Wednesday 28 March 2012

Making triangle from straight pieces...

Ok, a change from the dressmaking now to show you progress and final pics from a pendant commission I've been working on.

The brief? A 'simple' inverted triangle with a hanging loop at the top. Sounds easy, and in a way it is, but there are a lot of stages involved nonetheless.

I started with a flat strip of silver and filed a v-shape in the centre (unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of this so you'll have to use your imagination) then folded the resulting piece up to create the bottom half of the triangle:
Once this was soldered to secure it, I then filed the tops of the two prongs so that they lay flush with the piece going across the top and soldered the top bar in place:
The protuding ends were filed back flush to form a perfect triangle before all the faces were emeried smooth:
I then attached a small ring to the top of the triangle for the jump ring to go through, and polished the whole pendant up. The result is indeed a simple but beautiful pendant:
(although try as I might I couldn't get it to lie flat and not look wonky while photographing it in the box!)

Monday 19 March 2012

What my customers get up to...

...or rather, one customer in particular. You see, I happen to have a customer who's a Shirley Bassey Tribute, and a rather good one at that. 

Anyone who's been on my Facebook page may have seen the photos of a stunning gold sequin dress and matching gold lame cape, which were commissioned by Jacqui to take with her on a trip to the states this Feb/March. I was quite pleased with the result, and the dress especially managed to look stunning both on the mannequin and on Jacqui during fittings.
By all accounts her trip seems to have gone really very well, she had a wonderful time and some of the comments on her Facebook page give testimony to how well her show was received everywhere she went. The gold dress seemed to make an appearance at most shows she did, and she said there were often little gasps of amazement when she walked out in it - based on this photo she gave me, I'm not surprised!