Lost Wax Casting: Floral Bracelet (cont'd)

Over the holidays I read about an easy way to add a dark patina to your sterling silver with just a container and some hard-boiled eggs.  The sulfur released from the eggs reacts with the metal the same way that the Liver of Sulfur chemical does, only much slower.  After boiling one egg I peeled the shell, cut it into quarters, and put the sections into a clear container with the bracelet while the egg was still hot.  The clear container keeps the sulfur in while allowing you to monitor your silver piece (which was still tricky due to the condensation).  After about an hour I was satisfied with the colour and took out the bracelet.  This is what it looked like!

I used a silver-cleaning polishing pad to remove the dark patina from the high points of the bracelet and voila!  Here is a photo of the finished product (with my first bracelet in the background).

Lost Wax Casting: Floral Bracelet (cont'd)

I ended up giving my wax model to my casting instructor from last term to cast into sterling silver.  I picked up the bracelet this week and got right down to business polishing it so I can wear it during the holiday season.  Here are pictures just after I sawed off the sprues.  My instructor said he made two of them to ensure that the molten silver would flow evenly to the rest of the bracelet and pick up all the details of the wax model.

It took about an hour to polish the bracelet using a combination of emery paper, small polishing brushes, and finally the polishing wheel at George Brown.  The bracelet looks and feels great on my wrist - I'm definitely going to show this off during the holiday celebrations!

Lost Wax Casting: Floral Bracelet

Here is my second bracelet project and I am determined to make it more wearable than my previous one.  I found a neat flower stencil online and put together a design with four flowers in a row with room for filler in between.  I actually started carving most of the flower design before coming up with the pattern that connects them. My instructor had various sizes of cup burs which allowed me to create the tiny circles without too much trouble.

To help ensure this bracelet is lighter and more comfortable to wear I drilled out a number of holes in the flowers designed it so that much of the border material is cut away.

Here is my bracelet after several hours thinning out the bracelet and removing the border material.  I think the irregular shape makes this piece much more interesting than a cuff that is the same width all around.  I'm excited to see it in metal but this time around I will not be casting it myself since I no longer have access to the equipment.  I'll have to seek out some casting houses downtown or talk to my instructors about it. We'll see.

Lost Wax Casting: Koi Cuff Bracelet (final)

Remember that koi cuff bracelet I finished back at the beginning of the year?  Well I had cast it in silver after finishing my final wax model-making course with Pawel so he never got to see the final product.  This month I started the level two course for model-making and brought this bracelet in to show him.  He was pretty impressed with the final product and said it would look even better if I brought out the details using Liver of Sulphur.  It's a strong liquid chemical that coats on clear but turns the silver black in a matter of seconds.  You can then put the bracelet through the polishing wheel once more to remove the black patina from the high points on the surface.  The blackspace and grooves are left dark and definitely highlights all the details from my carving.  I love it!

Lost Wax Casting: Koi Cuff Bracelet (cont'd)

Here is my finished bracelet after polishing with Tripoli.   I'm really proud of this bracelet which probably took around 30 hours to carve in wax and another 4 hours to finish in metal.  Too bad it's quite heavy and not at all comfortable to wear!  It looks great on my jewellery stand though and turned out better than I ever would have thought.  I will just have to make my second bracelet even better (after a little break in between, of course).

Lost Wax Casting: Koi Cuff Bracelet (cont'd)

I was able to cast my koi cuff braclet in sterling silver this week - how exciting! In my previous class I soldered a massive sprue at the base of the bracelet and then set the mold. I ended up keeping most of the bridge as support so there will be a considerable amount of silver I can recover from this casting. One of my classmates took a final photo of the wax piece just before I said goodbye to it for good.

Preparing the piece for casting

 There was a fair bit of prep before the actual casting process took place. I had a bar of fine silver that had to be cut with copper to make sterling silver which is harder and more durable. It took a painfully long time to melt down such a large amount of silver and my hand was pretty crisp from holding the torch.

Here I am with my instructor Shao getting ready to melt the sterling silver beads with the torch.  In the right photo I'm adjusting the flame before pointing it down into the centrifuge.

After the piece was cast I had to wait another 20 minutes for it to cool down before plunging it in a bucket of water and retrieving the bracelet. That felt like a verrrry long 20 minutes.  Here is the bracelet with the massive sprue sawed off (which took an hour with a tiny jewellery's hand saw!).

Bracelet just after casting (fine silver coating)

Lost Wax Casting: Koi Cuff Bracelet (cont'd)

I was able to dedicate a lot of carving time to this bracelet over the holiday season (I love that my office shuts down for Christmas!).  The bracelet is coming along nicely and I've spent many hours carving, digging, and scraping away wax.  I'm still pretty timid with the tools so I end up making multiple passes over the entire bracelet, slightly deepening the grooves each time.  Not very efficient but I'm getting good practice, that's for sure.

