Art Jewelry Elements: Making Lemonade out of Lemons

Or in this case, making pretty stud earrings out of scrap silver! I am well and truly into Christmas craft show season now, and much of my time is taken up with making new stock to take the place of pieces that have gone to new homes. I spent the other afternoon making a couple of dozen pairs different designs of stud earrings as I can't seem to make them quickly enough at the moment, so I thought that I'd take some photos along the way!

1. Cut two small discs from fairly thin silver sheet. I've cut 6.4mm discs from approximately 0.6mm sheet, and I used my rolling mill to thin out some thicker sheet that I had left over from another project.

2. Cup the discs in a doming block, and then flare out the edges of the cupped discs by doing what the textbooks tell you to never do - hammer the punch while you hold it at a wonky angle!

3. This is what the cupped discs look like after hammering. No two ever turn out exactly the same, which I think adds to their charm.

4. Melt small pieces of scrap into two balls of silver. You can see here how little scrap I used.

5. Use medium solder to solder the balls in the middle of the hammered discs. I prefer to use solder paste for this. Quench, pickle and rinse your work.

6. Put a little easy solder paste on the end of a stud fitting.....

7. And start to melt the solder so that it is then solid on the tip of the wire. This will stop the solder from being smeared over the back of the earring.

8. Solder the stud fittings on to the back of the earrings. Quench, pickle and rinse the earrings.

And after a polish, this is what they look like!