New Jewelry Experiments

This is the Hamsah hand aka Miriam's hand in the shape of a dove with a "good" eye over it. I'm sure I'll not keep the two together. The stone is a reticulated quartz cabochon I got from a shopgoodwill.com aution. It only has a few gold threads running through it. I'm happier with the eye piece than the hand, though now I wish I'd have completely sawed out the oblong back of the bezel (for light) instead of leaving it in the shape of a round eyeball. Andria got to see the original silver hand and what was supposed to happen. The torch I am working with is too hot to do a lot of detail fusing. I plan to make it again when I get my torch dilemma figured out.    

 This piece is exciting and really pretty to me. I think I might wear it for awhile. I'm pretty sure the stone is a white topaz...because I heated it and the stone shocked and crackled. It actually looks pretty cool now. You can tell it's a true mineral instead of just looking like a rhinestone. I left the silver highlighted in a few places and with a raw patina over most of it.

This is the first "gypsy" bezel I have made and set. It involves making a bezel the circumference of the stone's crown, then making another smaller one for the stone to "sit" on while the slightest amount of silver from the first bezel is burnished over the stone.

It started out in the ring pictured below. I didn't like the way it sat on my hand so I heated the soldered bezel (hence the stone's crackling) and threw it into the scrap piece of silver (nautilus because it was originally bent to be a part of that rose ring) that now surrounds it in the above photos. More gypsy bezels to come now that I know I can do it!

Aunt K, this 7mm stone is from you. I'm finally getting to set all those gems you sent me so many years ago.