Recently I received an unexpected email from California, a request for two custom necklaces. Through a google search they had come across my sharks tooth necklaces that I had made for a previous customer. My clients stories of travel, the sharks dive, tradition, and family was so beautiful, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to put all those ideas of love into one place. Not only did they want a charm for the teeth but they requested several other love trinkets to appear with it, the coordinates where the sharks teeth where found and a compass rose. The compass rose was their family tradition of always finding there way home.
I decided to create my compass rose charm out of fine silver metal clay. I love this product, its a finely ground powder of fine silver mixed with a binder. The end product is a material like clay or "play-doh", which is easily manipulated to create many shapes that can be built and layered. After all my shapes where created, I then combined the triangles and circles to create the compass rose. The challenge was to create two charms that where the similar. After the shapes are "bone" dry, they are put into a high temperature kiln, burning off the binder and leaving solid fine silver behind.
To make the coordinate charms I used stainless steel letters designed for jewelry making. Each letter is hand stamped with a brass mallet onto sterling silver creating the mark. I made vertical charms for the longitude coordinates and horizontal charms for the latitude coordinates. Your always going to have a few mess ups with this step, so its good to practice several times beforehand.
The coordinates are trimmed, sanded then polished to create the charm.
To attach the bail onto the sharks tooth, I must create a hole. I pull out my secret weapon, my husband. He is a dentist so I leave this step up to him, he never fails and is always precise.
For the final pieces I used liver of sulfur to blacken the charms, bringing out the letters and textures. A beautiful end result for a beautiful story.
