Set A Cab A Month - March 2020

Oops!! Well this is a bit late!!! 😃

Medieval Mystery © Joy Funnell

I did actually finish this pendant for the Set A Cab A Month challenge in March... but only just!!! 

Life got a bit hectic so I only started making my piece at about 4pm on 31st March!! 😉There was no way I was going to fail at making a piece for a challenge that I started! It HAD to be done! 

This meant that the idea I had for my March piece was put on hold (watch this space in April for that one!!) and I went searching for something I could make in one evening!! lol

I found a blank ready made silver pendant that I had left over from the ones I made for teaching my Embellish! workshop at YCMI. I'd made a few extra so everyone could choose which textures they wanted, so that was lucky!! 

I fished out some fine silver bezels cups and the plan was to solder them onto the pendant. I have to say I had no real clue what I was doing with this piece and where it was going. I hadn't even looked to see what cabochons to use!! I was just going for it.

I put some paste solder under each bezel cup and heated the piece to solder them on. I was fairly sure I'd be quite lucky if I managed to solder all the bezel cups on in one go...

...and indeed whilst they all looked like the might of flowed the moment of truth is always after they have been in the pickle!!! 😂

As expected not all the bezel cups were soldered when I tested each one. Interestingly though I was left with a nice pattern as the larger cups were all firmly attached but only two of the smaller ones were. This immediately made me realise I gone a bit mad with bezel cups anyway to start with, so I just re-soldered one more small one on to even up the design.

Then I made some small spirals of fine silver wire and attached them to the pendant. It made a much nicer design that my original one!! 

So...what to add next...GOLD!

Oh yes, everything is better for a bit of gold!! 😀

By now it was running late into the evening as I'd stopped to cook dinner, eat it and watch a bit of TV with hubby!!! Possibly not the best idea but there you go 😂 

I found a small circle punch to cut out some discs of gold foil...

...which I added by heating the silver and burnishing the gold onto the surface using the Keum Boo method. I like adding gold like this onto spirals. Because the surface of the spiral is very uneven as it won't all fuse on so some bits of gold will come away afterwards. I call this distressed keum boo and I've used it quite a bit in the past!! 😉😁

Next was the fun bit - could I find a nice combination of cabochons. Now I will admit to having a slight panic at this point when I couldn't find any nice 8mm round cabs for the centre stone. However eventually I located a bag with a few in including this nice turquoise. To go with that I choose 3 x 6mm vintage red foil backed Swarovski crystals and 3 x 2mm rose cut (with a faceted top) amethyst cabs. With the gold I thought it made a nice rich colour combination 😃

Then I debated holes!! Well why not 😉 I marked them out with a pencil first to check I liked the idea...

...then drilled them.

After that I patinated the whole piece to turn all the silver a nice dark colour and give a good contrast with the gold. 

Finally I polished up the pendant a bit and then set all the cabochons. 

I took a few quick photos and managed to post it into the Set a Cab A Month Facebook group at 23.20!!! 😅 

Phew!

I love the combination of the cabs with gold and darkened silver 😃 

It's the first time I've used rose cut cabs too and they really catch the light and sparkle. I shall look for more of them  😊

Until next time....

Have fun!!!

Joy x

PS watch out for a new blog post on some exciting textures coming VERY soon!!! 😊