Experiment! I made silver jewelry (using silver clay)! I’ve been wanting to try this forever, bought the supplies ages ago, and finally, at the very end of summer, took the time to actually try it.
This is a hag stone (a stone with a hole in it). Well, it’s not really a hag stone, because those are supposed to be naturally occurring, and I made this one. And also, it has two holes in it, because I wanted a hole to put a jump ring through. But it’s for me, and I like it like this, so I’m going to call it a hag stone pendant anyway. One theory holds that looking through the hole of a hag stone will allow you to see a witch. Useful!
I could’ve sanded and polished it to smoothness before firing, but it’s supposed to be a stone, so I left it with an organic texture.
I made this pretty substantial — it’s 8 grams of silver, and notably heavy. It was really satisfying, somehow, firing the clay, getting it to glow orange, and then quenching it in water. I think I read too many fantasy novels with blacksmithing in them at an impressionable age. Now I want to do swords. 🙂
I don’t know that I’m likely to get really into metal work — it’s an expensive hobby, and mostly seems to call for more fine detail work than I really want to do, at least for jewelry. But this was definitely fun to play with, and I’m going to try making a few more pieces sometime this week, I think. Maybe I’ll have a few ready for Garage Galleries Forest Park 2024.
