Tag: Metalsmithing

Silver Bass

A silver and mixed metal bass guitar earring.

After finishing the Silver Elephant in the pre-final class of the year, I had to think of a quick project that I could do in 1+2.5 hours. Luckily, when I was trying to decide on the elephant, I’d also found a pin of a somewhat abstract bass guitar that really struck my fancy. My mother plays bass guitar and wears earrings so I figured I might try to make a bass guitar earring for funsies.

Silver earring shaped like an almost abstract bass guitar with two strings.
Low poly head and neck on a base made out of white paper with a silver earring shaped like a bass guitar

To make it, I flattened a piece of silver in that first hour and did the shaping and finishing in the final class. The plan was to bend it into shape, then solder the one pointy bit, drill holes for strings and finish it with sanding and polishing. I knew that it wasn’t going to hold the correct amount of strings for a bass, so I just drilled two holes in top and bottom. At home, I found some metal wire, made those strings and attached the earring hook. It turned out pretty well and so far, she’s enjoying it.

Silver Elephant

Silver elephant for a necklace.

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?!

Silver elephant next to a piece of paper with the original plan.
Silver elephant next to a piece of paper with the original plan.
Silver elephant on a piece of paper with the original plan.

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.

Order of the silver sections added to the Silver elephant

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.