The right-side koi is beginning to take shape

Another 3 hours spent adding details such as scales and fins

The wax model is almost ready for casting. I've spent a considerable amount of time hollowing it out and taking down the thinnest sections of the bracelet to about 1.2 - 1.5 mm. Before the holidays the wax model weighed 33 grams. Now it weighs 15 grams, and will be even lighter once I cut out the bridge and create the opening in the bracelet for my wrist. The weight in sterling silver is approximately 10.4 x the weight in wax so there is definite incentive to get this piece lighter.

In the right-hand photo you can see the neat texture that my instructor suggested I add to the inside of the bracelet. It took about 45 minutes just to do that detail alone but it really gives the bracelet a nice finished look without requiring me to file the finished piece from the inside.

Lost Wax Casting: Koi Cuff Bracelet

In my model-making class last week I started a cuff bracelet which will probably take me into the new year. This project will give me something to do during the Christmas break when we're off for a few weeks. I was inspired by a design I saw online here. Pretty ambitious I know, but hey it's something to strive for.

After sawing out a thick block of wax for the cuff bracelet I used the drill press to take out the middle section. I drilled a series of holes around the inner diameter and then cut through the remaining bits of wax with a regular jewellery's saw frame. Then it was time to file, file, file!

For now I'm keeping the cuff quite thick to provide support until all of the design has been carved into the front.  After that it can be hollowed out from the inside to reduce the cost and weight of casting.

Design for new bracelet

Here is the design I plan to use for the bracelet.  I found a nice stencil for a single koi online so I simply mirrored the image and added some more flowers as filler. I sized the design for my bracelet, printed it, and  taped it to the wax cuff for transfering. Using a pin I transferred most of the design onto the wax, leaving out the more intricate details such as the fish scales and the smaller flowers. This took about an hour.

Design transferred to wax using pin-pricks

It took me about 3 hours with the flex-shaft and a set of burs to create a sunken relief for the blackspace in my bracelet (I was way too timid with the burs). The instructor thought this project would take 40 - 50 hours to complete - so far I've put in 7 hours. I'll have to decide just how much fine detail I want in this bracelet but ultimately the plan is to have it ready for casting in January before my courses end.

Chandelier Watchlet

I've finally gotten around to incorporating a watch face into my chandelier bracelet that I designed back in March. For some time now I've been playing with the idea of combining a watch and bracelet since I typically wear both on the same wrist and therefore often need to choose between the two.





The challenge was designing a final piece that would be seen first as a bracelet and second as a watch rather than the other way around. When I spied this watch face in a store I knew it would be a perfect match for my chandelier bracelet. After hours of fiddling around I've managed to set down my tools and am satisfied with the results.

Sarees and Celebrations!

Remember the Indian Flare hand jewellery that I made for my friend's wedding? Well got to I wear it last weekend and it was a big hit with her family. The 4-day wedding (of which I went to 3 of the days) was so much fun!  I got to participate in the henna ceremony, borrow beautiful traditional Indian clothes for the wedding, and eat tonnes of great Indian food (mmmmmm!).

Here are a few photos from that celebration.

Dressed in a salwar kameez at the ceremony with Mike

Posing with Anisha, Sameer, and Miranda at the reception (and loving every minute in the saree!)

Vintage Chandelier Cuff Bracelet

Chandelier earring piece

After making the vintage malachite bracelet over the holidays I had been itching to do another chunky and bold bracelet so I headed to my favourite bead stores yesterday along Queen West which was filled with people soaking up the sun (Spring is definitely around the corner). I picked out a pretty metal piece meant for making chandelier earrings and used eight of them together to create the main structure for my new bracelet.

I didn't end up needing a whole lot of other pieces for detailing, mostly a handful of jump rings (and what a handful it was!) As a final touch I tediously attached a piece of chain along the outer edges to give the bracelet a more clean and finished edge.

Indian Flare

This year my good friend Anisha will be walking down the aisle on exactly the same day as Mike and my one-year anniversary. It will be an extravagant four-day Indian wedding and I was inspired by photos of the beautiful hand jewellery that Indian brides often wear. I created a pearl and crystal piece of hand jewellery for a bride last spring but this time I thought I would try something a bit different. Again I used pieces that were meant for chandelier earrings and played around with the angles to get an asymmetric shape that was just the right length down the back of my hand. I plan on wearing it to the wedding in the summer.

Vintage Malachite Cuff Bracelet

This past holiday I was going through some of my mother-in-law's collection of "vintage" (i.e. no-longer-worn-but-can't-bear-to-throw-away) jewellery and came across this beautiful old belt buckle. I wasn't sure what the stone was made of but it looked a lot like malachite.  I was able to find some matching malachite beads along Queen street and came up with a design that I think complements the original design of the buckle.