7/52 - Inner Sanctum

One of the things on my challenge list for the year is to make more open-work pieces, so this week I made a hollow pendant with an open design on the front. I really enjoy this type of intricate work. It needs a gentle touch and a steady hand, plus a good dose of patience!! I didn't have any design worked out in advance for this pendant, so I just added things as I went along to see where it would all end up.

 

After firing I added some enamel - not a lot!! I think this must be one of the most minimal amounts I've added to a piece! (All this being restrained with colour is starting to go a bit far!! I'll have to make something joyfully bright and riotous soon!!.)

I also added 24k gold inside the pendant using the keum boo technique. It was a bit tricky to get inside a VERY hot piece of silver with a burnisher to get the gold to fuse, and it was made more difficult by me deciding to place my raised Joy logo tags inside the pendant on that side!! Now if I had only thought ahead a bit maybe I could of made my life a bit easier...ho hum... :D

Finally I patinated it and polished it up to accentuate the texture. 

 The back of the pendant has the same texture.

I wanted to add a beaded chain to finish the piece off,  so yesterday I popped down to Stone Corner in the Old Town of Hastings to see what I could find that would complement it. I'm very fortunate to have this lovely shop in my home town. I took the pendant with me so I could see what went well with it. I decided on a mix garnet and carnelian beads. As I had already chosen the name for the piece - Inner Sanctum - I was also pleased with the properties associated with these two gemstones. (I'll leave you to look them up if you are interested ;) )

What should of been a fairly simple job to make the chain took me longer than expected. The holes in the garnets were a bit too narrow for the wire I wanted to use, so in the end I reamed each bead out to increase the hole size. Laborious but worth it!! 

Here's a photo of the beading in progress.  ;)

Taking photos to show the gold inside proved to be a bit of a headache, I hope you can see the idea of it. My photography is one area I want to really nail during this year. I think I'm getting there with it now :)

Having been out to buy the beads for this piece, of course I came back with several other things that I didn't need, but couldn't resist!! So you can expect to see some of these making an appearance during the year!

One of them even has a surprise rainbow in it!! :D Making something to show that off will be a REAL challenge!!

Have fun!

Joy x