The aim of the third project in my jewelry course was to do more soldering to get more faith in that. I had to think of something that I wanted to make and in the days preceding that class, I started looking around for inspiration. My one party trick is that I can fold an origami elephant from almost any piece of paper, for example a receipt. I’ve also got one of those elephants on my desk, and I thought, why not immortalize this in silver?!
So I looked for a line drawing to base my elephant on. In the end, I combined two different pins (one and two) and set out to make an simplified elephant. I used square wire and made the different shapes by filing sections away in the corners, bending those and then soldering those joints. The order of operations was purple first, then blue then green. Attach those three together. Make the orange and attach it. Make the brown and attach it. Put the red on and attach a longer bit of lavender and saw that to length. The end of the trunk was almost completely filled in, so I used a drill and my saw to make the hole a bit more obvious.
Lastly, I added a little loop to the back so I could hang him on something. I didn’t want him to be high shine, so I kept the front and back slightly matt, but polished the outside edges to a shine. I found a spang (I don’t know the translation, but it’s a round cord for the neck) in my stash that fit perfectly and would put him at a nice height on my chest. My instructor was very proud that the final product looked so close to the plan and of the finishing and soldering that I’d done. I’m also happy with it and hope to wear it sometime.
