Burnt Pearls

Lately I've been burning things on purpose. I took all of this silver to a very scary place. If I had an extra arm I would have taken photos in those seconds. The silver becomes a really pretty, rose, glowing color that is best seen in the dark. (Yeah, I sometimes fire in the dark.) The only reason there is any form to these pieces is because I mercifully backed off the torch at the last second.

As I explained to a friend yesterday, there is only a few seconds difference between total failure,cool experiment and nice piece of jewelry. Since I haven't mastered knowing when to back off before it's too late, I just let these pieces go on purpose. I did learn more about those critical seconds from these pieces.

These beauties are destined for the scrap pile, but I thought I'd photograph and share them. When unpolished, they look like something I could have stolen from the dentist's office. There's lots of silver here---which is why I can't afford to sell them considering what they look like. At least this expensive material is refinable.

No, I did not actually burn pearls. I did do that a couple years ago just to see what would happen. There really was a small glass bead under all those layers of nacre. It was sure stinky!