Chrysocolla Pendant : How to wire wrap a cabochon - How to: Weekly Contest by @robali123

Hiya!

It's a bank holiday this weekend in the UK which means no work Monday, and as I had the day off Friday I've been treated to a four day weekend, bit of a result! Not much has been done so far, lots of lounging around and a little bit of jewellery.

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I've been working on this commision for a birthday gift. They requested a Chrysocolla and Sterling Silver pendant but gave me pretty free reign on the actual design. Overall its taken a few evenings from design to finish but that's included lots of breaks and getting sidetracked! Actual working time is probably around 5/6 Hours.

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The Process
First up, when working with Silver, i tend to draw up some design ideas first. With copper, this isn't so important as the wire is dirt cheap and having to scrap a design halfway through doesn't financially cripple me! Here's the rough design I was happy with.

Next, I begin with some heavy gauge wire to build a solid base for the rest of the design to come off, I always get a little nervous working with this thicker stuff, must not waste materials

Using the drawn image as a template can be useful as a guide. I'll tweak the shape and keep checking to see how the stone will sit. It's important to get this bit right otherwise the rest of the wrap is trying to sort out or cover up the first mistake.

Using copper wire to experiment I begin adding different gauges of wire to secure the stone and add to the design. The thin copper wrapping wire is really good for holding things where I need them till they are permanently anchored.

Something I've only recently felt brave enough to do is to file the stones I'm wrapping myself. A lot of the gems I buy come as rough stones or cabochons but rarely do they have grooves or holes drilled to assist with wrapping. As Chrysocolla isn't very hard I was able to file a groove with some diamond tipped needle files.

Here you can see the back of the piece where I hide all the messy ends.

The wire to the left of the stone here is now relatively secure as it sits nicely in that groove i previously cut.

Adding some coiled wire to the right adds pressure to the other side of the stone to keep it secure, and it looks nice!

Using fine silver wire I begin adding a wrap to the twisted section.

As this is a piece of jewellery and not a flat painting it's important to make sure it looks good from all or at least most angles, this side needs some work. You may also notice, as I did, that the wire on the right has shifted forward leaving a pretty big gap between it and the stone. I need to sort this out too.

My solution for the gap was some partially hidden silver beads. I love adding plain round beads to my designs, they're good for filling gaps and break up the solid wire lines a bit.
To the left is the cover piece for the other side. At this stage of the process it's risky to anchor heavy gauge wire to the piece and try and bend it to shape whilst its attached as its quite stiff it can pull the design out of shape. I know this from several ruined pendants in the past! So as you can see i've shaped it to fit perfect before attaching it with fine silver wire.

I didn't get any more photos of the final stages as I forgot but after the little touch ups and tucking of stray wires all thats needed is a polish and it's done!

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A fine snake chain completes this commission, ready for the customer :)

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