Sterling silver
Formed, soldered
2 cm dia.
This week I had one more idea for the butterflies – a pair of hoop earrings. Here, the butterflies fly around in a loop. The earrings insert from the back of the earlobe and curl around to bring the butterflies to the front.
It’s been a frustrating week.  I went back to my projects notebook to work on one of the tutorials I wrote in the fall. I quite often write a set of instructions, then put them away for a while, so I get it completely out of my head. Then when I come back to it, I’m looking at it with fresh eyes. It lets me test whether I can follow what I wrote.
I tend to go through several attempts at making the project while I’m writing instructions, refining the design as I go and making sure the steps make sense. Because of the rising cost of silver, the prototypes for the project I’m currently reviewing were originally constructed in copper wire.
Well…Â that was a mistake.
Silver, even in dead soft temper, is stiffer to work that copper – a small detail I forgot to consider – so the only thing I succeeded in doing was adding to my scrap bin. I’m now revising the project so it will work in silver.
