.

Erikas Design Process

I make no claims to be a trained artist. Infact, most of my sense of design is purely instinct. When I work on a new piece i have several days of designing: sometimes i draw out the idea, sometimes i just move around the stonest themselves. I had a nice turquoise i wanted to pair with an opal, but i hade a bit of trouble figuring out what to do and how to so it. I did a small sketch, but it wasnt enough to fill in all the design holes. So I played with the stones i had until i saw something I liked. Here are three possibilities:

 I still like this one....

Ever so slightly different

But I went with this one. 

Now the question: where to I put the chain?

Tippy top?

Middle of the top?

Through the accent stones? IF i went with this design I would have to have the opal stationary-and my problem was I couldn't see how to connect the opal to the turquoise.

Finally, I decided to go through the top and connect the two stones with a rod....this also created lots of design possibilities. Big rod? Small one? Beads on the end? Gold or Silver? Though I almost went with gold accents out of nowhere i decided to use two rhodocrosite garnets.

Here is the setting waiting for the stones.

Finished piece. Well, almost, still needs a final polish but its not to bad for an afternoons work.

BTW This is the original piece of opal I cut that one from. I actually got THREE different pieces of jewelry from this one stone.

End Product

So here is my inspiration:

The connection: 

The rabbit in a handmade silver clasp (note the tail is the release for the clasp):

The end product:

No pun intended.

Anyone else ever make a piece based off a pet? How do you incorperate humor?